Help:Beginner editing guide

This article is a draft It is still in development and may change significantly as it is expanded. If you like to contribute to this work, please reach out to the draft's author.

This page is a step-by-step walkthrough on editing the wiki. It is intended to help first time contributors with their first edit.

Creating a page

There are several options to create a new page.

1. You can go to Portal:Create a page where you can input the name of the page, and select what type of page you want to create.
2. Click an empty wikilink (i.e. a red link) to go to the empty page. On that page, select the template you want to use.
3. Search the page name using the search bar. If the page doesn't currently exist, click the appropriate button to create the page and begin editing.

Editing a page

Click the "Edit" or "Edit source" button on the top right of the page. "Edit" brings you to the VisualEditor and "Edit source" lets you edit the wikitext markdown directly. You can switch freely between both edit modes.

For beginners, we recommend using the VisualEditor.

Using the VisualEditor

For help on how to use the VisualEditor, a comprehensive guide can be found on Wikipedia's VisualEditor help page.

Wikilinks

Linking pages together helps readers find information that they need. You can create links to other pages in the wiki using the link button in the Visual Editor, or using double square brackets in the source editor.

[[Linked page name here]]

Pages do not need to exist to be linked. If the page is empty, it will appear as a red link and your or other editors can create that page. For the current list of empty pages see: Portal:WantedPages.

Categorisation

Ensuring each page is properly categorised is crucial for pages to be findable by users. Refer to similiar pages to find the exact category names that match, or create a new category if it doesn't exist yet.

You can categorise a page by adding the following text anywhere on the page:

[[Category:Insert category name here]]

For beginners, we suggest using the templates provided (see next section) to start a page. The appropriate category tags have been pre-inserted in the template.

Reference layouts

Reference layouts have been provided for some categories of pages. These layouts serve as a starting point and editors are encouraged to liberally adjust and revise the headings and structure to suit the content for that topic.

See Help:List of reference layouts

Images

You can upload and display images on pages. Use the insert image button on either editor to upload an image to the wiki

Insert image button in the VisualEditor

or insert the image using the following format:

[[File:Name of image file]]

We suggest using the VisualEditor to adjust the image properties, such as size and alignment.

Images are restricted to a maximum of 2Mb per file.

Citations

Citations are strongly encouraged for any claim. Citations can be easily inserted using the Cite button in the editor.

Cite button in editor