User:Sherurcij/Primer

Welcome to my "Introduction to Wiki", chances are you're here because you either owe me a favour, or have decided this is the best way to ensure I owe you a favour. No matter the reason, let's get started.

The basics of Wiki-ing

When writing anything for Wiki, whether it's Wikipedia or Wikisource, there are a few basic things you're going to need to know.

Linking

• To create a link to another page on the same Wiki, simply enclose the title of the page within double square-brackets so that [[War and Peace]] becomes War and Peace.
  • Sometimes you'll want to create a link, but have it appear with a different name. Inside the double square-brackets, type the actual name, and then a | symbol, followed by how you want the link to appear.
  • If you want to link to a non-Wiki page for some reason, use single square-brackets to include the full url of the page, and use the spacebar, rather than the | symbol to separate the link from the text you want to appear clickable. That way, [http://www.yahoo.com Yahoo website] becomes Yahoo website

Images

Images are a tricky issue, so for the sake of argument, let's assume that the only images you need to upload right now are either illustrations from books (which typically have to pre-date 1923) or historical photographs and art (again, pre-1923 is the magic term). Modern images are a disaster just waiting to happen, so if you have a modern image you want to use - ask an established user to help you!

• Assuming you have an old image that you feel would add to the text's quality, the first step is downloading, scanning or otherwise getting it onto your computer desktop. Don't resize it, we do that manually later with the WikiCode, to preserve the "full-size" image for people who want to see it in detail themselves.
  • Go to Special:Upload (typically found on the pull-down menu at the top of your screen as "Upload file") and select the file off your desktop. Under "Summary" you must include the source of the image ("In a 1908 book I own entitled "The History of the Triple-M Ranch"" or the url of the website) as well as the template-tag {{PD-1923}}. This will identify its status as being out-of-copyright, and will prevent administrators from deleting it.

• Now you'll have a "name" for your image, it will begin with "Image:" and end in the proper file extension (.jpg, .gif, .png). Go back to your article, and type the following where you want the image to appear; [[Image:photo of John the Baptist.jpg|right|300px]]. Notice again, that you use the | symbol to separate parameters. In this case, the file name, the position of the image in the article, and how large the image appears to readers.
  • You may also wish to include a caption on your photo, in which case the code would be [[Image:Fish of Northern Mississippi.jpg|thumb|A sampling of fish found in the region.]].

Chapter headings

A chapter heading is exactly what you see above, where it says "Chapter heading". It is a way of separating parts of a text, whether you are splitting a biography into "Early life", "Military career" and "Death and legacy" - or splitting a book into chapters. It also has a small edit button beside the Chapter Heading, which allows people to edit only that chapter if it is a long text they don't feel like searching through, to fix an error.

• To create a chapter heading, simply enclose the chapter title in double-equal-signs. ==External links==
  • You can create chapters within chapters, by simply increasing the number of signs you put around the title. Triple-equal-signs, quadruple, however many you need!

Citations and footnotes

On Wikipedia, you'll want to reference any facts you include in an article if they aren't a matter of "common knowledge". (The fact that Abraham Lincoln was President of the United States does not need to be cited, but the claim that he hated his youngest daughter does.) On Wikisource, you'll want to add footnotes that appear in the original document (or even sometimes, your own!). These are both accomplished the same way;

• Enclose the source of your claim (WP) or the text of the footnote (WS) within <ref> tags. Don't forget that the one after the text needs a /-slash in it to 'close' the tag! <ref>Dowes, Jennifer. "The Big Book of Presidents", Green Hand Publishing, 2002. Page 24.</ref> or even simply <ref>http://www.whitehouse.gov/interestingfacts/Lincoln.html</ref> if your information is coming from a website.
  • At the very bottom of your new article, you'll want to include a place for those notes to go. Use a chapter heading to create ==References== or ==Footnotes==, and then beneath it place the term <references />. That will automatically generate a listing of all the footnotes/citations you've strewn throughout the text!

Wikisource

Starting

• Once you've decided which text you want to add, your first step is making sure it doesn't already exist. The easiest way to look for a book is to use the Search feature - but it doesn't always work, so you can either google "Wikisource+Secret+Garden", or you can simply replace the end of the current URL with "Secret Garden" and see if anything comes up (and if it doesn't, it automatically provides you the ability to create the page!).
  • Be careful, although Secret Garden doesn't already exist, The Secret Garden does. Try a variety of attempts to figure out what title it may be listed under, this can include looking for the Author's page (which is found at Author:Frances Hodgson Burnett))

Breaking it up

Now, are you hoping to add a long work like a novel or play - or something relatively short, like song lyrics, a speech or a newspaper article? Longer works tend to have subpages created for their individual chapters (like The Princess and the Goblin or A Voyage Towards the South pole and Around the World), while short works tend to just use Chapter Headings. Sometimes you'll have a medium-sized work like Principles of Mohammadan Law - just use your judgment, subpages or headings?

• Subpages
  • Creating subpages is easy, simply go to the main page at the title where you want to create your book and add in the names of the

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