User:OneKarma/Forum/Basics
Welcome to OneKarma's 'internal version' of Occupy Boston's wiki. To maintain a fully open and equal-opportunity forum, please follow these basic guidelines.
- Most importantly, anyone can become a content creator/author, but no one is ever a content owner.
- Etiquette should require no more mention than this.
- Research is key to proper communication. One should always make an effort to learn more than is already known about a given topic before criticizing or suggesting alternatives.
Pages and Nested Discussion
Every topic page should represent a 'professional face' regarding its topic. The related discussion page (tab in top left) is the place for clarifying questions and development of the ideas described on that topic page.
Insert four tildes (~~~~) to post a 'signature' with a time-stamp on your comments so that others know how to contact you if your questions are answered. The wiki automatically inserts a link to your user-page when you click 'Save page'.
Frequently Used Pages
To save from 'editing wars' on discussion pages where a number of collaborators may be attempting to write simultaneously, authors should be re-directed to a live-updating document such as https://pad.riseup.net.
To ensure that your work is not lost in the case of simultaneous editing, open a .txt document on your computer (Microsoft has a program called 'Notepad' with which some may already be familiar) to write an update. Go to the Edit tab, then select all (ctrl+a on Microsoft) and paste it into your .txt document. Then click 'Cancel' (to the right of 'Save page', 'Show preview', and 'Show changes' buttons at the bottom) or just leave the page. Perform all your editing in the .txt document (don't forget to save!), then go back to the Editing tab and replace the 'old' version with your update. It may also be helpful to check the History of that page if you have been working for a while, in case others have updated it while you were working on your .txt. In this case you may have to track the differences between the version you were editing and the version created during your working period. It is likely that this will never be the case, but it is good practice to back-up all your personal work.
Formatting
Every page (both topics and discussions) should follow a few basic formatting guidelines. Visit User:OneKarma/Help or ttp://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Help:Formatting for the basics.