Difference between revisions of "Help:Basic Editing"

Revision as of 20:51, 21 April 2010

So you're browsing the Guidebook and see something you want to change or think of something great to add...but how?

This will give an outline of how to edit an article on the Guidebook.

Please consult the manual of style and the list of editing do's and don'ts for more in-depth information.

Steps to Editing

1. First you need to log in. The log in portal can be accessed in the upper-right corner of the screen. No registration is required, you must use you Mie JETs forum username and password.
2. Make your way to the article you want to edit
3. To begin editing, click the "edit" tab at the very top of the page. If you only want to edit a specific section, you can click the "edit" link on the right-hand side of the screen that correspond to the different headings.
4. Make your changes. Please see formatting for information about how to format and markup your text. In general it's best to follow the formatting patterns already in place in the article.
5. In the "Summary" box, give a brief note about the changes you made to the article
6. If only fixing typos, broken links, or formatting (ie, not adding or removing any information), check the box that says "This is a minor edit"
7. Preview your changes by clicking "Show preview"
8. If you like what you see, then click "Save page"
9. You're done!

Basic Structure

The theory of how to best structure the guidebook is something that a great deal of text could be written about, so we'll keep this basic advice short.

In general, every time you list something you are confronted with an option:

Do I list the topic title, wikilink it, and put all the information regarding this topic in its own article?

- or -

Do I list the topic and all of the relevant information right here in this article?

This question has to be analyzed on case-by-case basis. In general most topics do not warrant their own article but a few do. We must first ask a short series of questions:

1. Will this topic be brought up in multiple other articles? (As opposed to only appearing in a single article)
2. Does this topic have a good deal of unique information associated with it that can't be logically listed elsewhere?
3. For places and events, is it likely that more than just a few people (just people in a particular town) are going to want to go?

If the answer is yes (esp to question 1), then it's probably best to put that topic in its own article. If you know something is deserving of its own topic but don't have the information, simply wikilink it and hope somebody else who is familiar with the topic is nice enough to come along, see the red link, and run with it.

Creating a New Article

1. Enter the title of the new article you'd like to create into search and press "Go". Make sure you entered it exactly as you'd like the title to read, and also keep in mind that spaces are allowed.
2. At the top of the search results page, just under the "Search Results" heading, there will be a small line of text that reads "You searched for ~~", and "~~" will be a clickable red wikilink.
3. Click the red wikilink and get down to business.

Alternatively, clicking any red wikilink (indicating a page doesn't exist) anywhere in the guidebook will automatically take you to the "new page" edit box which is basically identical to the regular edit box.

Other Notes

• User pages

  If you're so inclined, you can create your own user page. Just click your name (in the upper-right hand corner of the screen), and you will be able to edit your own personal user page. Not sure what you'd necessarily want to put here, but the option is there.