Help:Editing this site

This page, Help: Editing this site, gives guidance on how to create new articles and improve existing ones on The Falkland Historic Buildings Wiki.

For generic help on editing Mediawiki pages, see https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Help:Contents.

For general help on using this site, see Help:Using this site.

Becoming an editor

If you would like to contribute to the Wiki, you'll need to become a registered user. E-mail ross@foxearth.net with your name, email address, and a chosen "Username" for this site and you'll be set up as a user. If you've become an editor

Before doing any editing yourself, it's best to look at some existing articles and seeing how they're structured. If you click the "View source" tab at the top of the page (or the "Edit" tab if you're logged in and its a page you're allowed to edit) you will see the article in the "Wiki markup language" that controls the formatting. There's much more about editing the Wiki at the Help:Editing this site page.

Note the following examples:

• two apostrophes before and after a phrase in the markup make it display in italics, so ''something'' will display as something.
• three apostrophes before and after a phrase in the markup make it display in bold, so '''something else''' will display as something else
• enclosing a phrase in double square brackets will link it to the article in question (and display in blue if the article exists, otherwise in red), so [[Falkland Palace]] will display as Falkland Palace and clicking on it will take you to the Falkland Palace article.
• double equal signs before and after a phrase on a line by itself will create a section heading, so ==More information== on a new line will create a new section headed More information.

Starting to edit the Wiki

Once you've been signed up as a registered user, it's probably best to spend some time looking at articles and improving them before you create an article of your own.

If you find something wrong in an article, perhaps a spelling mistake, or something you know is factually wrong, click the "Edit" tab at the top of the page. This will show you the page in its markup form. Notice how this relates to the article as it's normally displayed. If you feel confident, just make the changes. To show what you've been doing, put a few words in the "Summary:" box at the bottom, to tell other editors why you made the changes. Once you're happy, click the "Show preview" box at the bottom of the screen and make sure that the article looks as you expect. If all is well, click "Save page" and the new version will be saved in the encyclopaedia.

Creating a new article

Before creating an article you should search to check that there is no suitable article that already exists. If an article on the topic you want to create is there, but you think people are likely to look for it under some different name or spelling, learn how to add a redirect with that name; adding needed redirects is a good way to help improve this Wiki.

If no suitable articles already exist, then you need to start a new article.

In the search box near the top right of a page, type the title of the new article, then click Go. If the Search page reports :"There were no results matching the query. Create the page "xxx" on this wiki!" (where xxx is the name of your subject in red) then you can click the red article name to start editing the article. If you're creating a page for a specific building, start by copying the contents of the Building Template page.

Remember that others can freely contribute to the article when it has been saved. The creator does not have special rights to control the later content.

References

An article should always say where the information has come from (other than the most basic information such as the location of a street or building).Provide a source for any statement that might be contested, and for any direct quotations. Add the reference immediately after the sentence, surrounded by <ref> and </ref>, for instance:
<ref>"Obituary: Sir Paul Latham", The Times, 26 July 1955, page 11.</ref>
or
<ref>http://www.bbc.co.uk/bbcfour/cinema/features/consenting-adults.shtml</ref>

The references will appear as numbered footnotes at the end of the article.

See also

See also a page of sources that we've drawn on to create this Wiki and some external links.