Help:Editing Pages

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Revision as of 16:44, 19 October 2010 by Tonygrimaud (talk | contribs) (rewriting and adding info)
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M3P is a wiki, meaning that anyone can start a new page, edit or improve existing ones, and the change is done immediately for all readers.

However, some pages are protected for obvious reasons. These might be pages of published newspaper articles or other pages directly related to the administration of M3P.

When you start a new page or add to an existing one in order to improve it, no matter how small your edit may seem, you can be proud of being a part of this community that is helping make M3P better - all those edits and contributions add up!

Editing

Editing most M3P pages is easy! Simply click on the red "edit" tab at the top of a page (or on a section-edit link on the right-hand-side of the page). This will bring up a text box containing the editable text of the current page. Here you can type in the text that you want to add, using wiki markup to format the text (BOLD, Italic, etc.).

Paragraphs can be separated with a blank line by entering 'Return' twice on the keyboard.

'Show preview' button

To see how the page looks with your edits, press the Show preview button located at the bottom of the page.

'Show changes' button

To see the differences between the page with your edits and the previous version of the page, press the Show changes button, also located at the bottom of the page.

Summary

When you have finished editing, it is helpful to write a short summary describing what you have edited. Write this in the small text-field below the edit-box called Summary.

'Save page' button

When you are satisfied with what you had done, be courageous and press the Save page button!
Your changes will immediately be visible to all M3P users.

Minor edits

Checking the "minor edit" box means that you have done only superficial changes to the existing page: typo corrections, formatting and presentational changes, rearranging of text without modifying content, etc.

Major edits

You are encouraged to be bold, but there are several things that a user can do to ensure that major edits are performed smoothly. Before engaging in a major edit, you should consider discussing proposed changes on the article discussion/talk page.

Once the edit has been completed, the inclusion of an edit summary will assist in documenting the changes. These steps will help all to ensure that major edits are well received by the M3P community.

A major edit should be reviewed to confirm that it is consensual to all concerned editors. Therefore, any change that affects the meaning of an article is major (not minor), even if the edit is a single word.

This is recommended as best practice, since doing it your own way, may increase the likelihood that your changes be re-edited.

Talk (discussion) pages

Talk pages are similar to articles in that they also have a "new section" tab to start a new section or edit the whole page.

Wiki markup

Wiki markup is the extra information (apart from the text which will be displayed) you enter in the edit window which tells the MediaWiki software how to display, categorize and process the article.

More information on editing wiki pages

Getting started

Policies and conventions

Helpful tips

Cheatsheet

Naming and moving

Moving a page

Article titles

Namespace

Style and layout

Tools

See also