Archive:Get started on this wiki

Welcome to the Free Culture Wiki! This tutorial will help you become familiar with using this wiki to find, create, and edit pages.

Login

 * 1) Before you start using this wiki, you should create an account.
 * 2) Once you've created an account and logged in, you can click on your username at the top of the "Wiki Controls" on your left and tell us a little about yourself on your userpage! The Talk page is where other users can leave messages for you.

Getting started
Each time you visit the wiki, the first thing you'll want to do is log in, by clicking the "login" link on the panel to the left. Unless you know the address of the page you're looking for, the best way to find a wiki page is by using the search box on the left. Also, check out SpecialPages.

Editing
Wikis thrive on participation! Here's how you may join in:


 * After you've logged in, find the wiki page you'd like to edit. As an example, we'll use the Propaganda page, where we post all informative and introductory materials on the movement.

Propaganda page:




 * Notice the panel at the bottom of the page and the link to "Edit this page:"




 * Clicking "Edit this page" will allow you to alter the content of the page in a text box, which looks like this:



Wiki markup
In order to do certain things with a wiki page (e.g. make text bold, create a link), you'll have to use certain syntax. For example, to italicize text, you would surround the selected text with two apostrophes, like this: italicize.

To italicize
insert text (Note: those are two individual apostrophes on each side, not quotation marks.)

To make text bold
insert text

To make text italicized and bold
'insert text'

To underline text
insert text

To strike out deleted text
insert text

To link to another page on the wiki
another page

(That is, look at the what the page is titled and put that in the brackets.  So, if the page's URL is "http://wiki.freeculture.org/?title=propaganda" then "propaganda" is the title of the page.)


 * Now, if you want more than just the title of the page to be a link (e.g. "Come see the propaganda page!"):

Come see the propaganda page!

To create an external link
(An external link is a link to a page that is not part of the wiki.)

insert text to be hyperlinked

For a numbered list
Begin each new line with a #, and you'll get this:


 * 1) Text
 * 2) More text
 * 3) And even more text

For bullet-points
Begin each new line with a *, and you'll get this:


 * Text
 * More text
 * And more text

Nested lists
This nested list:


 * A list entry
 * A subset of that list entry
 * A subset of that subset of that list entry
 * A subset of that subset of that subset of that list entry

would be achieved like this:


 * 1) A list entry
 * 2) *A subset of that list entry
 * 3) *#A subset of that subset of that list entry
 * 4) *#*A subset of that subset of that subset of that list entry

Previewing
Beneath the editing textbox, you'll see this:




 * Clicking the "Save page" button will publish your edits.
 * Clicking "Show preview" will allow you to see what your page will look like when published.
 * You can submit a brief summary about your edit so that other users know what you've done.
 * Check "This is a minor edit" if your editing was limited to, say, correcting a couple of typos or grammatical errors (although you might want to submit a quick summary in addition).

Note: After clicking "Show preview," you'll find another editing textbox is located beneath the preview page. You can keep previewing and editing until you're ready to post (at which point you'll select "Save page").

Creating a new wiki page
To create a new wiki page, all you'll need to do is locate the blank wiki page with the title you'd like and begin editing.

For example, say you want to create a wiki page about pterodactyls.
 * 1) First you'll want to check for an existing pterodactyls article by using the search function in the panel to the left.  If no page is found with the title "pterodactyls," then you're clear to create one yourself.
 * 2) To do this, you'll simply enter your desired URL into your browser. In this case: http://wiki.freeculture.org/?title=pterodactyls
 * 3) When you visit that address, you should find an empty page like this: [[Image:Pterodactyls.jpg]]
 * 4) Then simply select "Edit this page" at the bottom and get to work!

IMPORTANT NOTE: After you've created your page, don't orphan it! Make sure to link to it from relevant pages, or else no one is likely to find it.

Wiki tips

 * Save. A lot.  All sorts of things could happen while you're entering text and previewing (e.g. browser crash, you accidentally close the page).  Nothing is saved until you actually publish the page.  While editing, I would recommend frequently saving your text to another text editor or word processor on your computer, such as Notepad or Word or OpenOffice.


 * Notice the colorful bar of icons above each wiki page's text editing box:



Each icon offers an example of what you would type to achieve a certain effect, such as a link or header.


 * Get a spell-checker plugin for your browser and use it on the wiki. It's easy for other people to fix your spelling mistakes for you on a wiki, but that doesn't mean that you should leave blatant spelling errors lying around.  If you use Mozilla Firefox, you should try Spellbound.