Editing guide

Editing guide

The essence of this guide

This guide has been made in order to provide you with the basics of editing on this website and how to improve the quality of your edits to make them concise and neat.

The basics of visual editing

In order to understand the basics of editing on the website, no prior requisite (requirement) is needed other than an average understanding of the English language.

A basic edit

To make your first basic edit, do the following:

1. Find or think of something you wish to add or change. A good way to start is by making a profile page for yourself on this website.
2. If you have not done this already, create an account on this website. It is a requirement for you to edit anything and to get credit for your own work.
3. Navigate yourself to the chosen page via the searchbar. If it does not exist, click on the term (It is almost always in red) to create the new page. There, you click on the blue 'edit' button to start editing. Avoid the [] button for now, as this is more advanced and will be explained later on.
4. Familiarize yourself with the tools you have been given at the top. Most you probably already know from Word. Keep in mind that the different types of text have got a hierarchy, which is important to stick to. The hierarchy is as followed:

• Page Title
• Heading
• Sub-headings (In order of numbers)
• Paragraph
• Preformatted
• Block note

The first three are used to seperate categories on a page, to keep things concise for the reader. You might have already noticed this on this page. Paragraphs are like normal text, and make up the big majority of a page. It contains everything you want to say about your topic. Preformatted text is similar to paragraphs, but it has given the text a format, as the name suggests. Block notes turn your text into italics, and are mostly used in independent quotes or as disclaimers messages at the bottom of the page. You can read about how to refer to these disclaimers later in this guide.

5. If you are finished, click on the blue button "Save page", you will be asked to explain what you have done so others can keep track. After this, you have made your first edit! Keep in mind that others might also edit what you have made, similar to how you can edit the edits of others.

Insertions and citations

Wish to make your edit more attractive and more concise? Do you use sources from other people? You can use insertions and citations to do this. Insertions and citations can be found at the top of this page, close to the text. In order to keep things simple, we will ignore 'code block' and 'template' for now, as they require a bit of knowledge of code. Just simply click on the 'insert'/ 'cite' button and click on the thing you wish to insert. Follow the given instructions and you will succeed!¹

¹ When citing or refering to someone elses work, follow APA-regulations. When using images that are not yours, use the alternative downloading page given by the website in order to properly cite your source. We wish to avoid lawsuits and judicial issues.

The basics of source editing

Source editing is more based on code, and so it is adviceable to first learn a bit about visual editing before learning about source editing, as parts of it rely on coding.

Templates

Another way to make your work more appealing and concise is to use templates. Although templates are still being worked on a bit, you can still use templates. If you are new to this and do not have a good understanding of the coding language of the website (HTML and Wikitext), then it is adviced to ask others to help you out or to copy a template from someone else. If you are more experienced, simply insert a template and use keywords to find templates that you can tweak to your liking.

Tabbers

Tabbers are a tool to add tabs to your page, so that multiple sources of text can be on the same section of a page. In order to make a tab, open source editing by clicking on the pencil on the top right. Then find the spot where you want to place your tab and insert something like this

<tabber> |-|First Tab Title= First tab sample text. |-|Second Tab Title= Second tab content goes here. |-|Third Tab Title= Third tab content goes here. </tabber>

This code will result in this tab:

Hello

First tab sample text.

This is my ab Second tab content goes here.

Hope you like it Third tab content goes here.

To add more or less categories, simply follow the style of the code. You can change the title and text of a tab by changing the 'Second tab title' and 'Second tab content goes here' pieces.

Code blocks

Code blocks are used to insert code into your page to enhance your page even more. This is the most complex feature of the basics and requires you to be able to read and understand the coding language you wish to use. It is adviceable you first learn a coding language before you use this, otherwise this could cause problems.

Advice on design and use of imagery

As we have said earlier, you can use images to improve your page. We will not annoy you with all sorts of terminology as advice, but it might help you to stick to these guidelines:

• Do not stretch your images. Changing the ratio of your image will make it look odd or goofy.
• Make use of the description option in order to describe your photo or your goal with it.
• Do not use images too much. One image per category is more than enough, unless you really need to. Not every category needs an image necessarily, so make sure there is balance.
• Crop your photos appropiately, you can do this in Paint (3D) easily.
• Make use of tables if you can not put your image the way you want it. Some images might want to stick to a corner, and so you can use tables to relocate them to your desired location while also adding a nice border to your image.