Help:New Article in 5 Steps
From TCWiki
This article is intended to quickly acquaint you with what you need to know to contribute to TCWiki. For this example, we will be writing a character profile for Neko Einado.
To create or edit a page, you must first log in. If you need to log in now, click that link; you'll be returned to this page afterwards.
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Creating the page
The easiest way to create a page is to put a link to it somewhere else, then follow the link. Near the top of this page, you should see your username; that's actually a link to your user page. Click on that link. (You might want to open it in a new tab or window so you can follow along.)
If you aren't already in edit mode (with a blue-bordered box you can type into), click "edit" to get there. Add [[Character Name]] to the bottom of the page to create a link. Click "Save page", then click on the link. Following a link to a page that doesn't exist will place you in edit mode so that you can create the page.
Picking a title
In general, it's best to use the longest unambiguous form of the name commonly used in-game. In Ei's case, he has been called "Neko Einado" in-game, so we use that. As a counter-example, Mahou technically has a last name (Kamida), but it's never used in-game, so the article is simply "Mahou (character)". Himoto Kitsuko is usually just called "Kit" in-game, but there's another Kit (Kit Chase) in MT:tC as well, so her full name is used.
This principle applies to other names as well—faction articles should be titled with the faction's full name, for example.
Don't worry if you mess this up—a friendly user can move the article for you, and the Continuity Monk can clean up the mess.
- The title for Ei's page is Neko Einado.
Putting in the content
Now enter your character's description. If you want to italicize any text, put two apostrophes on either side, ''like this''; if you want to bold any text, put three, '''like this'''. (Don't use the double-quote character—it won't work for this.)
To add a link, put two square brackets on either side of the title of the page you're linking to, [[like this]]. If the title includes a type in parentheses, you can remove it by adding a vertical bar just before the closing brackets, [[like this (see?)|]]. If you want to display some text completely different from the title (such as a first name only), type two opening square brackets, the page title, a vertical bar, the text you want, and finally two closing square brackets, [[like this|for example]]
You should use a link the first time you mention a person, place, faction, story, character type, or just about anything else specific to MT:tC. Add a link even if the destination page doesn't exist—maybe somebody will make the page, and when they do you'll already have the link in place.
To add an image, put the URL location of the image in plain text. So for a picture of Tokyo Tower, simply drop the following into your wiki page.
http://cs.wellesley.edu/~rds/rds01/projects/tokyo_tower/smtower.jpg. (The actual results are not reproduced here for space reasons, but exist on the Tokyo Tower page for reference.
At this time, only images external to the server are supported, so put it up online or find it online and then link it.
When you're done, hit "Show preview" to take a look at your handiwork.
- A basic version of Ei's page might look something like this:
Name: Neko Einado (Ei) Player: [[User:Brent Dax|]] Faction: [[United Fangirls of Largo-sama (faction)|UFL]] (System Administrator) Thread: [[The Makoto Chronicles]] Neko Einado (usually just referenced as "Ei") is literally a Unix wizard; where in most hackish conversations "wizard" means a hacker of superior skill, in the universe of ''Megatokyo: the Clans'' it becomes literal. Somewhat like a [[technomancer]], Ei can magically influence technology, although the exact mechanism is different; while a technomancer can create new circuits, Ei can only control electrons moving through existing ones. He also has a set of spells based on Unix system calls. Ei is the UFL's sysadmin, and works in the [[United Fangirls of Largo-sama Hospital (place)|Field Hospital]]. The character [[Himoto Kitsuko (character)|Kit]] tends to interact with Ei.
Using a template
Like the example above, chances are good that your character page has a few pieces of basic information at the top: full name, faction, and so on. One of TCWiki's several templates can be used to put this information in a pretty box, which appears the same on all character pages.
Templates are used by putting the text {{Template:, the name of the template, a vertical bar, a set of name=value parameters (each parameter pair separated by another vertical bar), and two closing curly brackets. The template for a character info box is called Charinfo, and the parameters it accepts are called name, faction, owner, and thread. All four have to be specified; if the character doesn't have a faction, just put ''Unaffiliated''. (There's also a version called CharinfoImage, which takes an extra image parameter and one called ImageCaption which has only an image and a caption parameter.)
Once again, hit "Show preview" and make sure the box looks alright.
- The template for Ei's box might be written like this:
| Neko Einado (Ei) | |
|---|---|
| Creator: | Brent Dax |
| Affiliation: | UFL (System Administrator) |
| Threads: | The Makoto Chronicles |
{{Template:Charinfo|
name=Neko Einado (Ei)|
owner=[[User:Brent Dax|Brent Dax]]|
faction=[[United Fangirls of Largo-sama|UFL]]
(System Administrator)|
thread=[[The Makoto Chronicles]]}}
- The box this code creates is shown on the right.
Adding a category
One more thing: add [[Category:Characters]] to the bottom of the text. Although it looks like this is a normal link, it isn't—it's a category link. That means that the category page indicated will get a link to it, and a box at the bottom of the current page will indicate that it belongs to that category. You can have several categories in the same article—try adding one to indicate which faction the character is in, such as [[Category:Mihoists]].
The category page should sort characters by their most common name, which may not be the same as their full name. In Ei's case, he's normally called by an abbreviation of his first name. If you need an article to sort by something other than its title, put a pipe character and then the text you want it to sort by.
Once again, hit "Show preview"; the category box will show up at the bottom of the page, below the box you've been typing into.
- Ei's article has the following categories:
[[Category:Characters]] [[Category:Largoists]]
Note: the "|Neko Einado" afterward is redundant and actually breaks some stuff.--BozoCat 17:47, 7 Feb 2007 (PST)
You're done!
Now hit "Save page". Congratulations—you've made your first page!
Of course, you're not really done yet—now you have to add links to the page. Is there another character yours is frequently associated with? Does he or she hold a leadership position in a faction? Are there any stories on TCWiki that mention the character? Check out some likely pages and add links if appropriate.
