Help:Editing

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	This page is under construction
	Currently undergoing revision with NeoDex specific rules included

General

To edit a page, click on the "Edit" link at one of its edges.

After adding to or changing the wikitext it is useful to press "Show Preview", which produces the corresponding webpage in your browser but does not make it publicly available yet (not until you press "Save"). Errors in formatting, links, tables, etc., are often much easier to discover from the rendered page than from the raw wikitext.

If you are not satisfied you can make more changes and preview the page as many times as necessary. When finished, write a short edit summary in the small text field below the edit-box and press "Save". Depending on your system, pressing the "Enter" key while the edit box is not active (i.e., there is no typing cursor in it) may have the same effect as pressing "Save".

Dummy edit

If the wikitext is not changed while saving no edit will be recorded and the edit summary is discarded.

A dummy edit is a change in wikitext that has no effect on the rendered page. This allows an edit summary, and is useful for correcting a previous edit summary, or an accidental marking of a previous edit as "minor" (see below). Also it is sometimes needed to refresh the cache of some item in the database.

Wiki markup

Links and URLs

What it looks like	What you type
The NeoDex has a Moehog article. A link to another Wiki article. Internally, the first letter of the target page is automatically capitalized and spaces are represented as underscores (typing an underscore in the link has the same effect as typing a space, but is not recommended). Thus the link above is to the URL http://www.pinkpt.com/neodex/index.php/Moehog, which is the NeoDex article with the name "Moehog".	The NeoDex has a [[Moehog]] article.
The NeoDex has many articles such as the one about Moehogs. Same target, different name. The "piped" text must be placed first, then the text which will be displayed second.	The NeoDex has many articles such as the one about [[Moehog|Moehogs]].
There are many Moehogs on Neopets. Text at the end of a wiki link are blended into the link. Preferred style is to use this instead of a piped link, if possible. Blending can be suppressed by using <nowiki></nowiki> tags, which may be desirable in some instances. Example: The Kau is somewhat Moehogish.	There are many [[Moehog]]s on Neopets. The [[Kau]] is somewhat [[Moehog]]<nowiki>ish. </nowiki>
See the NeoDex:Community Portal. A link to another namespace on the NeoDex.	See the [[NeoDex:Community Portal]].
Sophie#Trivia is a link to a section within another page. #Wiki markup is a link to another section on the current page. #example is a link to an anchor that was created using an id attribute . Sophie trivia is a stylish link to a section within another page. The part after the number sign (#) must match a section heading on the page. Matches must be exact in terms of spelling, case, and punctuation. Links to non-existent sections are not broken; they are treated as links to the top of the page. Identifiers may be created by attaching an id="..." attribute to almost any HTML element. This doesn't work with legacy browsers. Include "|link title" to create a stylish link title.	[[Sophie#Trivia]] is a link to a section within another page. [[#Wiki markup]] is a link to another section on the current page. [[#example]] is a link to an anchor that was created using <div id="example">an id attribute</div>. [[Sophie#Trivia|Sophie trivia]] is a stylish link to a section within another page.
Automatically hide text in parentheses: Neopets. Automatically hide namespace: Community Portal. The server fills in the part after the pipe character (|) when you save the page. The next time you open the edit box you will see the expanded piped link. When previewing your edits, you will not see the expanded form until you press Save and Edit again. The same applies to links to sections within the same page (see previous entry). See Wikipedia:Pipe trick for details.	Automatically hide text in parentheses: [[Neopets (website)|Neopets]]. Automatically hide namespace: [[NeoDex:Community Portal|Community Portal]].
Jacob's secret Ninja Lair is a page that doesn't exist yet. (this is just an example. Do not create article) You can create it by clicking on the link. To create a new page: Create a link to it on some other (related) page. Save that page. Click on the link you just made. The new page will open for editing. Please do not create a new article without linking to it from at least one other article.	[[Jacob's secret Ninja Lair]] is a page that doesn't exist yet.
Help:Editing is this page. Self links appear as bold text when the article is viewed. Do not use this technique to make the article name bold in the first paragraph.	[[Help:Editing]] is this page.
When adding a comment to a Talk page, you should "sign" it with a signature. Three tildes add your user name: Jacob Four tildes give your user name plus date/time: Jacob 08:10, 19 December 2006 (UTC) Five tildes give the date/time alone: 08:10, 19 December 2006 (UTC) Using three or four tildes provide a link to your user page. A button on the toolbar of the edit page automatically adds a five tildes signature in your edit.	When adding a comment to a Talk page, you should "sign" it with a signature. Three tildes add your user name: :~~~ Four tildes give your user name plus date/time: :~~~~ Five tildes give the date/time alone: :~~~~~
Sometimes data in an article or the whole article itself needs to be redirected or moved to a page with a synonomous name (Faerie Quests redirects to Faerie Quest, Snow Faerie to Taelia). Redirect one article title to another by placing a directive like the one shown to the right on the first line of the article. It is possible to redirect to a section. For example, Redirect Sophie Trivia will redirect to the Sophie article's "Trivia" section if it exists. Before making a redirect, besure the article you are redirecting to is accurate by either reasearching the NeoDex or asking an administrator.	#REDIRECT[[Cooties]] Redirect[[Sophie #Trivia|Sophie Trivia]]
What links here and Related changes pages can be linked as: Special:Whatlinkshere/Help:Editing and Special:Recentchangeslinked/Help:Editing	'''What links here''' and '''Related changes''' pages can be linked as: [[Special:Whatlinkshere/Help:Editing]] and [[Special:Recentchangeslinked/Help:Editing]]
A user's Contributions page can be linked as: Special:Contributions/Jacob or Special:Contributions/68.185.186.186	A user's '''Contributions''' page can be linked as: [[Special:Contributions/Jacob]] or [[Special:Contributions/68.185.186.186]]]
To put an article in a Category, place a link like the one to the right anywhere in the article. As with interlanguage links, it does not matter where you put these links while editing as they will always show up in the same place when you save the page, but placement at the end of the edit box is recommended. To link to a Category page without putting the article into the category, use an initial colon (:) in the link. For more information on this, see NeoDex:Categorization.	[[Category:Neopets]] [[:Category:Neopets]]
Three ways to link to external (non-NeoDex) sources: Bare URL: http://www.pinkpt.com/neodex/index.php/Main_Page (bad style) Unnamed link: [1] (only used within article body for footnotes) Named link: NeoDex Square brackets indicate an external link. Note the use of a space (not a pipe) to separate the URL from the link text in the "named" version. In the URL, all symbols must be among: A-Z a-z 0-9 . _ \ / ~ % - + & # ? ! = ( ) @ If a URL contains a character not in this list, it should be encoded by using a percent sign (%) followed by the hex code of the character, which can be found in the table of ASCII printable characters. For example, the caret character (^) would be encoded in a URL as %5E. If the "named" version contains a closing square bracket "]", then you must use the HTML special character syntax, i.e. &#93; otherwise the Wikipedia:MediaWiki software will prematurely interpret this as the end of the external link.	Three ways to link to external (non-NeoDex) sources: #Bare URL: http://www.pinkpt.com/neodex/index.php/Main_Page (bad style) #Unnamed link: [http://www.pinkpt.com/neodex/index.php/Main_Page] (only used within article body for footnotes) #Named link: [http://www.pinkpt.com/neodex/index.php/Main_Page NeoDex]
Linking to other wikis: Interwiki link: Wiktionary:Hello Interwiki link without prefix: Hello Named interwiki link: Wiktionary definition of 'Hello' All of these forms lead to the URL http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/Hello Note that interwiki links use the internal link style. See MetaWikiPedia:Interwiki_map for the list of shortcuts. If the site you want to link to is not on the list, use an external link (see above). See also Wikipedia:How to link to Wikimedia projects. Linking to another language's wiktionary: Wiktionary:fr:bonjour bonjour fr:bonjour All of these forms lead to the URL http://fr.wiktionary.org/wiki/bonjour	Linking to other wikis: # Interwiki link: [[Wiktionary:Hello]] # Interwiki link without prefix: [[Wiktionary:Hello|]] # Named interwiki link: [[Wiktionary:Hello| Wiktionary definition of 'Hello']] Linking to another language's wiktionary: # [[Wiktionary:fr:bonjour]] # [[Wiktionary:fr:bonjour|bonjour]] # [[Wiktionary:fr:bonjour|]]

Character formatting

What it looks like	What you type
Use italics to Emphasize text. Use bold to give Strong emphasis. Use italics and bold for Even stronger emphasis. Italics should be used sparingly. They can be used to indicate when a word or letter is serving as a word or letter, rather than its meaning, e.g. "NeoHome is an amalgamation of the words Neopets and home. If something would usually be put in inverted commas (NB: not quotation marks), italics should be used instead. Bold type is primarily used for repeating the articles title at its start. One should not put bold tags in headings, as the font weight of a heading is increased already.	Use italics to ''Emphasize text'' Use bold to give '''Strong emphasis''' Use italics and bold for '''''Even stronger emphasis'''''
Section headings Headings organize your writing into sections. The Wiki software can automatically generate a table of contents from them. Subsection Using more equals signs creates a subsection. A smaller subsection Don't skip levels, like from two to four equals signs. Start with 2 equals signs not 1 because 1 creates H1 tags which should be reserved for page title.	==Section headings== ''Headings'' organize your writing into sections. The Wiki software can automatically generate a table of contents from them. ===Subsection=== Using more equals signs creates a subsection. ====A smaller subsection==== Don't skip levels, like from two to four equals signs. Start with 2 equals signs not 1 because 1 creates H1 tags which should be reserved for page title.
Unordered lists are easy to do: Start every line with a star. More stars indicate a deeper level. Previous item continues. A newline in a list marks the end of the list. Of course you can start again.	* ''Unordered lists'' are easy to do: ** Start every line with a star. *** More stars indicate a deeper level. *: Previous item continues. ** A new line * in a list marks the end of the list. * Of course you can start again.
Numbered lists are: Very organized Easy to follow A new line marks the end of the list. New numbering starts with 1.	# ''Numbered lists'' are: ## Very organized ## Easy to follow A new line marks the end of the list. # New numbering starts with 1.

Other wiki formating

• <nowiki>ignore wiki format</nowiki>
• ---- - Dividing line

Formating

This section concerns itself with the use (and application) of formating techniques within the NeoDex.

Headings

Headings divide a topic up into several sections. By using headings one forces oneself to be more creative and thus output more than just a few words or a few brief sentences (which while this may be good it is not yet as extensive as an encyclopaedia should be). There may be little to put under certain headings when one writes an article for the first time, but it will make it easy for other authors and oneself to return and continue each section.

A good article should be structured with the following sections, which should be headed appropriately to the article's subject matter:

• A brief introduction (usual without a heading) that briefly, yet concisely, gives, among other things where appropriate:
  • The definition of the article's subject (if applicable).
  • Dates for when the event in the article commenced to its end (if applicable).
  • The use of the article's subject (if applicable).
• Details of the topic.
• Other Thoughts on the topic.

Other common headings include:

• History
• Trivia
• External Links

Table of contents (TOC)

For each page with more than three headings, a table of contents (TOC) is automatically generated from the section headings, unless:

• (for a user) preferences are set to turn it off
• (for an article) in the edit box the code __NOTOC__ is added

With __FORCETOC__ or __TOC__ in the wikitext a TOC is added even if the page has less than four headings. The TOC is put before the first section header, or in the case of __TOC__, at the position of this code. Thus there may be some introductory text before it, known as the "lead". Although usually a header after the TOC is preferable, __TOC__ can be used to avoid being forced to insert a meaningless header just to position the TOC correctly, i.e., not too low. Preferences can be set to number the sections automatically.

In a page calling a template with sections, the sections in the template are numbered according to their position in the rendered page, e.g. if the template tag is in the third section, then the first section of the template is numbered four. Any text in the template before its first section shows up as part of the section with the template tag, and any text after the tag before a new header shows up as part of the last section of the template. This may be done deliberately, but can usually better be avoided (see also below).

Wikilinks

• [[Link title]]
  • [[Link title|Link Text]]

Wikilinks are links to other articles within the NeoDex. Any word or phrase that relates to Neopets in your article should be wikilinked, for if there is not already an article on that topic someone may very likely write one. Words such as Krawk or Maraqua should be obvious for wikilinking, but other Neopets concepts like User lookups should also be wikilinked.

Dead links, displayed in red on a page, are not a bad thing: it gives opportunity for entirely new articles to be created. In the event that the article you are trying to link to does exist, but under a different name, the page the wikilink heads to should redirect to it.

It is not recommended to link to a specific article more than once per article. Ideally, the first occurance of a word in the article should be the one wikilinked. A wikilink should not appear in a heading. If necessary, the first sentence under a heading should be written to contain the word or phrase in the heading that should be wikilinked, and this occurance of the word used as the link.

Editing with Style

The NeoDex is a Neopets Encyclopaedia, so it is essential that at all times the articles are easy to read, easy to edit, are consistent, and retain an encyclopaedic voice. There are no rigid rules here - after all, concise, unbiased writing is the most important part of the encyclopaedia - but there are some assumptions, conventions and considerations involved in writing NeoDex articles

This article is about these conventions. For anything that is not covered here, please refer to the Wikipedia Manual of Style.

This section concerns itself with the writing styles of an article (rather than formatting issues). As far as this is concerned, it is actually very hard to do any "wrong". It is, however, harder to be truly stylish.

Varying forms of English

In the English-speaking world, there are several acceptable forms of English. As Neopets.com was founded in Britain, spellings and writing traditions on the official site are kept as British despite the fact that the Head Office was moved to California. Similarly, to maintain consistency with the official site, articles written for the NeoDex should use the British-English forms of the words.

If, as is the case on occasion, a form of a word has been used on the official Neopets.com site to describe something that is not the British form, then this form should be used instead.

The blanket rule used for determining English variations is to avoid reversion warring.

Dates

As a Neopian Calendar exists and is used on Neopets.com in addition to the Gregorian calendar, there is some dispute as to which calendar to use. For simplicity, the Gregorian calendar should be used, as when researching extremely old portions of the Neopets.com site, this is the calendar used in the New Features, and is the most logical calendar to use when referring to sites involving Neopets outside of Neopets.com.

There are also some dispute over how to write dates out in the NeoDex. The more short hand notation, dd/mm/yyyy should not me used: instead, dates should be written out fully, e.g. 31st May 2006. The year does not need to be included if it has already been mentioned shortly before as the previous date in the article. The day here precludes the month to retain the British look.

Use of Capital Letters

Initial capital letters should be used for proper nouns and words at the beginning of sentences but not as a means of emphasis.

Due to technical constraints, all article titles on the NeoDex must begin with a capital letter. When using a wikilink in the middle of a sentence, it may not be appropriate to use a capital letter. This can be overcome in several ways, either by setting up a redirect on the page without an initial capital letter and wikilinking to that article, or by putting the proper name of the article in the wikilink, followed by a vertical bar, followed by the text to be displayed, i.e.

[[Proper article name|name without capitalisation]]

This technique can also be used to wikilink to a page without using its actual name.

Pace of writing

When writing a lot of text in a single sentence, it's important to make proper uses of commas (the "," symbol) and "full stops" (a moment while reading out loud in which you can take a breathe). If if sentence doesn't sound right to you while being read out load or is too long, it's best to arrange the pace of the writting with commas or make it a shorter sentence. These makes it read easier, and simplifies writing. As a "rule of thumb", a full stop can in most cases be used where a comma would go. New subjects can also be noted with spacing between paragraphs (using the "enter" key), making a bigger full stop than a normal end of a sentence.

Use of Pictures

Whenever possible, a picture of the article's topic should be included at the top section of a page, right aligned. With multiple pictures, they can either be staged across the page right and left, or kept all right aligned.

Minor edit

When editing a page, a logged in user has the option of flagging the edit as a "minor edit". When to use this is somewhat a matter of personal preference. The rule of thumb is that an edit of a page that is spelling corrections, formatting, and minor rearranging of text should be flagged as a "minor edit". A major edit is basically something that makes the entry worth relooking at for somebody who wants to watch the article rather closely, so any "real" change, even if it is a single word. This feature is important, because users can choose to hide minor edits in their view of the recent changes to keep the volume of edits down to a manageable level.

The reason for not allowing a user who is not logged in to mark an edit as minor is that vandalism could then be marked as a minor edit, in which case it would stay unnoticed longer. This limitation is another reason to log in.

Each wiki-community has different ideas about when an edit is no longer minor, but a general rule of thumb should be a quick spelling/mark-up tweak that does not effect the content of the article should be marked as minor.

Wikifying an article, that is, making it more encyclopaedic in voice and matching the style of the rest of the Neodex is usually marked as minor.

Spam

Inevitably, due to the nature of a Wiki and how easy it is to edit it, spam will undoubtedly crop up. In cases where it does, reversion is necessary. This involves removing the spam and replacing any valid text that may have been deleted (this can all be checked in the history of a page).

Templates

Some part of a page may correspond in the edit box to just a reference to another page, in the form {{name}}, referring to the page "Template:name" (or if the name starts with a namespace prefix, it refers to the page with that name; if it starts with a colon it refers to the page in the main namespace with that name without the colon). This is called a template. For changing that part of the page, edit that other page. Sometimes a separate edit link is provided for this purpose. Note that the change also affects other pages which use the same template. For all of the NeoDex's major templates, see NeoDex:Templates.

Variables

A variable is a predefined template, built into the coding of the NeoDex and brings up data which change by time, number of articles, etc.

• {{CURRENTDAYNAME}} - Shows the current name day (Monday, Tuesday, etc.)
• {{CURRENTDAY}} - Shows the current day of the month
• {{CURRENTMONTHNAMEGEN}} - Shows the current month
• {{CURRENTYEAR}} - Shows the current year
• {{CURRENTTIME}} - Shows the current time
• {{NUMBEROFARTICLES}} - Shows the current number of articles in the NeoDex
• {{NAMESPACE}} - Shows the namespace the article is under
• {{PAGENAME}} - Shows the name of the current article it's on
• {{SERVER}} - Shows the server the wiki is on
• {{SITENAME}} - Shows the name of the wiki

Page protection

In a few cases the link labeled "Edit" is replaced by the text "View Source". This article is protected and can only be edited by means of an Administrator. Should you find something which is not on the article, bring it up on the articles discussion board.

External links

• Wikipedia - How to edit a page
• Wikipedia - Manual of Style
• Wikipedia Help - Editing
• Wikipedia Help - Starting a new page