Help:Editing Pages

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Revision as of 17:46, 19 October 2010 by Tonygrimaud (talk | contribs) (sorting subtitles)
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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.

discussion/talk pages

discussion/talk pages are similar to article pages in that you can edit the whole or part of the page.

As previously mentioned in this section, it is encouraged that when attempting to make major edits to a page, one should consider discussing such proposed changes on the article discussion/talk page first, before making the actual edit.

More information on editing wiki pages

Moving a page

Article titles

Style and layout

Tools