WICSA 2005:Getting Started

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Participating in the WICSA 2005 Conference Wiki

Contents

Tips for Getting Started

  • Dive right in by browsing pages.
  • Get started by clicking on your login ID to go to your home page and create an entry.
  • Think of the wiki pages as a white board; contribute entries to get feedback on new ideas. They don't have to be perfectly written.
  • Use "Edit this page" to view the source and to make changes. Or select the "edit" link to the right of a section heading to confine your edits to a section of the page rather than selecting the entire page. Note that to use this feature you have to be logged in with the default user preferences (i.e., Enable section editing via [edit] links).
  • Talk about a page rather than editing the page directly using “Discuss this page”.
  • To receive change notifications for current page, log in and select “Watch this page”.
  • View the revision history of a page with “Page history”.
  • View changes to the entire site with “Recent changes”.
  • Add a new page by adding a link to it in an existing page. The first time you select the link, you will be told the page does not exist and you will be directed to a template for adding the page.
  • Learn more about how to edit pages at wikipedia [1].
  • Practice and experiment in the wikipedia sandbox [2].


Tips to Avoid Editing Conflicts

If two people are editing the same page then a conflict will result.

  • Do not lock a page for an extended period.
  • Select the "edit" link to the right of a section heading to confine your edits to a section of the page rather than selecting the entire page. Note that to use this feature you have to be logged in with the default user preferences (i.e., Enable section editing via [edit] links).
  • Add small entries at a time and save often. The prime problem with conflicting edits isn't that they conflict, but rather that the authors of the conflicts are not aware of the others' thoughts.
  • If a conflict occurs, do one of the following
    • If the editor tells you, when you try to save, that a conflict has occurred, examine the whole page carefully before doing anything. With luck, it will show you two versions of the page before you lose your changes or overwrite the other changes.
    • Use the back and refresh/retry buttons to recapture what you have written.
    • Look at the page history to see if you overwrote someone else's changes and either rollback or incorporate their changes into yours.
    • Use the "compare versions" feature on the history page to see the differences.
  • If you do need to lock a page P for an extended period of time (e.g., a session scribe editing the Discussion page during the session), do the following:
    1. Edit page P and add the following template tag line at the top of the page:
          {{inuse}}
    2. Save page
      This causes a template notice to appear at the top of the page so that whoever visits the page while the {{inuse}} tag is in effect will know NOT to edit the page. Please use this sparingly so as not to hamper flow of ideas during the conference.
    3. Go back to edit page P and do your extended edits
    4. When done, remove the {{inuse}} tag line before you save your final changes

Wiki Navigation

Navigation links down the left side of all pages

Main Page 
returns to the WICSA Conference Wiki Main (index) Page.
Current events 
links to the primary page of the current event
Recent changes 
lists the last x changes in the last y days.
Random page 
displays a random page.
Help 
provides you extensive help from MediaWiki (the organization maintaining this wiki engine)

Contextual Toolbox links down the left side of all pages

What links here 
displays other pages that link to the currently displayed one.
Not available on all pages
Related changes 
shows recent changes to just the displayed page.
Not available on all pages
User contributions 
lists contributions of current user.
Available only on user pages
E-mail this user 
allows you to send a user-to-user email via the Wiki for the current user.
Available only on user pages
Upload file 
allows upload of image and other media files, currently, only files with extension 'png', 'gif', 'jpg', 'jpeg', 'ogg', 'zip', and 'pdf'.
Special pages 
shows special Wiki pages for viewing registered users, browsing pages by characteristics (oldest, popular), viewing titles of all pages, site statistics, etc.

User-specific links at the upper-right of all pages

Generally, you need to be logged in to see these links.

{USER}
displays your user homepage, where you can provide information about yourself
My talk 
displays your talk page, a page where you can talk about you, yourself, and your own opinions.
Preferences 
provides options for you to customize the look-and-feel of the Wiki, including default skin, table-of-content show/hide, time zone, etc.
My watchlist 
displays your watchlist.
My contributions 
displays your contributions.

Tabbed links at the top of each page

article 
display the current page.
discussion 
add comments to a talk page associated with the current page.
edit 
make changes to the current page.
view source 
(in place of edit) view source of the current, protected page.
history 
show revision history and prior versions of the current page.
protect 
protect the current page from further revision (available only to admins).
delete 
delete the current page. This can be a drastic and unexpected change for a popular page (available only to admins).
move 
rename the current page. This can be a drastic and unexpected change for a popular page.
watch 
add the current page to your watchlist.
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