User:MontOther/Practice

MontOther's practice page is a space where everyone can practice editing wikipedia. You also have a "sandbox" in your own user space that you can use by clicking on the "sandbox" tab and editing in the window that appears (using the directions and examples here, if you wish), but on this page, we can all work together to simulate the environment of a live article. It's OK to make mistakes on this page or in your sandbox!

By the way, MontOther, Montanabw and Breadedchicken are the same person. (Montanabw is my main account, which has so many customized gadgets and gee-gaws that it looks quite different from the standard interface, so MontOther is my "clean" training program space, and Breadedchicken is the account I use when pretending to be a new user, just like you!)

This page is a variant on Help:Editing, which contains additional material

Getting started

The first thing you do is click on either the "edit source" or the "edit" tab at the top of the page. (If there is only an "edit" tab, choose it; if you have a choice, choose "edit source").

This is what the editing tab looks like.

That will open a window titled something like "Editing User:MontOther/Practice" (which is what you will see if you try to edit this page). You can now type in the editing box that appears and make changes to this page.

This is how the editing window looks in some browsers when you click the "edit" tab (click to enlarge)

Now, try editing: go to your sandbox (click the "sandbox" tab at the top) it will open the editing window, and then type "Hi there" and your user name name like this:

Hi, this is MyUserName

Then, scroll down and in the little box underneath the words "edit summary", type "hello" in the box, and then click on the button that says "Save page". Voila! You've made an edit!

If you click on the tab at the top of the page that says "View History," you will see everyone else who has edited this page.

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Can I see what my edit will look like before saving?

Yes, click the "Show preview" button instead of the "Save page" button, and you will see what your edit looks like before saving. This is often a good idea, that way you aren't making half-dozen edits to fix mistakes. The "show changes" button won't give you a preview, but it will show you what you are changing from the previously-saved version.

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What if I make a mistake?

You can undo any changes in three clicks. First, click on the "View History" tab. You will see every edit that has been made to this article. Click on the "undo" link by your last edit, and it will automatically open the editing window to the version in the previous edit. Click "Save page" and your changes will be undone.

If you made several edits in a row and want to get rid of multiple changes, click to highlight the circle by the last "clean" edit - the one you want to return to - and click on the most recent edit then click the button that says "Compare selected revisions" It will open up the editing window and compare the two versions of the article you have selected. To go back to the earlier revision, just click the "Undo" link and then save the page after the editing window opens, showing the old version of the article.

Try it here:

Open the edit window and delete or change this sentence, then save the page.

Now, undo the edit and restore the sentence to the way it was originally, using the "undo" link in the edit window.

Section headings

Section headings help generate a linked table of contents in wikipedia articles and make navigation much easier. To create a new section heading, you can open the edit window, then use the pull-down menu that says "Heading" and if you select "Level 2" you will get this:

Heading text

The section heading that appears when you use the pull-down menu will have the words "Heading text" highlighted, so you can insert whatever heading title you want. Create your own section heading below. Use the pull down menu, or just manually type in the syntax that creates a level three section heading (three = signs on each side of whatever you want to say). Then say something underneath the heading, like this:

Breadedchicken

Hi, this is User:Breaderchicken's level three section heading.

Formatting

The icons at the top of the editing window are similar to those used on a word processor. The "B" icon createsBold text, the "I" creates Italic text and so on. You can also manually insert the wiki markup syntax as you type once you have learned it.

Images

Sample image

There are millions of images at Wikimedia commons. To add any image, you can click on the "insert file" icon ( the little yellowish box that looks like a photograph) and in the box that appears, enter (copy and paste is best) the file name you want and a caption. Use the default settings. Your result will look something like this:

You can also manually type in the syntax once you are familiar with it. The "thumb" parameter makes the image a small, standard thumbnail size suitable for the average wikipedia article. As you gain experience, you can make images bigger, smaller, right- or left-justified, and make other changes by adding or changing commands.

If you want to upload your own images with a free license (Creative Commons, GDFL or public domain), do so at commons, not on wikipedia. The only images that should be housed locally on wikipedia are those restricted to "Fair use." Examples of photographs now in the public domain and uploaded to commons are at Evelyn Cameron. An example of an article with only fair use images is Albert, Alfred and Chris Schlechten.

Wikilinks!

The core of using wikipedia is adding wiklinks to the article text, allowing readers to open additional windows or jump to different articles. Active wikilinks are sometimes called "blue links" because they are... blue. See wikilinks. A "redlink" (looks like this one) is a link that has no article created for it yet.

There are three ways to add a wikilink:

1. you can just use wikipedia syntax: put a word you've already typed inside two straight brackets, manually, like this: typing [[word]] and saving looks like this: word
2. if you haven't added the word yet, you can go to the editing window, click on the "link" icon and fill in the page name you want in the box that appears, then click the "insert link" button.
3. Or, at the bottom of the editing window, you can click on the "insert" pull-down menu and select "Wiki markup", then click on the double straight brackets icon (which looks like this: [[]] and your cursor will automatically move inside of them), and type the word you want inside of the brackets.

Practice here: link to one or more of the following articles, save your changes, then undo your edits so the next user can try:

• Montana
• Wyoming
• Cattle
• Horse

Practice linking any of the words above using the insert link icon on the wiki markup commands, and see which method you like best

About "piped links"

Many times, there is more than one topic with a similar title, or you might want to use a different word altogether for a particular concept. A piped link allows you to link to any article, but not use whatever title it actually has. For example, pony is singular; if you want to link the plural form, you need a piped link. the format [[pony|ponies]] looks like this: ponies.

You can create a piped link with the insert link icon, type the name of the page in the first box (best to copy and paste the title) then just change the "text to display" in the second box to whatever you want it to say. Then insert the link.

A quick word about disambiguation: Many articles could be given the same name... is Helena the capital of Montana, a woman's name, a battleship, or a small village in Ohio with 224 people? It is ambiguous, so Wikipedia creates "disambiguation" or "dab" pages to sort this out. Piped links are particularly important when you are linking to pages that require disambiguation.

Here's another example: there are many different things listed at Roundup, from the carnival ride to the herbicide! If you want to link directly to Roundup, Montana, that's not a problem, but if you want to say "Roundup" and not "Roundup, Montana" you need to pipe the link: [[Roundup, Montana|Roundup]] becomes a link to the right place Roundup. If you want to link to the concept of a cattle roundup, it gets a bit more complicated. Not only is there an alternative title, but more confusing yet, the article about cattle roundups was created first by an Australian, where they are called a Muster, but that title was also already taken, so the actual article is called Muster (livestock). So, to link to a cattle roundup, you need to link [[Muster (livestock)|Roundup]]

References

One of the "pillars" of wikipedia is the citation of reliable sources. Adding references is a critical part of wikipedia.

To add nicely formatted footnotes, click on the "Cite" link at the top of the editing window, then pull down the "Templates" menu to select the type of source you are using. For books and journals, you can simply add the ISBN, DOI, or PMID number, click on the small magnifying glass, and most of the reference will be filled in for you. Click the "insert" button to place the citation into your article. In a new article, you also need to add a section heading for References at the end of your article and the template {{reflist}}; this will generate a footnote list. You can also click on the <ref></ref> link at the bottom of the edit box to manually insert a citation, or simply manually type in the markup syntax. There are special ways to cite the same reference multiple times, and a number of different formatting options you can choose. Wikipedia:RefToolbar/2.0 explains the process in more detail with a good video to watch.