Reading

Read the Tips for WikiEducator beginners, copied below for easy reference.

If you need this page for future reference, note that it is listed under Wikibasics on the general help page on WikiEducator, which can be accessed from the help link displayed on the left-hand side of the WikiEducator website.

Best tip for beginners

You can copy wiki text to help with formatting your own pages.

If you see a layout feature on a page in the wiki you would like to use, just open the page in the wikitext edit mode by clicking on the “Edit source” link at the top of your browser. Copy the relevant wikitext used for formatting and paste this on your own page (again using Edit source there). Edit the text for your local context.

Things to avoid

Avoid remaining a Redcoat

A “Redcoat” is wiki slang for a user who creates an account but does not provide any information on their user page. A red link in the wiki indicates a page without any text. WikiEducator is a community. Please provide a little information about yourself on your own userpage (as much or little as you would like to share) so members of our family have the opportunity to get to know you a little better. Visit the pages of past User Page Expo recipients for ideas.

Common layout mistakes

Using bold for styling headings

Use heading styles and levels to format headings. The toolbar for numbered and bullet lists should be used for formatting lists. For more information consult the VisualEditor userguide.

A common mistake made by new authors is to use bold for signifying headings. This is problematic because the HTML produced will not differentiate headings from normal text using the bold attribute. Moreover, the wiki will not be able to generate an automatic table of contents based on the hierarchy of headings. Also, when exporting wiki pages for different stylesheets, the conversion script will not be able to apply the target heading styles. Editors should always use the heading style option for headings and subheadings.

Linking internal WikiEducator pages incorrectly as external page links

The wiki differentiates between internal links (a link to another page in WikiEducator) and external links (a link to another website.) Internal and external links are displayed differently. For example, this link to Google displays a small arrow graphic whereas this link to the WikiEducator homepage does not display the arrow graphic after the link. When linking to an external page using VisualEditor type the full url in the link field, for example: “http://www.google.com”. Do not use the full url for internal links. Internal links should only use the page title, that is the text which appears after the url prefix: “http://wikieducator.org/”. For example, if you want to insert a link to the OERu planning page in WikiEducator (which is found at: “http://wikieducator.org/OERu/Home”) you should only enter “OERu/Home” in the text field (don’t include the “http://wikieducator.org/” prefix.)

Not applying the correct style for lists

Numbered lists and bullet lists should be styled using the toolbar for numbered or bullet lists in VisualEditor. A common mistake is to cut and paste lists from other sources and forgetting to apply the local wiki style for lists, or attempting to generate numbered lists by typing numbers. This is not advised, because this removes automatic numbering and will generate additional work to renumber the list in the event that a new bullet is inserted into the sequence.

WikiEducator conventions

Case conventions for page names and headings

The WikiEducator convention for page names, headings and subheadings is to use upper case for the first letter and lower case for subsequent words with the exception of proper names, for example: “Introduction to wiki skills” or “Introduction to WikiEducator”. This extends to the first letter of each component of subpage names, so every part of a page name following the / character should be capitalized (e.g. “Introduction to WikiEducator/Tips for beginners”).

Attribution of license and copyright holders of open images

All metadata, author name, license type, etc., should be entered on the individual image page when uploading the image. We do not include attribution information in the image caption or in text where the image is reused because the full metadata is recorded on the image page. (See for example the image attributions for Structure-compilation.jpg and usage on a WikiEducator page.)