Alathra:Wiki Guide
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.
To help manage our content better, it is required that everyone who wishes to start editing or adding content to the wiki needs to create an user account.
Editing methods
| Note: You can use the sandbox to experiment with page editing. |  |
Editing most pages is relatively simple. The wiki 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.
As using the VisualEditor is rather intuitive, this help page will focus on explaining source editing.
If you have finished writing your article, 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. You can visit the official tutorial on Wikipedia that teaches you the basics, or read a very detailed guide on the wikitext help page. The most commonly used wikitext is provided in the table below:
[Table]
- Heading 1 is always the title of the page and shouldn't be used in an article itself
- Links will display as blue if the linked page exists and red if it doesn't. If the reader has recently visited the page, it will be displayed purple.
Uploading files
Media is helpful to illustrate the main concepts of the article, especially in articles about places, people or events. The simplest way to upload a file is to click the Upload file button in the top left toolbox. There you will be provided with a new button for your upload and a text box to leave a summary of your file. Writing a short summary is recommended, as it helps to provide context to your media in the future.
Once your file is uploaded to our wiki, you will probably want to use it in an article. While editing a page, add the following to where you want the file to appear:
For example, the image on the right is displayed with the following code:
}}
Duration: 3 minutes and 14 seconds.3:14
"Soldiers Sailing to War" from What I Heard Last Summer
Files aren't only restricted to images. You can also upload and use GIFs, audio and video files. Here is an example of audio:
Using templates
Similar types of text or wikicode might tend to repeat across multiple pages. For example, we know that every page about a nation will usually contain the name of the nation, its flag, where its located and who rules the nation. Instead of having to individually write this information for each and every page, we can use a special page called a template. Template pages contain snippets of text or code that can be instantly displayed on any other page, a process which is called transclusion.
Some page elements which you might be used to seeing, like infoboxes or message boxes (like the one at the start of this article), are all transcluded templates. Most templates also take input through parameters, which tell the template what information it needs to display. A template is called using double curly brackets, and each parameter is separated using a vertical bar like this: Template:Template
For example, here is the code for a See also template, which allows us to notify the reader about another page on a certain topic: