Tutorial on editing wiki pages

This does not apply to the rich text that Wikia uses.

Okay, this will start off as some basics that I want to share with you. I'd like to point out that I'm not an experienced wiki editor. In fact I'm quite a beginner, having started a month ago. Still I think it might very well serve useful for someone who wants to have his/her first wiki editing experience. :-)

This much I can tell you now: it's much easier than you might think and much easier and clearer than HTML, too.

All that I have written up to now is plain text, no wiki knowledge necessary. I will go on writing and tell you every single time when I'm using a formatting tag. So it's kind of recommended to go through the text in chronological order the first time. Later on in the text, I will often simply put the source code after a text line using a specific tag. So, in order to see how it worked you need to compare. Maybe you don't like my approach of explaining things, then I'd recommend you this official wiki.

'''If you have got any questions, suggestions, improvement and other feedback, please send me a PM on enturbulation.org or post into this thread. Feel free to modify this wiki page as you see necessary!'''

Basic text formatting
How did I just do that heading? This is what the "source" text looks like that I just typed in:

Basic text formatting
How did I just do that heading? This is what the "source" text looks like that I just typed in: So making a level 1 heading, you just put == infront and after the words. If you want to make a subsection and use a level 2 heading, you just have to add one "=" on either side, the same with headings further down the hierachy. By the way, to put some text in this box, ignoring any formatting tag, I put this  infront of the text and that   at the end. Easy isn't it?

Italic and bold text
Okay, what do we do next? Maybe some more basic formatting:

italic text,

bold text,

and both bold and italic text.

And here the text I typed in: italic text,

bold text,

and both bold and italic text.

Line Breaks
One thing is necessary to know. You saw that I always left one empty line above. This is because if you write a sentence then press enter and put another sentence in the next line, the wiki page will ignore this "line break".

To better understand that, see the text I just typed in: One thing is necessary to know. You saw that I always left one free line above. This is because if you write a sentence then press enter and put another sentence in the next line, the wiki page will ignore this "line break". In the wiki page the line breaks I did were simply ignored.

So, to seperate text, you either need to add an empty line or you add this  in order to force a line break. Apart from using the  -Tag you can use this   -Tag to have one line following the other, although the text in the first doesn't fill all the line.

See how this text looks in the source code.

And compare it to this one:

See how this text looks in the source code.

And compare it to this one:

Actually this is not that important. Normally you won't need the  -Tag.

Internal Links
I will do a link to a wiki project that is about the construction of a Spanish Information Website about Scientology as an example. (I recommend to try out all the links to see how it works.)

Spanish Information Website

That was even more easy then doing an external link. Have a look: Spanish Information Website You just type in the exact title of another wiki page and but in into those double brackets.

Now if you want to link a specific word or a phrase to another wiki page, this is how you do it:

Click here!

Click here! All I did, was adding this symbol "|" after the wiki page title. Don't confuse this symbol with a capital i ("I"). Search your keybord for this character!

on a different wiki page
There are two possibilites again. The first includes the title of the linkes wiki page and the section, the second is a link from the text "Click here!".

1. Spanish Information Website 1. Spanish Information Website

2. Click here! 2. Click here!

on the same wiki page
1. 1.

2. Click here! 2. Click here!

List items

 * Just compare!
 * This is most easy.
 * The source text follws:


 * Just compare!
 * This is most easy.
 * The source text follws:

Put the text to the right
(Please, send me a PM to tell me what this is called in English.)

This can be useful for structuring. I'll talk about that later on more. First of all, we will just see how it works nicely in a list:


 * This is also very easy.
 * This line is a bit more to the right.
 * This as well.


 * And now compare!


 * This is also very easy.
 * This line is a bit more to the right.
 * This as well.

By repeating the symbol ":" the text goes more and more to the right.
 * And now compare!

Adding your signiture (and/or the date)
When you do a change on a wiki page, this can be tracked down in the history of this specific wiki page. (Have a look at it by clicking on "history" at the top of the page. Just experiment a little.)

Sometimes it is recommendable to put your wiki username next to a text, so that others can identify it as yours without having to bother to check the history. This applies for comments or discussions for example. Of course you could also simply write down your username, but it's the other way it's easier to spot as you'll see.

This is how I put my username after this text. Chanon

Putting your username after a text.

This is how I put my username and the date after a text. Chanon 15:12, 30 March 2008 (BST)

This is how I put my username and the date after a text. ~

This is how I put only the date after a text. 15:12, 30 March 2008 (BST)

This is how I put only the date after a text.

Using the last two explained tags in a discussion
Discussions can be done on the discussion page that comes with each wiki page. Remember that indents are don with colons and the signature (nickname and time) is left with four tildes ( ~ ). Generally, this it how it works:

What do you think about this tutorial? Chanon 12:38, 12 April 2009 (UTC)
 * Well it's kind of basic, but may be usefull for some. Someoneelse 14:38, 16 April 2009 (UTC)


 * I think it sucks! Anotherperson 13:11, 12 April 2009 (UTC)
 * Well, Anotherperson, I take offense to that sentiment. Chanon 13:27, 16 April 2009 (UTC)
 * You are stupid then. Anotherperson 14:39, 16 April 2009 (UTC)

Separation line
You can add such a line by typing more then three of these symbols "-".

Might be useful sometimes:

You can add such a line by typing more then three of these symbols "-".

Might be useful sometimes:

The table of contents
As you have seen there is a table of content before the first heading. I didn't have to put it there. The table of content is inserted automatically if there are more then 3 headings. If you want to force it to be at another place you need to put

(of course, you have to imagine that infront of all comments there are different usernames!)

Adding images (and other files)
If you want to use an image on a wiki page, you need to upload it to the wiki system first. You cannot use any image you find on the web.
 * Save the image to your hard drive.
 * Click on "upload file" on the left side on any wiki page.
 * Chose the file from your computer.
 * Add a name and a description if you want (if you don't specify a name, the original file will be used.

Now you can insert this image in any wiki page of this specific wiki system. Look at this example:



Just make sure you use the exact spelling that is specified after uploading the image (in this case the file was uploaded with "JPG" written in capital letters). The procedure also applies to other file types, like PDF documents etc., but there might be a limitation to certain file types.

Referring to the tags without putting them into use
Okay, maybe you wondered how I could use the line break tag  without causing the actual line break. Well, there is another tag that ensures that wiki tags in a specific area will not applied.

The tag to use to write for example  without any effect can be seen here: The tag to use to write for example  without any effect can be seen here:

Further tags and more info
Well, that's about everything I know up to now. You can do a lot with this knowledge. To learn more I suggest the following:


 * Read this wiki page: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:How_to_edit_a_page. I got most of my "knowledge" from that site. Looking at that page again, it seems this page is almost superfluous. *oops* On the other hand it might be a bit more basic.
 * If you see something interesting on any wiki page, look at the source code, copy it and use it for some experiments. The tags are often easy that you can grasp how it works this way.

Creating a new wiki page
Just look at the URL of a given wiki page. Let's take for example http://wiki.whyweprotest.net/index.php?title=Tutorial_on_editing_wiki_pages. All you need to do now is putting your own title after the "=" symbol.

What about http://wiki.whyweprotest.net/index.php?title=Ideas_for_protesting_in_Cologne. Go to this URL and you will be told, this is an empty page. To create it, click on "edit this page"! It's only important to use "_" instead of a free space, special characters will be "translated" automatically.

Before you save a wiki page...

 * ... you should save the text from time to time in your local text editor, if your computer tends to crash from time to time. It's too bad to loose an hour of work.
 * ... click on the preview button to check the text. Often you don't see mistakes in the editing mode.
 * ... mark "This is a minor change" nexto to the "save page" button if you just made some typo corrections, added formatting etc. that you believe "require no review and could never be the subject of a dispute".
 * ... please use the summary field to write shortly what you changed.