Help:What is the Wiki and How is it Used

(This page is a work in progress. I will be returning to it shortly. -DES Talk 03:25, 11 November 2008 (UTC))

This page is intended to describe the basic nature and features of the Wiki section of the ISFDB. It should serve as a general introduction to the ISFDB wiki for people not accustomed to using or editing a wiki.

What is a Wiki?
A wiki is a software mechanism intended to support collaborative work in a quick and simple manner. ("Wiki" is a Hawaiian word for "fast".) Wiki pages consist of text plus limited amounts of specialized markup (wikitext). (At display time, they are rendered as HTML pages in a web browser. At edit time, they appear as simple text.) Both the term and the notion have been popularized by Wikipedia, which is based on a set of wiki software. There are many other wikis, both public and private, using various implementations of the wiki concept. The ISFDB uses the MediaWiki software, which is the same software used by Wikipedia.

Primary and "talk" pages
Wiki pages are organized in pairs. One page is the "primary" page (or "article" or "project" page, depending on the namespace, described below). At the top of each wiki page are several tabs. The first is for the primary page, and will say "page" (or "help page" or "project page" or "user page" or some similar variant). The second is for the discussion or "talk" page, and will say "discussion".

The general convention is that a talk page is used to discuss the primary page, what should go on it, how it should be organized, etc. The purpose of the primary page varies, depending on the particular page involved. In some cases the term "discussion" may be in red. That indicates that the particular page has not had its talk page created yet -- but anyone can create it at any time.

Note also that on talk pages, and primary pages that are for the discussion of topics, users generally write in the first person and sign their comments. On primary pages that are basically descriptive, users write impersonally, and text is not usually signed.

User pages and User talk pages
A special case is the "User" page. This is a page that describes a particular user of the project, or that user's current activity, to do lists, or such things. Such pages have names that start with "User:" followed by the user's UserID on the wiki. For example User:Alvonruff or User:DESiegel60. Every registered user has a user page available, although some users may not have chosen to create their user pages. Normally, a user page will be edited only by the user it is for.

The corresponding talk page, the "user talk" page, has a name that starts "User talk:" followed by the user ID. This page is used, not for discussing what should go on the user page, but for communicating with the user in question. Whenever a user displays a wikipage, if there have been changes to that user's talk page, there will be a banner to notify the user that he or she has new messages. (of course this occurs only if the user is logged in). The user can click on the link in the banner and be taken to his or her user talk page. Also, there is a link to the talk page, called "my talk" at the top of every wiki page, in small type.

Conventions on the use of user talk pages differ on different wikis. On the ISFDB wiki, the convention is that a user responds to a message on the same page where the original message was posted, and it is the responsibility of the poster to watch or check that page to see the response. This keeps a discussion together.

In all discussions on this wiki, the convention is that responses are indented relative to the text being responded to. This is done by starting a paragraph with one or more colors, one for each indent level wanted. These display as indents. Do not start text paragraphs with tabs or blank spaces. This causes an unwrapped fixed-font display, which is generally unhelpful in such situations, although it can be useful for special purposes.

Editing wiki pages
Note that on the ISFDB wiki (unlike some other wikis) no one can make any edit without being logged in.

To edit any wiki page, simply click the "edit" tab at the top of the page. The display will enter edit mode, and the wiki text will be shown in an edit box. Make whatever additions or changes you wish, fill in the "summary" box below the edit box with a brief description of the nature or purpose of the edit (the "Edit summary", and click "save page" when you are done. Your changes are promptly saved to the wiki.

More often, it is helpful to edit only a section of a wiki page. Each section header has an "edit" link to the right. Clicking on this link will edit the section that starts with the header, including and sub-sections it may contain. This works exactly like editing an entire page, except that only the wiki text for the section (including the header) is in the edit box, and only the section will be changed by the edit. The Summary will be pre-filled with "/* Section Name */. Enter your summary of the edit after the pre-filled summary. If you changed the section name in your edit, change the pre-filled name also, please. If you added a new section, you should replace the pre-filled section name with the new name. This will allow the automatically created links on history and changes pages to work properly.

While editing, it is often helpful to click the "Show Preview" button at the bottom of the page, next to the "save changes" button. This shows how the edited page will be rendered, without saving any changes. This display is called a preview.

For more on editing wiki pagfes, see Help:Editing

Namespaces
Wiki pages are organized into various namespaces. A namespace is a prefix which is followed by a colon in the name of the wiki page. For example, this page is in the "Help:" namespace. Namespaces are used to separate wiki pages by purpose or function. Several wiki display functions such as the one at this page, can select only the pages in a particular namespace. Different wikis have different sets of namespaces, according to their needs.

On the ISFDB wiki, some of the more important namespaces are

Note that the list of available namespaces is set up as part of the wiki site configuration. Only those few people with shell-level access to the site can add (or remove) a namespace.

Wiki-links
You can insert a link to another wiki page by surrounding the name of the page with paired brackets. For example, a link to the "Magazines" page would be entered like this:

Magazines

and would display like this:

Magazines

A link to a page in a namespace (other than main) includes the namespace in the link. for example, a link to the page "How to verify data" in the Help namespace would be entered like this:

Help:How to verify data

and would display like this:

Help: How to verify data

You can change the displayed text of a link. For example if a link is entered like this:

the policy page

it will look like this: the policy page

Links can be used in the middle of a section of text like this, whenever they are appropriate.

Links to pages in the category and image namespaces are special. A "link" to a category page puts the page linked from into that category. A "link" to an image page displays the image where the links is. To link to a category without putting the page into the category, start the link with a colon. Enter the link  to get the link Category:Wiki Help. To link to an image page without displaying the image, also precede the page name with a colon. Enter the link  to get the link Image:Bheleu-Tweddell.jpg.

Templates
Pages on the wiki can use templates. Templates are special pages that contain test or wiki markup that can be inserted into other pages. Some Templates are simple boilerplate, that always produce the same output. Others take parameters (arguments) that are used in ways more or less complex to create the tempalte's output.

A template is called ("transcluded") by placing iits name in double curly braces. For example, the template "LOC" is called like this:

which results in this:

When parameters are used, they are marked off by vertical bars. For example, the template A (link to author record) takes one required and one optional parameter. It might be called as:

or as

This would led to the following results:

or

Some templates use named parameters. These are specified by the name of the parameter, followed by an equals sign, and the value being assigned. For example, the template Cover Image Data uses several named parameters. See its template page for detaiuls and examples.

Templates are normally pages in the Template: namespace. A template page, besides including the actual template text and markup, generally displays or links to documentation of the template including a list of the paramaters (if any) and their names and reasonable values. The corresponding Template talk: page may contain discussion of how a template should be used, or of how it might be altered or improved.

See Help:Template for more on templates generally.