Help:Getting Started

See that 'Show preview' button down the bottom of the 'edit' screen? Use it before posting. :)

Do as I say, not as I do...

- Bomb Bloke

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Starting off

Until a more comprehensive getting started section is up and running, the best way to learn how to start creating wiki articles is to click on the 'edit' button and look at the source of a page. Do this to look up how another author was able to achieve a certain effect that you'd like to duplicate.

The following wikimedia help page is a wealth of wiki text formatting information.

Also do as Bomb Bloke says, use the preview button. It's a great way of learning how to format a page without doing any damage to existing articles. Still, no worries. The wiki keeps backups of previous edits that you can look up in case you deleted by mistake.

HTML in wiki text

Wiki text allows some HTML to be used. Not all of it, but enough of the basics. For example, you may want to use a lot of whitespace in your text, but wiki text may eats most of your whitespace. This happens a lot when creating a quick list of items. Without resorting to creating an un-numbered wiki list, you can use a few HTML line break <BR> to force a few carriage returns.

If all else fails, rather than pressing enter once after each list item, press enter twice.

Watch those leading spaces

If you ever place a space at the start of a new line, the following happens:

See this box? This is the result. It contains unformatted wiki text. 
You can include formatting elements in it. 
Nothing's terribly wrong With it except that if your screen is too small, it can go off the page if the line of text is too long. See what I mean? 

(You may need to scroll the page to right to see the rest of the last line)

Links - watch those plurals!

When creating a plural link, watch where your s goes. It can be a bit confusing and even frustrating at times and can potentially create needless duplication.

Try not to put it inside the link. Instead, have it flush against the link, like so [[Laser Pistol]]s . The wiki knows to make the S part of the link. Or you can use a pipe, like so: [[Laser Pistol | Laser Pistols]] but that's a bit tiresome.

Don't use [[Laser Pistols]] unless the actual title is indeed plural.

Stub Pages

Stub pages are basically pages that contain little to no information, but are created as a placeholder for a future article, or even as a redirect page. They can possibly hold a simple to-do list.

For existing authors, regarding stub pages: Try not to litter the wiki with lots of little stub pages that you'll probably abandon either through neglect or you've suddenly decided to go for a better document title. Only create stub pages when you know you'll be using them and try not to fill them with unhelpful comments like "The banana peel bomb. Uh, yeah. it's really powerful. Blast the aliens to bits tod days beyond tuesday." and leave it at that. It tends to annoy some of the other authors. Heh.

Discussion

First of all, the wiki is not a discussion forum. But where needs arise, some discussion will have to take place on the wiki, as not all visitors will be members of the various forums the regular authors frequent.

There's a discussion link at the top of each page. If you have a comment or are unsure and want to ask a question, the discussion page is the best place to do it. If you find yourself having a frequent or a long discussion with another author, consider using the discussion page to iron out all the details and then edit the main page to reflect the discussion. It's a lot better than having deep involved discussions slipped in large blocks of informative text.

Remember to use the + button at the top of the discussion page to add comments rather than using the 'edit' button (unless it's the very first comment). Also remember to enter a brief discussion heading (there'll be a separate text box above the edit box for this) so that your new discussion topic stands out rather than ending up flush against the previous comment.

The discussion pages are like black boards. Remember to wipe them clean after you're done and all the changes are in effect.

Indenting

The purpose of this section is to describe indenting. A line of indented text probably doesn't look like much, but it can certainly allow sections of large blocks of text to stand out a bit.

To indent a line, observe the following line.

: To indent a line, observe the following line. 

Notice how there's a colon at the start of the line. This indents the entire line of text. Note that this only works on the one line.

All text after the carriage return (the invisible character representing the enter/return key) will return to normal. Just like what has happened to this line, if you have a look at the source code. If you want to indent a large document, remember to place a ":" at the beginning of each new paragraph.

You can have multiple indent levels!

Observe.

See?

This can be handy for breaking up user discussions into threads

It helps break up the large blocks of unweildy text

Fnord!

How now brown cow? Where is my cow?

It has absconded with the kitchen sink

A life on the run for one that befriends a cat with boots is a sad one indeed.

Mind you

This is taking things to the extreme

And is just causing one big horrible mess.

Be advised that if you place a semicolon ";" instead of a colon at the start of a new paragraph, it converts the entire paragraph into bold text. This can be a really handy way of making quick minor sub headings (such as the title to this section, if you look at the source). If you place a ":" right after the title, separated by a space, you'll get a heading and an indented pargraph. This is useful for definitions. For example:

; This is the topic being explained : This is the description

Produces:

This is the topic being explained

This is the description

In this case, only one level of indent seems to work.

- NKF 00:53, 3 Dec 2005 (PST)