Help:Editing

Basics of Editing Articles on this website.

This site is wikipedia-based (Mediawiki is the engine that powers both. This has SMW, and a lot of custom templates). This explains how articles are structure, and how to edit/add articles so they will show what you want and where you want.

ℹ️ Info

~ Aristotle Sabouni

Here is a bunch of examples of how to do formatting / use templates in this site:

Basics[edit | edit source]

There are multiple templates, items or data elements that help define an article in this CMS

Create an article/item by picking a from a Form & add in all the fields and data (including the content)
An articles structure is generally:
- a start-template {{+Item|...}}
- Body Text
- an end-template{{-Item|...}}
The majority of articles are an "Form:Item", and there are multiple subclasses of articles, or attributes you can add. Like if you add Review information, an Item is a Review. If you add a "Choice" item, it can be displayed in other pages as a "Choice" that optionally links back to this article. And so on.
But there are a few dedicated types that we can get into more later, like:
- a "Form:Quote" - is a quote by someone
- a "Form:Meme" - is a Meme
- etc.

Let's break those down more.

Start Template[edit | edit source]

🗒️ Note:
All templates are wrapped in {{ }} tags to mark them, and they will have multiple parameters, separated by usually a linebreak for easier reading and always a pipe character \| then a variable name and equals value.

The start template Template:+Item is going to have a lot of parameters for the article: {{+Item | Type = Article, Quote, Review, Humor, Slide, Term, Meme | Image = File (220px thumbnail)(440px for slide) | 1Line = 1 line description for bullet views or small views | Description = 200 character short desciption (for longer views or inclusions

It's easier to edit them with a Form, than directly. But either works.

More[edit | edit source]

Embed[edit source]

Main article: Help:Editing/Embed

This template engine (CMS) allows you to embed indexes of pages, or the contents of an individual page, into another page.

Indexes vary from low density but high information (like all the contents of all pages that match a category), down to high density but low information (like just the title/page name, in a multi-column list).

🗒️ Note:
The more information you pull into a page, the longer it takes to build that page. This has caching, which will make reloads faster. But size should still be balanced to keep a nice interactive experience, and users aren't swamped with mega-articles for everthing -- better a summary and a list of examples where they can get more.

Usage is to default for the high information and low density to reduce numbers of clicks and add value to a page -- you might get all you need from the summary or contents of another article without having to click to that page. But as the page becomes too large (and slow to load) as you have too much information on it, you start reducing the information.

So:

The highest level is you start with embedding tabs (pages with Category:PageName/tab) and each tab can have various lists, text. Unfortunately, it's not heirarchical -- so a tabs page can't embed a tabs page.
Then you can embedding the all the contents of all the articles of a type (Show Articles all). This can build a readable article from various sub-articles, and the user can tunnel in for more info. (To control order you use {{DEFAULTSORT:ORDER, Name}}. Obviously, this could have collisions if included in more than one place.
- Instead of many shown this way, you can embed just one article at a time: Show_Article_Summary - this is useful if you want to order the position within a parent article and/or you're intermixing new text with other articles.
Then you go down to embedding all the pagename + summary of articles as:
- An array of large boxes Show_Articles end with a {{Linebreak}}
- A Searchable array table with title + summary (and image) Show Article Summary
- A bulleted list with the title + summary Show_Articles_List
You can also embed just an individual article with:
- An signle large boxe Show_Article end with a {{Linebreak}}
Then you go down to embedding a list of title + 1Liner (shorter summary) using:
- An array of small boxes Show_Articles small end with a {{Linebreak}}
- A bulleted list with the title + 1Liner ....
Then you go down to embedding just the Title (Link) -- in either Show List 3col or Show List 2col format

SMW-Basics[edit source]

Main article: Help:Editing/SMW-Basics

SMW Links go here.

Help:Templates[edit source]

Main article: Help:Templates

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