Help:Editing
This is a quick run-through of the most useful formatting markup.
Remember that content here must not be copyrighted!
What kind of content should be added to Oberwiki? Factual information is always good. Opinions and experiences are also excellent, as long as they're recognizable as such (see Signing edits below). This is not the place for personal attacks or libel; it will be deleted.
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[edit] Plain text
Plain text entered in the edit box shows up as — you guessed it — plain text.
Separate paragraphs by putting a blank line between them.
[edit] Links
Links to other pages on Oberwiki let you browse around easily. To link to a page, put two brackets around the page's title: [[Main Page]] will display as Main Page.
You can make the link say anything by putting the text to display after a vertical pipe: [[Main Page|the beginning]] looks like this: the beginning (notice that it still links to Main Page).
If you make a link to a page that doesn't exist yet, the link will be gray. (So click on the link and create the page!)
Linking to a different web site uses only one bracket, and a space for the displayed text: [http://oberlin.edu Oberlin Online] looks like this: Oberlin Online. Notice the icon after the link — that lets you know that it's a page outside of Oberwiki.
An external link without displayed text turns into a numbered footnote-looking thing: [http://oberlin.edu Oberlin Online] turns into this: [1]
[edit] Lists
Lists are a good way to keep stuff organized. A numbered list is created by a pound/hash mark as the first character on a line:
# first list item
# second list item
...displays as:
- first list item
- second list item
An bullet list works the same way but uses asterisks: * bullet number one * bullet number two
...shows up as:
- bullet number one
- bullet number two
They can be nested and combined, too:
- number one
- minor detail
- another one
- number two
- number two, point one
- number two, point two
- more minor details
[edit] Bold and italics
Italic text is created by surrounding the text in two apostrophes: ''Slanty!'' will be displayed as: Slanty!
Bold text is created by using three apostrophes on each side: '''Thick!''' shows up as Thick!.
Five apostrophes will make something bold and italic.
[edit] Signing edits
If you're adding an opinion on something, you should sign your username (or IP address, if you don't have a username) along with the date.
Of course, you could do this manually, but it's much easier to use the tilde shortcut. Four tildes in a row ( ~~~~ ) will turn into a link to your username/IP with the time and date, like this: 82.165.135.161 13:36, 5 August 2004 (EDT)
[edit] Images
Pages can have images embedded in them in a couple ways.
Images can be uploaded to Oberwiki (the "Upload file" link on the left bar), to make them easy to display and caption.
- Don't forget: only images that aren't copyrighted can be uploaded! (Why?)
Look through the image gallery and note the filename of the image you want. To include it in a page, just pretend you're linking to it: [[Image:<filename.extension>]]
However, that'll display the image full size, and might not be that useful. You can change it by adding tags separated by a vertical pipe ( | ) after the filename: thumb will resize it and stick it on the right; 150px will resize it down to 150 pixels (or whatever size you want); and after the very last pipe you can add a caption (links are okay).
For example, the picture of Harkness on the right was created with this: [[Image:Harkness.jpg|thumb|150px|Little [[Harkness]]!]]
Images that are already on the web can be included on a page, but can't be resized and can't be a link. All you have to do is put the URL to the image on a line by itself.
[edit] Headlines
Headlines are created by surrounding them with two equals signs.
For example, the "Headlines" thing above was created by putting this on a line by itself: == Headlines ==
You can create sub-headlines with three equals signs, and below that you can use four and even five.
[edit] More info
There's a lot more you can do, but the info above will serve you well for a while. To learn more about wiki syntax such as tables, templates and more, the How to edit a page article on Wikipedia has pretty much everything you could ever want to know, and the editing FAQ can answer a lot of questions. (Oberwiki uses the same software that Wikipedia runs on, so all that stuff will work here.)
