NovaRoma:Wiki Editing for Romans

Latest revision as of 10:07, 31 July 2013

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This is one of the Nova Roma wiki help files.

This is a quick guide for editing for Romans who are new to wikis.

• If you just want to edit an existing article:
  • Please read section 1 "Editing: Basic steps" carefully.
  • Use the other sections as a reference for doing fancier things.
• If you want to create a new article, it is just the same, but please also read about how to name articles.

N.B.: This isn't everything that you can do, but it is probably enough for most articles. More topics are covered in Advanced Wiki Editing for Romans.

Editing: Basic steps

The Fourfold Way

The Fourfold way is the basic set of steps used for all edits.

Step 1. Click the edit tab to start making your edits.

Step 2. Enter a note in the edit Summary so others know what you have done. A summary might be as simple as "fix typos", "add links" or "add photo". Not leaving a summary is very bad form.

Step 3. Show preview to check your changes. If it isn't right, go back and do more editing. Every time you save, you create a version of the page that will be saved forever. Unnecessary saves create unnecessary load when backing up the database. Be kind to the server and preview before saving.

Step 4. When you have checked everything, click Save page.

Start editing

To start editing a page, click on the "edit" link at the top of the page. This will bring you to the edit page: a page with a text box containing the wikitext: the editable source code from which the server produces the webpage. (If you just want to experiment, please do so on your user page.)

Editing is simple

In most cases you will just type (or paste) words, sentences, paragraphs or whole articles. It is just like typing. You can read below about making headings, lists and other fancy things.

Summarize your changes

You should write a short edit summary in the small field below the edit-box.

Minor edits

There is a check box that marks an edit as "minor". Minor edits are generally spelling corrections, formatting, and minor rearrangement of text. Other users may choose to hide minor edits when viewing Recent Changes.

Preview before saving

When you have finished, press Show preview to see how your changes will look -- before you make them permanent. Repeat the edit/preview process until you are satisfied, then click Save page and your changes will be immediately applied to the article.

Links

You will often want to make clickable links to other pages.

Link to another article in the wiki

To link to another article in this wiki, just type the article title inside [[double brackets]].

To link to the article "Choosing a Roman name", you would enter

[[Choosing a Roman name]] 

and it would appear in your article like this: Choosing a Roman name.

To make it fit smoothly in a sentence, you can make the first letter (only) lower case. If you type:

We have an article about [[choosing a Roman name]]

It will look like this: "We have an article about choosing a Roman name".

If you want to link to an article but you don't want to use the article's title, you can use the pipe character |. Start your link the same way, with the article title in double brackets, but then add the pipe character and then the words that you want to appear as your link.

We have an article about [[choosing a Roman name | picking a name]].

Appears as: "We have an article about picking a name".

Many articles here have titles like "Coin (Nova Roma)". If you don't want the "(Nova Roma)" part to appear, just make a normal link, add a pipe character and then add nothing. If you type

[[Coin (Nova Roma)|]] 

you will get this: "Coin".

If you add any letters right against the end of your link, they will become part of the link. If you type

 We have also minted several [[coin (Nova Roma)|]]s.

you will get this: "We have also minted several coins."

Link to things outside the wiki

To link to something outside the wiki, just enter the URL. If you type

http://groups.yahoo.com/group/newroman/ 

you get a link that looks like this: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/newroman/

If you want to give that link a name you must put it in single square brackets and add the name after the address, just leaving a space. So if you type this:

[http://groups.yahoo.com/group/newroman/ a group for new citizens]

it will look like this: "a group for new citizens".

If you use the single square brackets and no link name, you will get a number. If you type

[http://groups.yahoo.com/group/newroman/]

you will see this "[1]".

Category links

You can add your article to a category by putting in a category link.

A category is a special kind of page. It will automatically show an alphabetical list of all the articles that have a link to that category. Every article in that category has a link like this inside it:

[[Category:Nova Roma]]

• Put a category link anywhere in the article, usually at the bottom or at the top.
• The link to the category automatically appears at the bottom of the article.
• An article can be in any number of categories.

To make a link to a category without adding the article to the category, just add a leading colon, like this:

[[:Category:Nova Roma]]

It will look like this: "Category:Nova Roma"

Of course, it now acts like a normal inside the wiki link, so all the other rules apply:

[[:Category:Senators (Nova Roma)|]]

Appears as: "Senators"

Date links

N.B. We have a special system for recent years. Put double braces around recent years in the common system. The wiki will convert these to consular dates with the common dating as hover text.

If you type  {{2006}}

it will become "K. Buteone Po. Minucia cos. ‡ MMDCCLIX a.u.c.".

Otherwise, always put double brackets around dates.

The Wiki reformats linked dates to match the reader's date preferences. These three dates will show up the same if you choose a format in your Preferences:

• July 20, 1969
• 20 July 1969
• 1969-07-20

Always put double brackets around years AUC (in Roman numerals).

Redirection links

You can automatically forward readers from one article to another. For example, a reader who searches for "eagle" will be forwarded automatically to the article on Aquila heliaca.

The article "Eagle" contains just this:

#REDIRECT [[Aquila heliaca]]

The redirection happens automatically. If you add a redirect to an existing article, everything else in that article will be deleted, so use redirects carefully.

Dividing the text

Making paragraphs

Leave an empty line to start a new paragraph. A single return is ignored, but two returns (a blank line) starts a new paragraph. Do not use <p>.

Making sections

Divide an article into sections by putting a heading on a new line and surrounding it with double equals signs:

==Section heading==

Make subsection headings the same way, but use three equals signs:

===Sub-section heading===

• Start with two equals signs; don't use single equals signs.
• make smaller divisions with more equals signs.
• Don't skip levels: two equals signs should be followed by three equals signs, not four equals signs.

A table of contents will be generated automatically for any article with four or more headings.

Do not use <h1>, <h2> etc..

Italics and bold

You can put words into italics or bold by surrounding them with apostrophes (or single quotes).

Italics are used for words in another language (e.g. Latin). They are not used for emphasis.

Bold is used for emphasis.

The emphasise a word in a foreign language, you can use bold italics.

1. Put two apostrophes around the bit you want to make italic: ''Non-English word'' --> Non-English word.
2. Put three apostrophes around the bit you want to make bold: '''Emphasised word''' --> Emphasised word.
3. Put five apostrophes around the bit you want to make bold and italic: '''''Emphasised non-English word''''' --> Emphasised non-English word (usually bold italic).

It is considered bad form to use ALL CAPS for emphasis.

Lists

Unordered lists

• Start every list item on a new line.
• Put an asterix in front of each item.
• This list looks like this:

*Start every list item on a new line.
*Put an asterix in front of each item.
*This list looks like this:

Ordered lists

1. Start every list item on a new line.
2. Put a number sign in front of each item.
3. This list looks like this:

#Start every list item on a new line.
#Put a number sign in front of each item.
#This list looks like this:

Definition lists

• Put each item to define on a new line
• Put a semicolon before each item
• Put a colon between each item and its definition

Item to define 

A nice definition that can be as long or as short as you want.

;Item to define : A nice definition that can be as long or as short as you want.

Using footnotes

It's of utmost importance that for all claims in a scholarly article of our website we use references in footnotes. It does not only assures our readers they are reading a high quality, researched and verified article, but it greatly hepls them in further research, to find the ancient sources, the latest scholarship, authors etc., so that they can conduct researches themselves, or deepen their understanding and Romannes.

To create a footnote, determine the point in the page content where the footnote is desired and enter the markup with the citation or note inside the <ref>TEXT OF THE FOOTNOTE</ref> tags. A numeral indicating the footnote and the footnote iself will automatically appear on the page at the point where you put this tag: <references/> For example:

This is the text on the page that needs a footnote in the "references" section below.<ref>''LibreOffice For Starters'', First Edition, Flexible Minds, Manchester, 2002, p. 18</ref>	
<references/>

It will look like this:

This is the text on the page that needs a footnote in the "references" section below.^[1]

1. ↑ LibreOffice For Starters, First Edition, Flexible Minds, Manchester, 2002, p. 18

Attention: there must be no space before or after the <ref>TEXT OF THE FOOTNOTE</ref> tags. If there is a space there, the text will show error.

Special characters

Now that Mediawiki (the software that makes this wiki go) supports UTF-8, many of these can be entered directly into articles, without the HTML markup.

Related Topics

• help article for images
• help article on templates. Templates let us put things like dates onto pages automatically.