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Contributing to the Wiki

Thank you for wanting to help with the wiki, but before you start, it is very important that you have a basic understanding of how to edit a wiki, and how it works

Here are a few basic wiki-specific tags and concepts:

1. In a wiki, you don't need HTML. Instead, use the Wiki markup equivalents. Use ONLY Wiki markup when editing pages.
2. Want to link to another page? Take the name of the page (not the URL!) and put them in double square brackets, like so: [[Example]]. After saving the page, it will look like Example. This is called an internal link.
3. If you create a new page, make sure to add it to a category. To do so, first go to category:categories, from there, find the category that'd be best suited for your article. Then add the text [[Category:NameOfCategory]] to your page.
4. NEVER EVER empty a page. The information, no matter how outdated it may be, may still be useful to some people, so use a tag to indicate that it's non-current info. If you believe that a page should be deleted instead of being archived, first consider make a redirect to relative pages. If you find an outdated article(we'll call it "A") which contents is almost the same as another maintained article(call it "B"), put #Redirect [[B]] in empty page A. If you can't find related page despite of your every effort, put {{delete|Your reason for wanting the page deleted}} to the top of the page, and save it. A sysop (a.k.a. Wiki admin) will then review your proposal to delete, and if accepted, will delete the page. The only exception to this rule, are pages that only contain spam. Throw it into our trash bin by putting #Redirect [[Trash Bin]]. After that, it will redirect to Trash Bin page without even showing the big catchy title of the spam page.
5. This wiki uses the Genshi code syntax highlighting plugin to make script and program code easier to read. Here's an example page of highlighted code. For details on how use code highlighting by specifying which language your program code is in, see MediaWiki Syntax Highlighting Usage

For more info on how to edit Wiki pages, see http://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Help:Editing

What do we need help with?

There are a lot of pages in the opensim wiki today, many of which aren't really up to snuff.

Have a look around, and if you find an article that you think you can add to, then feel free to do so. One place to look could be The stubs category, where you can find pages that are in need of expansion.

Another way to help, is to go through and tag pages. See below for tags and templates that you could apply to the pages in the wiki.

How to find stuff to do

See the following pages for things that need work:

• Uncategorized Categories - These categories need to be put into a category.
• Uncategorized Images - These images need to be put into a category.
• Uncategorized Pages - These pages need to be put into a category.
• Unused Categories - Unused categories. Edit pages to add them to these categories, or mark for deletion.

• Short Pages - Short pages may need to be expanded.
• Long Pages - Long pages may need to be split into separate sub-pages.

• Double Redirects - Double redirects put an unnecessary load on the server. Remove the middle redirect(s) and change the first one to point to the last page in the chain.
• Dead-end Pages - Dead-end pages don't have any links to other pages. To keep the wiki work like a wiki should, add links to other pages.
• Broken Redirects - Broken redirects point to nonexistent pages. These should be deleted, or modified so they become useful articles.

• Orphaned pages - These pages are pages that are not being linked to, or have been incorrectly linked to (like by using an external link instead of an internal one).
• Wanted Pages - These pages don't exist yet, but are needed. Please create them if you can (and make sure to add content to them. No placeholders!).

What else is there to be done?

• Update Navigation links - Mark Malewski
• Check the WIKI for orphan pages and bad links - Mark Malewski
• Twist the developer's arms, and try to get updated content for WIKI pages - Mark Malewski
• Mind Map for the Wiki - SeanDague

See also WikiTodo and Infrastructure

Tags

The following templates should be used to tag pages that are not up to par. This will help us keep a list of things needed to improve the wiki. Don't worry too much about marking a page incorrectly, tagging these pages makes them show up under various Categories and wiki admins, or even users, will clear tags if they aren't appropriate.

How to use

To tag a page, put the appropriate template in the article's body, just before the text that you want to tag. When saving the article, the template will automatically be translated into one of the boxes that you see below.

Example : You come across an article about a third-party addon, or software that was not yet tagged. You edit the page, and find that the article body looks like this:

 = Some Third Party Software =
 
 The software ''foo'' was designed to make [[bar]] easier to manage, and [...]

To apply the template, add the text {{thirdparty}} to the article's body. The article body will then look like this:

 {{thirdparty}}
 = Some Third Party Software =
 
 The software ''foo'' was designed to make [[bar]] easier to manage, and [...]

Most templates will automatically add the article to a category, to make them easier to find.

Pages That Need Fixing

Purpose: This page had good information at one point, but it is too out of date to really have value now. We need to capture the information in another page, or do major work to bring the page up to date.

Tag: {{obsolete}}

Purpose: The information on this page is out of date. However, it may still hold value to some people (examples are chat logs, version history, or OpenSimulator 0.6x specific info) or needs to be preserved for other reasons. It should be marked as archived information to prevent confusion.

Tag: {{archive}}

Purpose: While the content of the page is good, it's too hard to understand without examples. We'd like to get examples into this page to make it more user friendly.

Tag: {{needsexample}}

Purpose: This page has a little bit of information, but it's very incomplete. It probably can stay in the same place but needs more helping hands.

Tag: {{content}}

Pages that need deleting (use sparsely!)

Purpose: This page does not belong on the wiki. It contains spam, is an empty page, a vanity page, or is considered rubbish otherwise.

Always specify the reason for the delete request. Without one, the page will not be deleted.

Tag: {{delete|Reason}}

Example: {{delete|This is an example of the delete tag.}}

Informational Tags for Pages

Purpose: This is used on pages that represent future proposals, so that people don't get the idea that this is the way that opensim currently works.

Tag: {{proposal}}

Purpose: To be used on the pages of deprecated functions. New page is to be created with replacement function. Suggest copying over the content of the page of the deprecated function, and make modifications in the content of the new page.

Tag: {{deprecate|<MM DD YYYY>|<newname>}}

Example: {{deprecate|Nov. 21 1997|NewArticle}}

Purpose: To be used on pages dealing with 3rd party add-ons, modules, and so forth, so as to clearly, uniformly, and effortlessly mark them as 3rd party software.

Tag: {{thirdparty}}