Basic Wiki Concepts

Here's some basic information about The Ripples wiki, finding your way around, how to get involved, and other things you might want to know.

Why a Wiki?

What's a wiki and why use it for this kind of material? A wiki is a kind of webpage that's collaboratively built, with readers making contributions and editing content. The most well known wiki is wikipedia. Someone creates an article that becomes a page in the wiki. Other readers can contribute to the article in three ways: commenting, editing, or annotating.

Commenting

Commenting is a response to the article, a question, a personal reflection. These can be seen by clicking the "Comments" link at the bottom of each article page. If there are any comments, that link with show how many. These are like the comments in a blog or forum. You can see an example of a comment by clicking the comment link below. Anyone can comment, and while we encourage you to sign your comments, comments can be left anonymously. In order to prevent post-spam, all comments get flagged for a moderator to review before appearing on the website.

Editing

Editing is when a user actually changes an article entry. This is the feature that sets a wiki apart from every other kind of web page. A user might edit an article for a variety of reasons. It may be done to clean up the writing, making it more clear. It may be done to add information the original author left out. It may be done to add other ideas, arguments, and interpretations to the original article making it more complete. Most webpages don't allow users to freely edit them, but user editing of a wiki is seen as a good thing, based on the idea that as more people bring their knowledge, experience and expertise to a topic, the more helpful and more accurate it becomes. We welcome anyone interested to become a contributor or editor. However, to prevent post-spam we do have a password for editors. If you request a password and are willing to abide by our Acceptable Use Policy, then we welcome your contribution. Email Marc Schelske at schelske@bridgecity.org to get your password.

Annotating & Making new pages

• Annotating is when a user creates a link (like that one) in the original story, either to a new article in the wiki, or to another webpage. This link would provide additional information that deepens understanding of the original article.

1. You can Use CamelCase. This is where you can type a word with SeveralCapitalLetters (or even type NewPage), which will automatically create a link to that page! A red dashed underline means the page doesn't exist yet. But once you click on the link, the new page will be created, awaiting your new content.

2. You can also use [brackets]**. You can put [brackets] around any word to create a new page. For example, if you wanted a page named "cars", you could just type [cars]. This will create a potential link like this: cars. Once you click on the link the new page will be created for your new content.

3. You can link to any page within the wiki by typing [brackets] around the name of the page. For example, the home page is called "FrontPage." You could link to this page from any wiki article by typing [FrontPage].

4. You can specify the link text by typing the URL like this: [http://www.theURLyouwant.com|Click Here]. That would result in a link like this: Click Here.

Comments

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