Tips page

If you're brand new to the world of wikis you may be unsure how to start. Here is a quick guide with some tips. None of these are required, but many of them are helpful in creating a sense of wiki community and making the wiki more usable.

• register - Registering lets people know who edited a page and allows all of your edits to be grouped under your name. This helps you establish a reputation -- this is important on big wikis like Wikipedia, perhaps not as much here -- and lends authority to your entries and edits. When you are registered, people can contact you through your talk page if they have questions about your entries or edits. You can register here Please note: Registering is currently required on this wiki.

• annotate - You have the option of adding little notes to your edits in the Summary box beneath the editing page. When people look at pages like the Recent Changes page, or their own watchlist, they can tell at a glance what was done to the page you edited. If you are including a fact that is not widely known, sometimes a brief cite is helpful here. Check the minor edit box if you are just fixing a typo or a punctuation error.

• discuss - Every page on the wiki has a discussion page that you can use for discussing an article. This is often more useful than making an edit, having someone else undo it, and back and forth. These pages can be for asking questions about the topic, or informal coverage of a topic. This is the discussion page for this page, feel free to add to it. There are also discussion pages for all user pages, if you want to talk to a user directly. As an example, my talk page is here

• link - Please feel free to add hyperlinks and crosslinks to other wiki pages. Here is a quick and dirty guide, much more is available from Wikipedia
  • linking to another wiki page
    [[Online_Reference]] will get you Online_Reference
  • linking to another wiki page using your own text
    [[Online_Reference|doing reference online]] will get you doing reference online
  • linking to another web page
    [http://librarian.net] will get you [1]
  • linking to another web page using your own text
    [http://librarian.net my web site] will get you my web site

• list - If you are starting a list of tips, links, or comments, or are adding to a list, please start your addition with an asterisk (*), which shows up on the wiki like this
• Example.
  • It's just a good way to set each distinct contribution off from the rest. Two asterisks will indent what you write as you can see on this line.

• look - The best way to learn how to format things on the wiki is to look at how people have formatted things on other pages. Just hit "edit" at the top of the page to see how people did what they did.

• Firefox users - Install the Wikipedia Firefox extension. This toolbar will work on any Mediwiki wiki such as this one and will automatically allow you to format text, add lists, tables and images, etc. with the click of a button.