Help:Editing

Editing Best Practices

Use A Sandbox

For major overhauls create a Sandbox (a subpage) in your userspace and copy the page code to the Sandbox and edit it there until you have a finished product. Then copy from the Sandbox to the original page.

You can create any number of subpages and they are perfect for Sandboxes, to-do lists, etc. For more on subpages, see this help page.

You should also use subpages/Sandboxes when working on new pages until they are at a useful state. This way incomplete and/or confusing information is not presented to a reader.

Always Provide An Edit Summary

You can force the web app to prompt you if you submit a change without an edit summary. The option is in Preferences -> Editing Tab -> Editor section. Check to enable "Prompt me when entering a blank edit summary."

Pro tip: Be careful using Wikitext in the summary as it will be rendered when viewing the "History" page.

Clean Up After Yourself

If you move a page and create a redirect, you should work through everything that links to the redirect page and point those links to the new page so that eventually the redirect can be deleted. This helps avoid spaghetti redirects.

In the "Tools" section of the main menu on the left is a special page: Special:WhatLinksHere/Help:Editing. Following that link on any page will provide a list of all pages that link to it.

Archiving Pages

Never "blank" a page, or clear all content to effectively delete a page. If an item or feature has been removed from the game, there is a process for archiving the item or feature. Instructions are here: Help:Removed_Items. See also Help:Deleting.

Editing Syntax

In addition to the Wikitext examples below, you can also insert HTML into pages.

Anywhere in a line:

Description	Input	Result
Italicise text	''italic''	italic
Bold text	'''bold'''	bold
Strike-through	<s>strike</s>	strike
Underline	<u>underline</u>	underline
Superscript	<sup>superscript</sup>	superscript
Subscript	<sub>subscript</sub>	subscript
Internal page link (within wiki) With display text	[[Help:Editing]] [[Help:Editing|Target Page]]	Help:Editing Target page
Internal image link	[[:File:Wiki.png]]	File:Wiki.png
Internal category link	[[:Category:Images]]	Category:Images
External page link (off-wiki) With display text URL shown	[http://www.curse.com/] [http://www.curse.com/ Display Text] http://www.curse.com/	[1] Display Text http://www.curse.com/
Signing comments (for talk pages)	~~~~	Coaster 02:36, 13 April 2011 (UTC)

Only at the beginning of a line:

Description	Input	Result
Image Resized	[[File:Wiki.png]] [[File:Wiki.png|75px]]
Image thumbnail with caption (defaults to right side of page)	[[File:Wiki.png|thumb|Caption Text]]	Caption Text
Image with different landing page	[[File:Wiki.png|link=Main Page]]
Headings (a table of contents is created with four or more of these)	= First Tier = == Second Tier == === Third Tier === ==== Fourth Tier ==== ===== Fifth Tier ===== ====== Sixth Tier ======	UNABLE TO DISPLAY
Numbered List	#Point One #Point Two #Point Three ##Three Subpoint One #Point Four	Point One Point Two Point Three Three Subpoint One Point Four
Bullet List	*First Point *Second Point *Third Point **Third Point Subpoint One *Fourth Point	First Point Second Point Third Point Third Point, Sub-point One Fourth Point
Indented Lines or Paragraphs	No Indent :First Indent ::Second Indent :::and so on	No Indent First Indent Second Indent and so on