User:Rikke/sandbox

Alathra Wiki:Getting started

Alathra Wiki is entirely built on contributions by people like you. We encourage everyone to create, edit and illustrate articles, to help us grow and improve over time. As a new editor, however, you might feel a bit overwhelmed by all the possibilities and writing that has previously been done. Don't worry too much if you don't understand everything at first, as it is acceptable to use common sense as you go about editing. You just need to remember that you shouldn't do anything to harm the wiki, and although there are many guidelines you should follow, perfection is not required, as Alathra Wiki is a work in progress. Collaborative editing means that incomplete or poorly written first drafts can evolve over time into excellent articles.

Alathra Wiki's purpose

Our purpose is to create and maintain a basic encyclopedia of knowledge about Alathra. Every article should aim to present a comprehensive and neutral summary of a topic related to Alathra, preserving valuable information about our history, people and lore in general.

As Alathra is a world created by its players, our wiki mostly contains original content. This is different from the actual Wikipedia, where primary and secondary sources are used to create an overview of a topic based on the information already available in the wider world. That's why it is important to remember that when creating lore, try to be detailed, but also easily understandable, as you will probably be the only source about your given topic.

Basics of contributing

A new contributor isn't necessarily required to start creating their own content. A lot of work can be done to improve already existing articles, such as proofreading, linking to other pages, providing images or formatting text. Both creating and maintaining articles are essential to the operation of the wiki and a balance between both is desirable to produce articles of better quality.

Editing methods

Editing most pages is relatively simple. Wikipedia uses two methods of editing: source editing through wiki markup (wikitext) and through a newer VisualEditor. Both are perfectly adequate to create a basic article, but if you wish to have more control over the look of your page, it is recommended that you learn to write and edit a page source. Wikitext is a markup language like HTML, which contains special code that tells plain text how to format itself. The VisualEditor option is intended as a friendly, "what-you-see-is-what-you-get" editor. It doesn't require any wiki markup and shows you the page as if it were already published.

If you have finished writing, it is recommended to press the Show preview button first, to review your work for any errors. If you're ready to publish the page, you should write a short edit summary in the small field below the edit box describing your changes before you press the Publish changes button. This will help others to understand the intention of your edit.

Source editing

Source editing can be accessed by choosing Edit source from the toolbar at the top of a page. This will bring you to a large text box, where you write your article and the wikitext that's needed to format it. To learn more about how wikitext works, you can visit the official tutorial on Wikipedia that teaches you the basics of editing.