Help:Wiki Collaboration
From ICCC
See Help:Editing for basic instructions on how to edit a wiki page. Here we'll explain some more advanced wiki concepts (Well hopefully they are not too advanced. We're all well-educated around here after all *snort*)
Contents |
Recent Changes and Page History
Whenever you edit a wiki page, your change is indicated on the Recent Changes page. This shows any changes to any pages, with most recent changes higher on the page. As such, this is actually the most important page. This is place to come back to periodically, to see what has changed on the wiki. So bookmark it now!
Every page has a history display (click the 'history' tab at the top) which is similar to recent changes, but it shows edits taking place just on this particular wiki page.
On page history displays and on 'Recent Changes', edits may be listed along with summary text, and the name of the user who did the edit.
Edit summaries
Whenever you edit a page, you can type in a 'summary'. This is a field appearing below the main edit box. If you leave it blank it doesn't matter, but as a courtesy to others, for more effective wiki collaboration, you should enter a description of the change you made. This can be just a few short words e.g. "fixed typo" or "more details about cooking rice".
Your edit summary appears on the page history display, and on 'Recent Changes', and so it helps other poeple see what is going on.
User names
As on many other websites, you can register on the wiki, chosing a user name and password, which you can use in future to log in with. It is recommended that you do this, chosing a username which is recognisable by other poeple in the canoe club, in fact, why not use your real name?
It's all a bit of a hassle, and with a wiki it's tempting not to bother, because in fact you have the ability edit pages without doing this. There are some big advantages however...
Once you are registered and logged in you will find that all of your edits are credited to your user name, i.e. your name apppears on 'Recent Changes' and history pages, alongside every edit that you have made. In addition you can view 'your contributions', which is a list of all page edits made only by you. From now on, the wiki records all your edits against your user account, so this means you are getting credit for all that editing work you are doing.
It also makes it easier for other people to see what is going on. Like edit summaries, it enriches the displays with more information, to make wiki collaboration more effective.
User pages
Every registered user gets a 'user page', which is linked to from 'Recent Changes' and history pages. Here you can describe yourself, put a photo of yourself, link to your favourite websites, or whatever you like really. For an example see User:Harry Wood
