Help:How to work with the Wiki

From Mmswiki

Rules

Many of the topics you will work on, are of interest for other students!
Please always look out for existing articles, concerned with or related to your research topic, and integrate them i.e. by using links, or by adding a chapter to an existing article.

Before you start writing an article please clarify and determine the following points:

• Use clear (well-defined, non-ambiguous) names for the article, that fit into a scheme of the existing names - therefor have a look at the Denomination Rules
  • Please nominate "work in progress" during the Seminars like this: Seminar,Task,Name/Groupname
• Check if your article fits into the existing Categories - all articles must be categorized!!
• Link to articles on topics you cite or refer to.
• Look for Disambiguation pages and link your articles if necessary.
• If you are working on a topic collaboratively - together with another person - use the "discussion function" for coordination (especially when you disagree!)

For more Help-topics see MediaWiki Help.

Create an account

For login and to get a permission to work on the Wikisites, you need to create an account.
You can find the login button in the upper right corner.
It should look like this=>

A Wiki is a collaborative workingtool please use your real name or recognizable parts of it, so that your lecturer can distinguish who is who.
examples: Lisa Merten; Lisa M.; L.Merten

Please note that accounts with fantasy names, like "fairy123", will be deleted automatically.

Create a page

To create a new page please type the name of the desired page into the searchbar - remember the Denomination Rules.
It should look like this =>(You will find the Searchbar between the navigationbox and the toolbox, above the "Go" and "Search" buttons.)

A note that no such page exists will appear soon, you will be asked to create this page.
Do so an the new page is created.
It should look like this =>

Videotutorial

Work on a page

When you created a new page the editing window appears.
Now you can start to type your content into the editing frame.

This is the wikis toolbar=>

While writing you can format your entry

MediaWiki ignores normal line breaks. To start a new paragraph, leave an empty line.
You can force a line break within a paragraph with the HTML tags

<br /> or <br> .

To find more information on formatting possibilities including lists, html, blockquotes etc. please go to the Advanced Formatting page.

Categorization and Structure

On the bottom of your editing frame, you will find a Category-Cloud.

When you click on one of the labels, the category appears in the category frame.
Choose one or more categories to categorize your page.
With different categorizations the page is easily accessible.

Without categorization the page is lost whithin the abyss of the Wiki.

If you whish to create a new category, you simply type a name into the category frame.
Different Category labels are separated by semicolons " ; " in the category frame.
The new category will appear in the category cloud after saving the page.
Before adding a new category, please always check the existing categories!!

You can find a list of all categories by following this link: Special:Categories

If you create a new category, please also edit the category description that you reach by clicking on the category.
It is also possible to create category trees by defining a major category in the category description. Existing major categories are the following:

• Keywords
• Material
• Persons
• Theory
• Seminar
• WikiOrga
• Seminar Knowledge Formation (self-study)

These categories define a general structure for wiki-articles and should help to organize contents etc.

Before you create a new major category, please talk to your lecturer!!

Links

Internal Link

To add an internal link, enclose the pagename you want to link in double square brackets [[ ]]. When you save the page, you'll see the new link pointing to your page. If the page exists already it is displayed in blue
if it does not, in red
. Selflinks to the current page are not transformed in URLs but displayed in bold.

[[Main Page]]

[[Main Page|different text]]

External Link

http://mediawiki.org

[http://mediawiki.org MediaWiki]

[http://mediawiki.org]

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/.avi video]
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/.wav sound]
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/.pdf document]

How to avoid auto-links

By default, when you write a URL as is, it will be transformed to an external link.

To avoid that effect, put the URL between <nowiki> tags as in:

<nowiki>
http://mediawiki.org </nowiki>

File Upload

Image

To upload an image, click on the label "upload file", in the toolbox on the left side, below the searchbar of the wiki.
A browser window appears and you can choose the desired file from your computer.
The uploaded file will be saved in the Gallery of new files.
Click on the embedded file icon in your editing toolbar and the code appears automatically

[[Image:imagename.jpg]] 

All you have to do is to fill in the images name and save your modifikation.

If you are looking for advanced image formating (with different allignment, size, or to create an image-gallery) follow this link: Help Images

Video

At the moment we provide links to video-files. Most of the films are password protected. If you participate in a Seminar at the *mms, you will find the password in your eduCommsy workspace!

If you want to include a youtube-video you can use the following code:

{{#ev:youtube|filename}} 

You can find the filename on the YouTube webpage as final part of the URL.
See for example:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v= YaKhSYG9Jao would be

{{#ev:youtube|YaKhSYG9Jao}} 

pdf

pdf documents are uploaded just like a picture via the Upload File link in the toolbox, or the Special page special:upload, they can be integrated into a material by using

[[Media:filename.pdf‎]] 

Personalize your Entry

To personalize please use the signature/timestamp button in your editframe toolbar.
This will allow further readers to reconstruct if the article is still up to date and who has written it.

Further Information

For basic technical information and question on how the wiki works please visit the following pages:

• MediaWiki FAQ
• Configuration settings list
• MediaWiki release mailing list
• Consult the User's Guide for information on using the wiki software.