Star Trek Online Geekipedia:Getting Started
From Star Trek Online Geekipedia
Welcome to the Star Trek Online Geekipedia. If you find yourself here, it probably means you want to become a contributing member of the STO community. Feel free to look over the steps outlined below. Once you've created your first article, or contributed to an existing article, we hope you'll continue to do so.
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First Steps
The first rule of the Star Trek Online Geekpipedia is that If you do not want your writing to be edited, used, and redistributed at will, then do not submit it here. Repeat this until it is properly embedded into your mind. For the full Attribution-Non-Commercial-Share-alike licensing details, click here.
Before you can edit or create articles here, you will need to register an account with a proper email address. You can do that by clicking here.
Typos will happne
This is the second rule of editing a wiki page - commit it to memory.
Page Creation and Changing Titles
If you want to create a new page, simply type the title you want into the search bar to the left. If the page exists (doubtful) you will be given an option to create it. This seems to confound most people new to wiki's, so I put it up top and in italics.
If you create a page and then decide you do not like the title, or perhaps there is a typo in the title, you can use the move tab at the top of the page to have the content moved into a page with the proper title.
Character Page Titles
This can be confusing, and though we certainly don't have any policy describing what can or cannot be in a charcter page title, we do have a simple guideline we put together to help them all conform. You can find it here.
Page Deletion
If you decided you want to completely delete a page you have created, for whatever reason, please do not just blank out the contents. Instead, if you are the original author of the page only, enter a message requesting deletion on the talk page of one of the admins and we will do it for you.
If you see a page you believe should be deleted, but you are not the original author, use the deletion template by putting the phrase {{deletion}} at the very top, and then use the link in the page notice to descibe your reasons. Please read our deletion policy first, though.
Further Help
Meta-Wiki's editing help page is another great resource for those new to writing wiki articles.
Categories
Every wiki needs a good, strong set of categories to begin with, and the Star Trek Online Geekipedia is no different. Though this list will certainly change in the months to come, so for a full list of what's avaialble right now, look here: Special:Categories.
When creating a new page that you think will suit these or any other category, enter [[Category:Category Name]] somewhere in the text. If the category doesn't exist, it will be created. Standard procedure is to put the list of category tags at the very end of the text, after the body of the article itslef, though it can be anywhere.
You may want to read the character page title guide for information on creating a character page and, yes, how to title it. It also includes information on how to index the page by a character's last name despite the title beginning with the first name (recommended).
Templates
Eventually we hope to have a number of great templates available for pages dealing with fleets, characters, factions, planets, ships etc. - basically boxes that will standardise how the info on these things are displayed and allowing you, the contributor, to focus on other things in your article about them. But since Star Trek Online is still in development, there's no way to know what design would be best.
This will change, so stay tuned.
Images
A picture can speak a thousand words. To add a picture to your page, you will want to click on the link on the left side of the page labeled "upload file". From here, you can upload any picture on your system.
Some rules:
- Image files must be less than 300k
- PG-13 is the rule for image content - anything higher may result in some serious phaser burns
- Use a unique file name to avoid overwriting someone else's upload. A good rule of thumb is to use your username as the prefix ("username_filename.jpg")
To add your picture to your page, use this text format: [[image:IMAGENAME.jpg]]. This will place your picture aligned with the paragraph where you place the formatting link.
If you want to put your picture in a nice frame to the right side of the text, with a caption below, use the format: [[image:IMAGENAME.jpg|frame|IMAGECAPTION]]. Note that this is the pipe symbol (usually found on the same key as the backward slash).
For more image options, see Wikipedia: Extended image syntax.
Stubbing
If your article is a small work in progress, feel free to "stub" it. When you stub an article, you mark it as a work in progress, so that people who read the article know that there'll be more content coming soon.
To stub an article, add the text {{stub}} as the very first line of the article.
You may also want to request that nobody else edit the article except to repair technical errors such as typos or spelling mistakes. This could be for a character page or fan fiction, some form of personal creativity you don't want anyone else to edit. To do this, add the text {{wip}} as the very first line of your article instead.
In Conculsion
This, as all articles here, is a work-in-progress and will change. Please, check back for further basic help and if you have any suggestions for change, use the discussion tab up top!
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