User:Koenigsegg
A Guide to Wiki: 101
Before we begin, thank you for your consideration to help us improve this Wiki. This guide intends to set up a decent base for every wiki pages in order to make them easier to read and especially, easy to understand as well as easy to navigate through. I will address a few points regarding the formatting of a page, which can be really important. Note that every informations gathered was from the official MediaWiki Contents page, which gives a summary of most text and image formatting we need, as well as a description on their effect. Do not neglect it as you'll be expected to put more than raw text in your pages, otherwise they will look bland. Keep in mind that you are writing a guide, and people will read your work. You need to word your guide correctly and be precise if you want to catch their attention and interest.
As an attempt to make this guide as efficient as possible, it also serves the purpose of a template, which you may use to crate your pages and work from there, so that you do not have to work from scrap.
Creating a page!
Before creating a new page just yet and directly open to the public, it is more than recommend to work on it in a more closed environment and one that won't affect the image of the wiki in its entirety. You may see your account name in the top right, you may click your name (which should be red if you never followed a similar guide) and this will lead you to your own user page.
Congratulations, you've found your own user page. As you can see, you have the possibility to create this page. This is what you must do and it'll crate an empty page for you to work with. This is the environment you will have to work with before releasing your guide, as it may be reviewed by a Wiki Maintainer for various reasons; spellcheck, quality control and most importantly, to make sure you put efforts into it. Do keep in mind that the Wiki is what most new players will seek for help. Details are not to be neglected.
Picture, my dear picture
Sometimes, if not quite often; it is easy to forget the importance of a picture. Because a picture can be worth a thousand words, neglecting them can make one's task harder, as a player may seek an example. It is not always easy to find something, you never know when a new player has no idea what you are talking about. As such, you are encouraged to take screenshots, highlight the desired part of your screenshot in case it needs to be more specific (such as highlighting an area or an object) and then upload it within the wiki. When you open the wiki, regardless of the page you are on, there is what we call a side bar with a bunch of options. But in this part of the guide, we are only interested in the Upload File hyperlink (As shown in the picture to the left). Granted you have the permission to upload files, you should be given the possibility to choose a file within your hard drive, give it a name (mind the name, this is what you will use to add a picture to your guide, links do not work) and finally, upload it (As shown in the picture to the right).
Last, but not least
Criticism is the key to improvement. Even this guide isn't perfect, it doesn't aim to be. Let people judge your work and point out its flaws, then act accordingly and work with them to fix those nasty issues. You have the chance to work with a community; work together to achieve a task, you will quickly find this task to be much easier and faster, because teamwork does wonders. There is no proper or unproper way to make a guide, you must simply keep a few points in mind and ask yourself some questions:
- Can I understand this guide and continue from there without requiring the help of an administrator/player?
- I have no idea how a fusion reactor looks like... Can I see a picture of it?
- I do not know the right order of tools to repair this vehicle... Is there a rundown on what I should use first and what I should use next?
And many more questions. As stated previously, details are important; they'll make the difference between a good guide and a bad guide. When writing a guide, the first question that should come to mind is, am I answering all the questions they might have?
While using your private environment, you are free to experiment with various formatting, even if it wasn't used in this guide. If you can find a creative way to make your page look better, nobody should mind it. (As long as you do not neglect the fundamentals!)