Service-Learning Wiki:Style Guide

From Service-Learning Wiki

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This page serves to help members of the service-learning community (meaning you) contribute to and edit the Service-Learning Wiki. This style guide borrows heavily from http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Help:Contents, but is designed to help people get started and leaves out information not relevant to this project.

If you have a question and can't find the answer here, feel free to contact NYLC (nylcG2G@nylc.org), the editor of this wiki.

Contents 1 What is a wiki? 1.1 Page Tabs 1.2 How do I add to the wiki? 2 Basic Editing 2.1 Adding Text 2.2 Formatting text 2.3 Naming Pages and Sections 3 Links 3.1 Internal Links (also known as Piped Links) 3.2 External Links (also known as hyperlinks) 3.3 Table of link styles 4 More Basic Editing 4.1 Lists 4.1.1 The bullet wikitext 4.1.2 The numbered list wikitext 4.2 Tables 4.3 Images 4.4 References and Footnotes 5 Advanced Topics 5.1 Categories 5.2 Moving Pages and Redirects 5.3 Templates 5.4 Page Translations

What is a wiki?

A wiki is a collaboratively edited website. The software that runs the wiki records a history of all edits made to the pages and tracks who made them. It also uses a special coding language to make it easier for beginners to start using the website.

Page Tabs

At the top of each wiki page, you will find several tabs. Each links to a specific component related to the page.

• The article tab displays the published content of the page.
• The discussion tab displays any discussion or comments made about the page by users. Many of these pages currently have no content, but you're welcome to add to them. Anytime you add to a discussion page, remember to sign the comment with ~~~~ which adds your username and a time stamp to the comment.
• The edit tab is where you can make changes to the current page. When you click on it, a new screen will come up that displays the code behind the wiki.
• The history tab opens a page that shows all past changes made to the current page. You can compare different versions and revert unintentional changes here.
• The move tab allows you to change the name of the page. This can cause problems so should only be done when a page name fails to comply with this style guide. All links to the old page name need to be changed.

How do I add to the wiki?

All you have to do to add to the wiki is press the edit tab at the top of the page and start typing. Because this is a collaborative project, don't worry about having everything look exactly right the first time. You, or someone else, can come back and make edits later.

Basic Editing

The wiki uses a special coding language called Wiki markup or Wikitext. It can be intimidating at first, but is much easier than learning HTML or another web coding language. In a few minutes, you'll have it down.

A helpful cheat sheet is available on Wikipedia at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Cheatsheet

Adding Text

Adding plain text is very easy.

• Just type it into the edit box and click the Save page button.
• If you are adding or changing significant text, it's helpful to briefly describe the change in the Summary box.
• If it's just a minor change, click the minor edit box.
• If you want to preview your change before saving it, press the Show preview button, and a draft of what the page will look like will appear. Remember to save your changes or Cancel.

Sometimes you want to add text, but you don't have the right information to do so. If this is the case, you can add what is called a stub template to that section, indicating that it needs to be expanded in the future.

To do so, simply type {{stub}} and the wiki will display:
This section is in need of expansion. You can help by expanding it.

Formatting text

To make something bold, place three apostrophes before and after the text, like '''Bold text''', which displays: Bold text.

To put something in italics, place two apostrophes before and after the text, like ''Italic text'', which displays: Italic text.

To make something bold and in italics, place five apostrophes before and after the text, like '''''Bold-Italic text''''', which displays: Bold-Italic text.

Naming Pages and Sections

There are a few rules for naming pages:

1. Pages related to states, territories, and countries are named using their colloquial name without "State of" or "Commonwealth of" or any other preceding or subsequent wording. For example, Minnesota or Mexico.
2. Pages related to organizations use their full name, with all words capitalized. No abbreviations are included in the page name. For example, National Youth Leadership Council, not NYLC.
3. Pages related to schools and community-based groups are named using the full name, with all words capitalized, and the city, state, and country (if outside of the United States) in parenthesis. For example, Career Technology School (Hale County, Alabama).

Naming sections is even less strict. Profiles should have common structure to aid use, but should be flexible enough to reflect differences between different states and countries. A hierarchical section structure will help to organize pages and create an easy to use table of contents on each page.

There are four levels of headings. The wikitext below renders the three heading levels. The Table of Contents is automatically rendered by the software, provided that headings are formatted as follows.
=Heading 1=
==Heading 2==
===Heading 3===
====Heading 4====

Links

In the wiki, there are two types of links: one to link to other wiki pages and another to link to outside webpages. Both look similar in the code.

Internal Links (also known as Piped Links)

To link to a another page, you simply place two brackets around the name of the page you want to link to, like:
[[Page Name]]

The link will, by default, display the page name as a link. You can change this by adding a vertical line after the page name and different text to display, like:
[[Page Name | Display Text]]

If you're creating a new page in the wiki, simply use the name of the page you want to create. Please take care to spell correctly and capitalize appropriately.

To link directly to a section within a page, simply include #section name after the page name, like:
[[Page Name#section name]] or
[[Page Name#section name | Display Text]]

External Links (also known as hyperlinks)

External links looks similar to internal links. To link to a page outside of the wiki, you simply type the web address of the link, like:
[http://www.nylc.org

As with internal links, you can display different text by adding a space after the web address and typing the text you'd like displayed, like:
[http://www.nylc.org Display Text]

Table of link styles

Wikitext	Displays
[[National Youth Leadership Council]]	National Youth Leadership Council
[[National Youth Leadership Council | NYLC]]	NYLC
[http://www.nylc.org]	[1]
http://www.nylc.org	http://www.nylc.org
[http://www.nylc.org NYLC]	NYLC
[Style Guide#What is a wiki?]	Style Guide#What is a wiki?
[[Style Guide#What is a wiki? | What is a wiki?]]	What is a wiki?

More Basic Editing

Lists

The wiki can create bulleted and numbered lists very easily. To create a bulleted list, use the * symbol. To create a numbered list, use the # symbol.

Outlines are also possible. Simply use two or more of the symbol to indent that line.

The bullet wikitext

*Example 1
**Example 2
**Example 3
***Example 4

Displays:

• Example 1
  • Example 2
  • Example 3
    • Example 4

The numbered list wikitext

#Example 1
##Example 2
##Example 3
###Example 4

Displays:

1. Example 1
   1. Example 2
   2. Example 3
      1. Example 4

Tables

To create a basic table, use the following wikitext:

{|class="wikitable" |+Table Heading |- |Row 1, Col 1 |Row 1, Col 2 |- |Row 2, Col 1 |}

Displays:

Table Heading

Row 1, Col 1	Row 1, Col 2
Row 2, Col 1

For more advanced editing of tables, visit http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Help:Table.

Images

In order to have images in the wiki, they have to first be uploaded to the server, then incorporated into the desired page.

To create an image, make an internal link to the image, such as [[Image:TestImage.jpg]]. Preview the page and by clicking on the link, you'll be taken to a page where you can upload the image.

To learn more about formatting the size and position of images, visit the MediaWiki help page: http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Help:Images_and_other_uploaded_files

References and Footnotes

Including references and in-line citations is key to the accuracy and overall success of the G2G wiki. Anytime a document is referenced it should be given a numbered citation and a corresponding footnote.

To add an inline citation, simply place the following wikitext after the referenced language:
{{ref|reference identifier}}

To add the corresponding footnote, place the following wikitext in the References section, followed by a standard bibliographic entry:
{{note|reference identifier}} Author. Publication. Source. Publication Date. Web Address and Retrieval Date (if applicable).

Note: The reference identifier can be a letter, number, or combination of multiple letters and/or numbers. For ease of use in larger articles, use the author's last name and publication year as the identifier.

For example:

The K-12 Service-Learning Standards for Quality Practice were released in 2008. [2] References ^  K-12 Service-Learning Standards for Quality Practice. National Youth Leadership Council. 2008. http://www.nylc.org/standards. Retrieved on May 1, 2008.

Advanced Topics

Categories

Categories help to keep the wiki organized. Many of the essential categories have already been created and unnecessary categories should not be added unless they significantly add to the quality of the wiki. Likewise, all pages should be added to a category so that they remain organized.

To add a page to a category, place the wikitext [[Category:Category Name]] at the bottom of the page.

For example, all project example pages should be added to the category for their state, such as [[Category:Alabama Project Examples]] and their sponsor, if applicable, like [[Category:Sponsored(LSA)]].

To create a new category, the process is the same.

Moving Pages and Redirects

If a page name is changed, all links that pointed to the old page name will still point to the old page name. To prevent these links from going to a blank page, it is possible to redirect traffic to the new page using the wikitext #REDIRECT [[pagename]].

This will redirect all links to the page listed in brackets.

Templates

Templates can be used as a way to save time and energy and create consistent formatting across pages. It works by adding wikitext that references another page and "transcludes" or copies the text of that page onto the one you're currently editing.

The G2G wiki uses several types of templates, like:

• The States and Territories of the United States boxes, or
• The stub text, which indicates a section in need of expansion, is a simple template. In the wikitext, it looks like: {{stub}}.

Templates can be enhanced with variables that are set on each page, like:

• The references and footnotes use a simple template, with a single variable for the reference number. In the wikitext the reference looks like {{ref|1}} and the footnote looks like: {{note|1}}.
• The Learn and Serve information boxes, with a variable for each data point.

It is unlikely that you'll be creating new templates, but if you are interested in doing so, visit the MediWiki help page: http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Help:Template.

Page Translations

In an effort to bring to English and Spanish language editors together, this wiki has been designed so that pages in both languages exist for many topics. Not all topics have a page in both language, but for those that do, a simple template has been created to link the two.

It can be added to the top of any page and looks like:
{{interlingua|en=Page Name|es=Página Web}}

The English page is defined by "en=" and the Spanish page is defined by "es=". The same template text should appear on the top of both pages.

To deal with pages that would be titled the same in both languages, Spanish pages are prefaced by "Es:". This should be consistently used for any new pages added in Spanish, so that they can be easily distinguished from pages in English.