Introduction to CBC Wiki
From CBCWiki
Welcome to the Carolina Bird Club Wiki! This page will cover some of the basics of working with a Wiki web site. Because this Wiki runs the same software as the better known Wikipedia site, you might well begin by reading Wikipedia's Help.
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[edit] Reading articles
If you are just here to read articles, there is not much special that you need to know. The site works much like any other web site. Just a couple of things might be worth mentioning.
You will see two different kinds of links in this site. Links to another page within this Wiki, for example Main Page, or to a page on an external Wiki, such as Wikipedia, look like normal links. Links to a page that is outside of any wiki, whether elsewhere on this web site, such as Carolina Bird Club main page, or completely outside of this web site, such as North Carolina Birding Trail, appear with a special arrow symbol at the right.
At the top of each page are a few tabs, two of which are labeled "discussion" and "history". The discussion tab takes you to a "Talk page" where you can ask a question or participate in a discussion about the contents of the page. For example if you think that a page needs significant revision, you might first give your reasons here before you go ahead and revise it. The history tab shows you the history of all the previous versions and changes that have been made on the page. If you are logged in, there is another tab labeled "watch". Clicking on the watch tab adds the page to your watch list. If you have registered your e-mail address, the Wiki will send you an e-mail notice whenever the page is updated by someone else.
One thing that is very different about a Wiki is what happens when you click on a link to a page that does not exist. On normal web sites you will get an error message telling you something like "The requested URL was not found on this server." But in a Wiki when you click on a link to a page that doesn't exist, you are presented with an invitation to create the page! And that brings us to the next topic:
[edit] Creating and editing articles
A wiki is a web site that is written collaboratively by its users. Its software makes collaboration easy–well, pretty easy once you get over the initial hump.
Anyone can contribute to this wiki, either by creating new articles or improving existing articles. Because the web site is collaborative, pages don't have authors–anyone can update most any article. That includes this one—if you think that you can explain things better, do it!
[edit] Create an account for yourself
This is something that you will probably only do once, so it's described in a separate article: How to create an account.
[edit] Editing a page
You edit a page right in your browser. Editing for the Wiki may take a little getting used to if you haven't worked with web pages before (or even if you have, because Wiki markup differs in many ways from html). Unlike the typical WYSIWYG (What You See Is What You Get) wordprocessor, the Wiki editor does not immediately show you what the final product is going to look like. Instead, you enter plain text, along with special markup commands or characters that describe what the final page should look like. After making a change, you will need to click the "Show preview" button to see what the formatted page should look like.
To begin editing a page, either click on the "edit" tab at the top of the page, which lets you edit the entire page, or on the "edit" link at the top of a page section, which lets you edit just that section. It's safe to click on "Edit" just to see; any changes that you make won't be kept unless you click on "Save page". Go ahead, try it now!
Many pages on this Wiki, including this one, make little use of fancy features. There are only about three things that you need to know in order to create a simple page like this one. The first is that paragraphs are just contiguous lines of text. The only thing that might seem a little bit unusual about them is that in the editor they don't have the same font or formatting that they have in the browser.
The second thing is that you create a new paragraph by leaving one blank line.
The third thing is how to make section headings. In the editor, you make a top level heading by putting two equal signs before and after the heading text, like this:
==A top level heading==
Add one more equal sign for each successive level of nesting of subheading, for example
===Three equal signs make a second-level heading===
Once you have those three things down, you're ready to start helping to add content to the Wiki. You might first like to go to the Sandbox which is a public "play" page where you can try out editing and saving pages to see what they look like. If you are signed in, you can also use your Personal page as a Sandbox.
Probably the next thing that you should learn is how to add a link to another page. To make a link to another page on this Wiki, just enclose the page name in double brackets. For example, in the editor a link to the "How to create an account" page would look like this: [[How to create an account]]. In a browser it will look like this: How to create an account.
To make a link to a page outside the wiki, enclose the URL in a single pair of square brackets. After the URL but still inside the square brackets, add the text that you want to appear in the link. For example, a link to the Carolina Bird Club home page with text "Carolina Bird Club" would look like this in the editor: [http://www.carolinabirdclub.org Carolina Bird Club] and in a browser it will look like this: Carolina Bird Club
[edit] Creating a new page
The best way to create a new page is
- decide what other page should link to your page
- edit that page to add the link and save the updated page
- click on the link
It's not intuitive until you've tried it; just try it!
[edit] Finding Help
There are many help pages on Wikipedia. They are sometimes redundant and navigating them can be bewildering. Here are a few good starting pages that address the basics:
When you start needing more advanced editing features, begin at Editing Wikipedia .
