wikidoc:Editing FAQ

This FAQ answers the most common questions about editing Wikidoc. For full help on editing articles, see the Help page, and these help articles:

• How to edit a page
• How to start a new page.
• How to use talk pages, which are used to discuss how to improve articles.
• How to rename (move) a page.
• How to use redirect pages.
• How to revert a page to an earlier version.
• How to delete pages
• How to import articles
• How to break up a page

How do I edit a page?

It's quite easy. Simply click the "Edit this page" tab located at the top of the page or the other edit link across from headings on the right hand side of the page, and type away. See How to edit a page to learn about making links, using bold and italics, linking to images, and many other things...

How do I rename a page?

Only sysops can move a page; this moves the page content and edit history to a new title, and creates a redirecting page at the old title. This method is better than just copying and pasting the content by hand, as it preserves the article's history, as required by our license. Use the "Move this page" link. Once you have moved a page, please click the "What links here" and fix the links to the old page (which will be labelled as a redirect in the "What links here" list).

Images and other media files cannot be renamed.

How do I delete a page?

First off, please don't blank articles. Such changes will most likely get reverted soon afterwards, so they are pointless, too.

The procedure for deletions is explained at deletion policy. Articles that should be deleted are most commonly nominated at articles for deletion.

at the top it will say edit this page. click on that.

How long should the ideal article be?

Since one can link from page to page to page, how long should the ideal Wikidoc article be?

A Wikidoc article can be long, up to 32 KB, which is when you will recieve a warning about the size of your article.

If you write one long article, you will need new headlines anyway. If you write a long paragraph, then you need to add new linebreaks. The structure of Wikidoc is a web, instead of a text that you read linearly.

How do I figure out how big an article is?

Search results give the size, for example "Knot theory (3220 bytes)". If search is disabled, copy the content of the edit box into an editor, save it as a text file, and check the properties of the file. Some variation is possible depending on whether a new line takes one or two bytes.

When the article size reaches 32 KB, a warning is displayed at the top of the edit screen, as that size gives some Web browsers problems. It will likely give readers and editors problems as well.

What do I do when an article is too long?

Break up the article into smaller articles. For example: An EKG page can become very long and very detailed. This page can be broken up into seperate pages, "Drug effects on the EKG" on a page and "Pacemakers and EKG" on another page. This would break down the size of the page and subjects in table of contents on said page.

How do I determine what other users have changed in an article?

Wikidoc's software can produce a list of all the changes between two versions of an article (either between two consecutive versions, or between an old and the current version), laid out in two-columns side by side with changes highlighted. From the Recent Changes page you can click the "diff" link; from an article page itself click "Page history", then "cur" or "last" to see changes.

How can I put pictures on my pages?

First, you need the right to publish the picture under the GNU Free Documentation License. This means that either you created the picture and therefore own the copyright, or it is in the public domain. If the picture is located on a server you control, you can refer to that image from your wiki page by simply including its URL, like this:

http://my.webserver.com/image.png

and it will be included. (Note it will only be linked, not displayed.) If instead you want to upload a picture to wikidoc, you can use special:upload as a logged-in user and once it is uploaded, you can refer to it in your wiki pages as above, by including its file name :[[image:NameOfImage.png|Alternate Text]].

See also Image use policy.

How can I delete uploaded items?

Only administrators can delete uploads, but anyone can upload a new item with the same name, thereby replacing the old one.

If you want to nominate an uploaded image for deletion, see Wikidoc:Images for deletion.

How do I describe images?

Click on the image to get the description page. Also, when you upload the file everything you put in the upload summary is placed into the image description page.

All information on this page is attributed to Wikipedia and its contributors