Help:How to contribute

Revision as of 13:17, 26 June 2020 by Divenal (talk | contribs) (→‎Citing papers: how to re-reference something)
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If it ain't broke, don't fix it. That is the guiding principle behind this help article ;)

The wiki runs on MediaWiki, the same wiki software that powers Wikipedia and probably every other wiki you've come across on the internet. As a result, countless other people have written guides far better than we could ever hope to write about how to contribute to the wiki. So, no point in reinventing the wheel with this one.

Please try to keep in mind the specifics of how contribution will work here. None of the policies of Wikipedia or any other wiki applies here, we have our own policy articles. We are not written from a neutral point of view, referencing guidelines are fairly relaxed and humour is encouraged in articles wherever possible for entertainment value to the reader. But as for syntax and the technicalities of editing, you can't get much better than what's already written.

Remember that if you're using templates such as {{templatenamehere}}, a lot of them will not work unless the template has been copied over to here in the Template namespace. Bear that in mind if something doesn't work properly :)

You can find an EndMyopia Wiki specific, video tutorial here!

Formatting

Using Wikitext

Wikilinks

Try to use wikilinks when writing articles. You can write wikilinks like this:

[[Article]]

That will produce Article. You can also produce red links, that look like this - this is good for indicating to other editors that an article on this topic needs to be written, and doesn't exist yet.

Wikitext guides

You can find all the information you've ever wanted on how to use Wikitext to write articles effectively at Wikipedia.

Wikipedia help article on how to format articles using Wikitext (very recommended)

Styling of articles

You can find a far, far better crafted Manual of Style at Wikipedia than we could ever have the time or enthusiasm to write. Here it is, in all of its glory.

Definitely feel free to ignore anything that is more related to being an encyclopedia, we are not an encyclopedia, we are a vision improvement resource, first and foremost, full of funny jokes. You will find a lot of information about how to stylise articles in a cool way there though.

Using images

You can upload images to this site using the "upload file" tool in the left panel. (That tool also provides a link to enumerate uploaded fles.)

But even better than that, the "InstantCommons" feature seems to be enabled, which means you can access images directly from commons without having to copy them to here. See https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/InstantCommons#Using_files_via_InstantCommons

Writing maths

To write maths, enclose text in <math></math> tags.

<math>(5+12)/(41.9999)</math> displays as

You can use fancy formatting too!

<math>\frac{1}{2}e^{i\pi} = \frac{-1}{2}</math> displays as

For way too much detail on how to write and display formulae, see Wikipedia's guide on how to render mathematical formulae.

Citing papers

We want to cite scientific research where possible to justify this approach. One way is to use the 'proveit' gadget that should appear in the bottom right corner while editing - see the video tutorials mentioned above for more details.

Repeating references

It is possible to reference the same document several times from within an article. On the first one, give the reference a tag : <ref name="habits">citation here</ref>. Then subsequent mentions can simply use the tag with an empty body : <ref name="habits"></ref> or xml shorthand <ref name=habits" />

Biomedical citation maker

Another (external) tool is http://sumsearch.org/cite/ - if you have a unique reference for the journal in one of various formats (such as a https://doi.org/... url), you can enter that into the box and will generate a fancy <ref>{{cite...}}</ref> sequence with title, authors, journal, etc. that you can simply paste in.

It provides a bookmarklet which allows you to generate a citation by simply selecting the doi using mouse, and pressing a button.

EndMyopia specifics

There is an apparent consensus at the time of writing that 'EndMyopia' should be the consistent capitalisation of how the name is referenced. Please refrain from using different capitalisations when referring to EndMyopia in articles. Consistency is important.

Creating new pages

Creating a new article

To create a new article, enter in the URL of the article you would like to create. You'll be taken to a page where you will be asked to create the article if it doesn't exist already.

Alternatively, create a redlink, like this. Then click on the redlink to create the article. You can place loads of redlinks in articles that are already written to indicate to others the articles that need writing.

Creating a redirect

Redirects move anyone who lands at that page to another page. This is used for terms that are similar, like Myopia and Shortsightedness. This is really important in preventing duplicate articles covering the same topic, and to aid in navigation of the wiki.

To create a redirect, type the following in the entire body of an article, and nothing else:

#redirect [[ArticleName]]

Using talk pages

See Help:Talk pages