CarlWiki:Talking tutorial
From CarlWiki
| Help contents |
| Reading tutorial |
| Talking tutorial |
| Editing tutorial |
| Questions |
| Meta-policy |
| Style guide |
| List of admins |
| E-mail the webmaster |
This talking tutorial will teach you how to participate in discussions on CarlWiki. Before you begin, you'll want to go through the reading tutorial, which shows you how to start an account on CarlWiki. Having an account is important to participating in productive discussions. Anonymous posts are usually disregarded.
Contents |
Finding discussions
Every normal page on CarlWiki has its own "discussion" page, which is a simple message board. You can get to it by clicking on the tab labeled discussion at the top of any page. If the link to it is blue, there's already an active discussion. If the link is red, then the discussion doesn't yet exist, but you'll be given the option of creating one.
Discussions are a great place to ask questions related to pages, because the authors of a page tend to monitor that page's discussion. Don't be daunted by the unusual message board format, which is explained below.
Making a post
For maximum flexibility, discussion pages are fully editable pages, just like regular wiki pages. However, this can be confusing for beginners. Let's try making a post. Go to the sandbox and then click the discussion tab. You'll see everything that others have posted there. Now click the tab labeled edit at the top of the discussion page. (Note that you could also click on + to add a new section, or on the edit link next to any section heading to edit just that section.) You'll see a text box filled with the whole "code" of the page. This is where we start to learn basic editing.
Indentation
Find a post that you'd like to respond to. Then, on the line below it, add indentation. The following is an example of indentation code:
* This line is indented once. ** This line is indented twice. *** And so on...
And the result:
- This line is indented once.
- This line is indented twice.
- And so on...
- This line is indented twice.
You can use # instead of * if you don't want the bullet point in front of your lines. However, the bullet points normally make things more readable.
Text styles
You may be familiar with HTML for doing things like bolding and italicizing text. However, CarlWiki uses a different, faster notation. Although HTML is supported, it's highly recommended that you use the CarlWiki notation shown below. Bolding and italics is done using serieses of apostrophes (not quotation marks, which the multiple apostrophes often resemble). Here's the code:
''This text is italicized using two apostrophes on each side of it'' '''This text is bolded using three apostrophes on each side of it'''
And the result:
This text is italicized using two apostrophes on each side of it This text is bolded using three apostrophes on each side of it
Wiki-ing
Often the most useful thing you can do in a post is refer to another page on CarlWiki. It's easy to make that reference into a link; this is known as "wiki-ing." You do this using double-brackets, like follows:
[[Main Page]]
And the result:
Because there is a page named Main Page, this link simply goes to it. If you link to a page that doesn't exist, you'll get a red link, which people can click on to create a new page with that name. Note that links are caps-sensitive, except for the first letter. This means that a link to "main Page" would work properly, but a link to "main page" or "Main page" would not.
You don't always want your links to have the same text as the page name, especially if the page exists in a "name space" which adds a prefix to it. For example, the next tutorial, the reading tutorial, exists in the CarlWiki name space, because it's a page about CarlWiki. This is done to avoid confusion, since there could be something Carleton-related called a "reading tutorial," and so the name of the CarlWiki reading tutorial page is "CarlWiki:Reading tutorial". (Note that the letter after the colon is not caps-sensitive, so "CarlWiki:reading tutorial" is also an acceptable link.) But a link to CarlWiki:Reading tutorial looks awkward. To give the link different text, use the | (pipe) character. It's shift + \ on most keyboards. Example:
Check out the [[CarlWiki:Reading tutorial | reading tutorial]]!
The result:
Check out the reading tutorial!
The spaces before and after the | are optional. A common use for this technique is linking to user pages, which are in the User name space.
Signing posts
Last but most importantly, always remember to sign your posts! A series of 4 dashes automatically inserts your user name and a time stamp. Anonymous posts are strongly discouraged on CarlWiki, so remember to use this. Putting two dashes in front of the four tildes is customary. Example:
I'll just put my John Hancock here. --~~~~
The result:
I'll just put my John Hancock here. --Trevor Burnham '07 16:45, 4 Jan 2005 (PST)
Where to go from here
You now know some basic discussion skills, and enough wiki formatting knowledge to make basic edits to pages. For more advanced study, see the editing tutorial.
