Editing wiki guide

This guide is meant to help new members become acquainted with editing the Protospace Wiki (this website). It should be short to read and simple to follow so new editors don't get overwhelmed.

After talking to several new members, it was discovered that most hesitation to edit was due to non-technical reasons so those are addressed first.

What is a wiki?

A wiki is a website with a collection of knowledge that can be edited by its users. In our case, the Protospace Wiki can only be edited by logged-in Protospace members.

Our wiki is powered by MediaWiki software, the same software that runs Wikipedia.

Culture

Editing this wiki is crucial for its accuracy, comprehensiveness, and overall quality. However, it is equally important to emphasize that editing should not be intimidating or discourage potential contributors. The collaborative nature of a wiki encourages open participation and welcomes diverse perspectives. Don't be afraid to edit or worry about stepping on toes; the goal is to improve the wiki collectively and create a more valuable resource for all members.

The benefit and gratitude for your contribution will outweigh any mistake that you could possibly make here. All changes are tracked and mistakes can be undone, so be bold. Since the information added to this wiki can be viewed by every member, editing the wiki is an easy way to make a large volunteer contribution.

Where to start

You can add any Protospace, makerspace, or making information to this wiki. Some examples are documenting one of your projects, a useful procedure, a step-by-step guide for a tool, information on a specific tool, a list of useful resources; codifying an official policy, and adding to the FAQ or glossary.

If you ask someone a question, it would be excellent if you documented their answer on this wiki.

Organization

There isn't a strict organization structure for the pages in this wiki. This may discourage new editors, but it's not a problem because everything can be found via the search box.

Pages are loosely organized like so:

Major pages are linked from the bottom of the wiki's homepage
Pages describing each tool are linked to from the Tools we have page
A list of all pages can be found here

Basic Editing

Editing the wiki on your phone is an inconvenient mess. For simplicity, this guide will assume you're editing on a desktop (normal computer).

Logging in

You can log into the wiki using the same username and password as the member portal (Spaceport), the forums (Spacebar), and Protospace computers.

Click the "Log in" link at the top right of any wiki page.
Log in with your Protospace username and password.
- If the log in fails or you forget your username / password, do a password reset on the portal, then try again.
- If you still can't get in please email directors@protospace.ca, they will be happy to help you.

Edit a page

There's two types of editing methods: visual editor and source editor (advanced). This guide will focus on using the visual editor.

Make sure you are logged in.

Browse to the page you'd like to edit.
Click the blue "Edit" tab somewhat near the top right of the screen. Don't click "Edit source" for now.
The page's visual text editor will load.
Edit the page however you'd like. You can use the toolbar above to format the text.
Click the blue "Save changes..." button on the right.
Enter a short summary of what you changed in the dialog box.
Finally, click "Save changes" to finish.

Create a new page for a tool

Tool pages have their own specific procedure documented here, please follow it.

The procedure is a complicated mess and beyond the scope of this guide.

Create a new page

To create a new page for something that isn't a Protospace tool, follow these steps.

Make sure you are logged in.

Type your desired page name into the search box on the top right.
Press enter.
- If the page already exists, you might see it in the search results list. You can edit it instead.
Click the red link in the "Create the page [red link here] on this wiki!" text near the top of the search results.
An editor page should open.
Make sure the "Create" tab is selected at the top.
Enter something, an introductory sentence, or whatever random text just to get started.
Click the blue "Save changes..." button on the right.
Enter "Starting page" in the summary box.
Finally, click "Save changes" to finish.

Now you can edit the new page normally as described above.

Additional info

Testing sandbox page

If you'd like to experiment with editing, feel free to edit the Testing page.

You can make any changes you want there to practice.

Tracking changes

All changes to the wiki are tracked and can be reverted if something breaks, so don't be afraid of editing things.

To view the history of a page, click the "View history" tab near the top right.

You can see all the recent changes to the wiki here: Recent Changes, or click "Recent Changes" on the left sidebar.

Editing source

Sometimes in order to use advanced features, you'll need to edit a page's source code.

You can click the "Edit source" tab on a page to change the source code that gets turned into formatted text.

Feel free to use this mode, you can refer to the syntax here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Help:Cheatsheet.