How to edit wiki pages

From the LDC Language Resource Wiki

[Mamandel 19:46, 19 May 2011 (UTC)]

About this page

This is not just about how to do this or that on the LR wiki: it includes policies as well. In other words, "how" of manner as well as means.

You can use the Sandbox to practice editing and formatting.

Editing help

(Mamandel 15:30, 22 April 2010 (UTC))

This wiki uses Mediawiki software. When you start a new page or edit an existing one, there is a link to Wikimedia's Editing Help at the bottom of the page, below the editing window and summary.

Contents 1 About this page 2 Editing help 3 Deletions 4 Entry metadata 5 New pages 6 Quotations 7 Sign and date 8 Section headings 9 Table of contents 10 "Under construction"

Deletions

[Mamandel 18:44, 19 May 2011 (UTC)]
When deleting an entry, note the fact, reason, date, and the section deleted from on the corresponding Talk page in the section "Deletions and significant changes". The section doesn't have to be a wikilink, since by default it is on the article page. Example of a deletion from the Ewe page:

• Adzomada, Kofi J. 1980. Grammaire ev̳e: aide-mémoire des règles d'orthographe de l'ev̳e. On Ewegbe.net as "Grammaire Ewe".
  • Deleted from Linguistic resources#Grammar: 404 [Mamandel 18:09, 19 May 2011 (UTC)]

If a listed resource becomes significantly poorer, that would also be worth listing under deletions, as there is less material there now than there was, or something like that.

Entry metadata

[Mamandel 16:43, 10 May 2010 (UTC)]

Each entry should include information about licensing requirements, if we know them. Often a reference to the source page will suffice, like "Free license for non-profit research use ([link]) or "See webpage for price and licensing". We have templates for some standard licenses; see also Copyright.

TO BE DONE:

We should also have some kind of icon or marker that indicates that/when we, the LDC, have acquired a copy of the resource that is publicly accessible (including access to members only, but not including internal access that is limited to LDC people).

New pages

(This section is so far mostly about new language pages. Non-language-specific resource pages may require different structures. [Mamandel 23:52, 28 April 2010 (UTC)] )

(See also "Under construction" below.)

New language pages are currently (2010-04-14) made by the administrator (Mamandel). They should never be at the top level of file naming ([[LANGUAGE]]), but one level down in their namespace ([[LANGUAGE/LANGUAGE]]). See Atlantean.

At the very bottom of the page put a category tag, after a couple of blank lines to make accidental deletion less likely. Use the name of the language as the name of the category. For example, the last line of the wikitext for Urdu/Urdu is [[Category:Urdu]].

Once you have created and saved the language page with its category tag, go to the language's category page and add

1. the category tag [[Category:Languages]]. This will make the language's category page a subcategory of the Languages category.
2. a brief description of the category. The text may vary slightly as needed, e.g.:
   • "The Bengali language, also called Bangla."
   • "The Berber or Amazigh language(s)."
   • "The Pashto (Pushto) language group."

The new page template (not currently on the wiki) includes many resources relevant to only some languages. The language editor should check and refine these links and descriptions, and if necessary delete them. These are marked with the resource symbol (wikicode: [[Image:RedRx.gif]]) and are generally at least partly in red type. This symbol and the red font color (and much of the text in red) are intended as guides for the editor and should not appear on finished pages.

New pages should be signed at the top when created. See Sign and date.

Every page created automatically has a Talk page, which at first is empty. Put the "Deletions" section header and note at the top of it with the template {{subst:Deletions}}. (If you don't put subst:, the page looks the same, but the "Edit" button on the section edits the template.) [Mamandel 19:37, 19 May 2011 (UTC)]

Quotations

(Mamandel 07:48, 14 May 2010 (UTC))

When quoting a resource's own description of itself, use “these special orange boldface quotation marks ("heavy quotes")” rather than ordinary "double" or 'single' quotes. This convention attributes the description properly, as not being your evaluation of the site but their own -- although if you have reason to doubt the description's accuracy, don't use it, or at least add a qualifier. Include them like this:

• around text: “Text”
   {{hq|Text}}
• left: “
   {{hlq}}
• right: ”
   {{hrq}}

Sign and date

(Mamandel 23:02, 28 April 2010 (UTC))

Resources can change quickly, especially on the web. As this wiki is to be a trustworthy academic resource, every resource listing should be signed and dated. Use four tildes, in parentheses,*

(~~~~)

The result looks like this:

(Mamandel 23:02, 28 April 2010 (UTC))

When you create a new page or section, sign it at the very top. For a short resource entry, the signature can go at the end of the first paragraph instead of the beginning/top. Do the same when making major edits to an existing section or entry.

The "si" template will put the signature in small italics and square brackets:

{{si|~~~~}}

[Mamandel 23:09, 28 April 2010 (UTC)]

(This policy is not yet fully in place with the pages that have already been established.)

*Don't use square brackets, which the wiki software will misinterpret in this context [although in general they're OK; see Links in Editing Help].

Section headings

(Mamandel 19:50, 22 April 2010 (UTC))

As a general rule, subsections should be labeled with subsection headers:

=level 1=
==level 2==
===level 3===
====level 4====
=====level 5=====
======level 6======

The Mediawiki software automatically creates links for these and puts them in the page's Table of Contents.

Font manipulations such as boldface and italics affect only the display, and should in general be used for subheads only at very fine-grained levels of detail.

Table of contents

(Mamandel 15:30, 22 April 2010 (UTC))

The Wikimedia software will automatically generate a TOC (Table of Contents) for a page with four or more sections. Wikimedia Help provides detailed information on controlling the TOC.

The TOC's section name is generated as "toc", so you can link to it with "[[#toc|Contents]]", which produces the link Contents.

"Under construction"

(Mamandel 20:37, 27 April 2010 (UTC))

Until all read permission issues have been resolved, pages that are being built on the wiki and are publicly readable but are not yet ready for publication should always include the {{Under construction}} template code at the top. Such pages are still subject to the content policy.