How to update the wiki
This page describes the basics of editing the SCOUTS South Africa Wiki. For more detailed help, visit Help:Contents.
General
What is a wiki
A wiki is a website specifically focussed for the storage and categorisation of knowledge. It allows you to easily find knowledge, improving the resources available to members of SSA.
What is the wiki good for?
Many things will be well placed on the wiki. For example:
- Historical records and information that is useful for others to know (e.g. historic competition results)
- Educational material, Scoutcraft skills
- Badge requirements
- Advancement programme
- Campfire songs, skits, cheers
- Scout cooking recipes
- Topics such as Baden-Powell, Mafeking, the history of Scouting
- And much more!
What is the wiki NOT good for?
- Announcements, such as your Group bingo evening. The wiki should store more permanent information.
- Group specific information, unless useful to the wider community.
- Anything temporary
- Anything which is copyrighted by someone else (it's OK to create a link to it, but you can't upload a copy of it)
- Contents which is not suitable for a Scouting audience or which would reflect badly on the organisation
- Any official documents, forms and policies of SCOUTS South Africa without approval from the CEO.
How do I edit the wiki?
It may take some time to get used to at first. But there are many tutorials that can help. Have a look at our tutorial below.
I'm afraid I won't get it right
Don't worry! You can't break anything. The whole point of a wiki is that others can edit and improve on articles. So if you are worried that your article is far from perfect, don't stress - someone else will be able to refine it and improve it. And you'll be able to improve on the improvements.
Our goal?
We want the whole Scouting community to be able contribute to the wiki in order to have a central place for all Scouting resources. All those useful files of Scoutcraft skills that you have saved on your computer - these should be available to anyone on the wiki. Do you have a special skill that is useful to Scouts - write a wiki page about it.
Ability to edit pages
In order to edit a page, you will need to apply for an account. This is as easy as clicking a few buttons. You will then be able to create and edit pages. At first, your edits won't be live until a moderator has reviewed. But once it is clear that you have the hang of things, your account will be granted access to make edits without moderation.
Creating a page
See Help:Starting a new page for more info.
From a red link
If you (or anyone else) create a link to an article that doesn't exist yet, the link will be coloured red, like this. Clicking a red link will take you to the edit page for the new article. Simply type your text, click save and the new page will be created. Once the page has been created, the link will change from red to blue (purple for pages you've visited) indicating that the article now exists.
Usually this is the best way to create a new page, because it means that right from the start, the page will be linked from at least one other place on the wiki (and typically you will want to mesh it into other related pages later).
If you are creating a new page without creating any link to it, you may need to ask yourself: Does this page really fit in with the topics already covered in the wiki? Also, how are you expecting visitors to find this page? Normally there is no reason to create a page without first creating a red link to it.
From the search box
If you search for a page that doesn't exist (using the search box) then you will be provided with a link to create the new page.
Using the below form
Linking to other pages
Linking to other pages is a very important part of the wiki, allowing quick access to related content. We add links by using '[[' and ']]' brackets.
| Wikitext | Rendering |
|---|---|
[[An example link that doesn't yet exist]] |
|
[[Scouts]] |
|
[[Scouts|Link to Scouts, but with different text]] |
|
[[Media:Scouts South Africa Outdoor Code.pdf|Scouts South Africa Outdoor Code (PDF)]] |
|
[https://www.scouts.org.za Scouts South Africa website] |
Headings
Headings are created using the '=' signs. Two '==' for a main heading, three for sub heading, four for a smaller heading.
A Table of Contents is automatically created if you have a few headings.
| Wikitext | Rendering |
|---|---|
==Example Heading 2== |
Example Heading 2 |
===Example Heading 3=== |
Example Heading 3 |
====Example Heading 4==== |
Example Heading 4 |
Note:
| |
Bullets and lists
See Help:Lists for more info.
You can create ordered lists and unordered lists. In the following sections, ordered lists are used for examples. Unordered lists would give corresponding results.
| Wikitext | Rendering |
|---|---|
* Lists are easy to do: ** start every line * with a star ** more stars mean *** deeper levels |
|
* A newline * in a list marks the end of the list. Of course * you can * start again. |
marks the end of the list. Of course
|
# Numbered lists are good ## very organized ## easy to follow |
|
Tables
See Help:Tables for more info.
Tables in the wiki are quite tricky, as they use a special format. You can use the Table icon in the toolbar to insert a template of rows and columns, or you can convert from Excel to wiki.
| Wikitext | Rendering | ||||||||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
{| class="wikitable"
! Header text !! Header text !! Header text
|-
| Example || Example || Example
|-
| Example || Example || Example
|-
| Example || Example || Example
|}
|
|
Converting from Excel
Visit this site, and paste the table from Excel into the block. It is imortant to only select the data in Excel that you want to show in the wiki. Select 'use class="wikitable"'. The other options may be sleected if needed. For more details see Help:Tables
Uploading files
Uploading files is a two step process: you first upload the file, and then you link the uploaded file to one or more pages. You can upload files one at a time using the 'file upload page' or to upload a few files at a time, follow this process:
- Go into 'edit' mode of the page where you want to add the files, by clicking the 'edit' button on the top of a page.
- Click on the 'select files' button (an upfacing arrow) to select one or more files to add. You can select multiple files and click 'open'.
- The files will be presented in a list. You can rename them to be consistent with a name related to the page, purpose or content of the files.
- Click 'upload all files'.
- Once the files are uploaded, you now need to add them to the page. You can do this by clicking:
- 'insert all as gallery' - this is for images and they are added as an image gallery such as the one below.
- 'insert all as files' - this is the most common way to insert PDFs or images that are not part of a gallery.
- 'insert all as links' - less common, this will add links to the files.
- Once you are happy, you can click 'show preview' and then 'save changes'.
-
Select Files
-
Rename and upload all files
-
Insert files into page
See also
- For more detailed help, visit Mediawiki Help Page
- Wikipedia guide to formatting