User:Mcktimo/on organizing the wiki/help file

general notes on organization

This wiki collects information and ideas that can help to grow the Occupy Boston movement. As authors we want to create compelling and interesting content. To a large extent, the wiki organizes itself as we link to each others ideas.

This wiki (Mediawiki(same software that runs Wikipedia) allows the creation of webspaces for each user and working group.

personal webspaces

As a general guideline, we suggest that you put your developing work, personal manifestos and collected interesting stuff in your user webspace. Consider the main wiki to be a public face of Occupy Boston and as such it should draw in readers to the movement with concise well edited content.

working groups - pages a workspaces

Working groups can have a public face and a group workspace. Create a working group account following the convention User:WG-groupname and create internal working group content as subpages of User:WG-groupname (see below)

referencing other documents

to link to pages on the wiki

Put a link using double brackets and the name at the top of the page like this [[page name]]

to link to pages on other sites

You can create a link to content off site by creating a link with single brackets like this [http://urlofpage.com/page]

posting a document hosted only on your personal computer

Click on 'Upload file' on the left menu bar.

Adding Notes

• Notes about format and language often belong right on the page.
• Notes should be in brackets and announced. [Note: This is an example of a note.]

In order to contribute you need to...

to create a login account on occupyboston wiki

1. click-on the login/create_account button in the upper right corner
2. click on "Create an Account"
3. Put in username, password and email

Creating content (basic)

Creating your own content is easy. You can edit any page by clicking on Edit this page (top right) . You can comment on any page by clicking on Discussion tab. After you add your content sign it by clicking on the signature button (the second button from the right on top or enter ~~~) then save page (bottom).

creating content in your webspace

1st make sure you are logged in. To write in your page click on your username at the top of the page. Click on edit this page. Just start writing at the top of the page. Your prior writing will be pushed down and your most current writing will always be at the top of the page. Start a new paragraph by skipping a line. Don't indent(if you want a paragraph to be indented put a : in front of it). Hit save page (at the bottom of the page) to save your work. Do it often!

creating a subdirectory in your webspace

To set up a subdirectory put this code in your webspace:

[[/subpage name]]

(the '/' is important) Save the page and then click on the new link to get into the directory.

making a table of contents and titles/heading

To organize your work give each piece of writing its own title. To create a title, type, on its own line:
==your title here==

making __NOTOC__

put that at the top of your page

you cannot erase

You can always get back to a prior version of the page by clicking on it in view history(top right)

taking notes, creating lists

To organize your notes you can use bullet lists and numbered lists. To create a bullet list like this

• first point
• onother point
• etc

just start a line with an *
For a numbered list

1. first
2. second
3. third

just start each line with a # symbol (don't skip lines)

writing a poem

If you don't skip a line the text on the next line always 'wraps' to follow the text on the line above. Sometimes that's not cool,like for a poem. To avoid word wrap you can use

<poem>
Here is a poem
It is not very poetic
Is it
</poem>

Another way to prevent word wrap is to put <br> at the end of a line. The next line will stay on the next line when you save.

Another way to prevent word wrap is to just skip a line.

using the graphical editor

A graphical editor is a little slower and hides the guts of the wiki markup language.

moving stuff from Word?

Write in Word. Single spaced, do not indent first lines, skip lines between paragraphs. Copy and paste into the wiki when you are done.

There are many other cool things you can try that create nice pages...

other help

Editing and Formatting

http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Help:Contents

editing HTML

SandBox

To try out formattng and editing features use this space

Customizing

Please see documentation on customizing the interface and the User's Guide for usage and configuration help.

Magic Words

If you want to be able to do some thing like Wikipedia does we may need to add an extension. Find somebody from the OBIT(tech) working group and we'll try to get it set up.