Creating and editing wiki pages

This page is a work in progress.

The content can be incomplete or poorly organized or it can be on a topic that isn't obviously within the scope of the wiki. Feel free to use the content here but please do not add any links to the page yet.

The Open Metaverse Wiki uses MediaWiki, the same software as Wikipedia and many other wikis. The official MediaWiki documentation can be found at https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Help:Editing_pages but there are several points that aren't very clearly explained there and also much that is specific for this wiki. Here are a few of them.

Creating a new page

There is no obvious way to create a new page with WikiMedia but it's not that difficult and there are several common methods.

Create a link first

We do not usually want "orphaned" pages on the wiki, every new pages is linked from an existing one. So the easiest way to create a new page is to add a link to it, click on that link and follow the instructions from there.

Create a temporary link on your user page

There ar a few occasions when we do want a page with no links to it.

Page structure

We don't want to be too strict about the structure and formatting of the pages on the wiki so this is all advice, not strict rules.

Content alerts

Templates like {{Stub}}, {{AuthorsView}} and {{WIP}} should be placed right at the top of the page.

Navigation links

Most of the pages on the wiki are parts of a hiearchial structure. It's a good idea to add links to the "higher" level pages in the hiearchy make to make the wiki easier to navigate.

Introduction/Summary

Most people do not read through an entire wiki page to see if it contains the info they are looking for. So add a brief summary at the start. It can be only a sntence or two and shouldn't usually be more than two or three paragraphs at most.

Do not use a header for the introduction! There are two reasons for this. One is that we want the introduction/summary to be displayed above the automatically generated page index. The other reason is that it's superfluous and only takes up space on the page. The page already has an automatically generated main headr and it works as the header for the introduction/summary too (id it doesn't, the text is not an intorduction or summary.)

Useful special features

Talk page signatures

When you post a comment on a talk page/discussion page, you should always sign it. The recommended way is to add the code

''~~~~''

That is two apostrophes, four tildes and two apostrophes. The tildes are the actual signature, the apostrophes put the text in italics. You can copy and paste from above if you like. The result is something like this:

Tess (talk) 10:31, 27 September 2023 (PDT) - Your user name with a link to your user page and the date the comment was posted.

Templates

Templates are premade standard blocks of text that can be added to any page. Used correctly they can be great time savers for editors and also help ensure a consistent page design. You add a template by typing or copying its name inside a double set of curly brackets, something like this:

{{templatename}}

Here is a list of the templates currently supported by the OMRG wiki.