Our editing introduction

Administrators: See Steve's Wikitext editing introduction

This is Steve's text-editor editing introduction.

First - DON'T PANIC! You CAN'T permanently lose anything (only Administrators can do that).

If you get into real trouble (you probably won't), put a {{help me}} at the top of the page and save the page. Fixes are very easy, and an Administrator will eventually figure it out.

Saving your work

Nothing is more frustrating than to complete a big set of editing and then, when you hit Save, get hit with an "Edit conflict" and possibly lose all of your editing work!

So, if you're going to make massive changes, it's smarter to Save many times as you go along.

If that's not possible, perhaps what you need to do is to copy all of the text you intend to modify, then make a "holding page" in your own space. Simply put in the searchbox user:yourname/newfilename like user:Shollingsworth/Example and when you try to go to it, choose to edit it. paste in the text you've copied and you can edit it in your own workspace. When you're done, copy it back into the appropriate page or page section.

Making a "See also" section

It's traditional to have a See also section of wikilinks at the end of an article. It's not required, just traditional.

Example:

• Stan's Introduction
• [Block captain]
• User's Guide

(This last is an external link, and really belongs in an External links section.)

Talk/Discussion pages

Signing your name

It's very good etiquette to sign your name on posts you make on Talk or Discussion pages.

You do that by, after your message, typing four tildes (the shifted-character in the upper left of your keyboard) like this: ~~~~

If you have an account here and are signed in, your username will appear in the text after you hit Save.

This is an example:

Hi, John! I'm glad you joined us! ~~~~

for me becomes:

Hi, John! I'm glad you joined us! Shollingsworth 14:48, 14 January 2011 (PST)

Indenting

It's also correct to indent your responses to someone's Talk post. Each new response in a thread gets indented one tab further.