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Sprocket School is an experimental compilation of information about film handling, film projection, and film exhibition.

It is a project of the Northwest Chicago Film Society, a nonprofit organization dedicated to the exhibition and preservation of film in its original formats.

About Editing

This website was made using software called Mediawiki (just like Wikipedia!) There is a TON of documentation (manuals, guides, templates, and so on) available for free on the internet that will teach you how to do things with Mediawiki. Use Google to find it.

To get started, create an account.

Starting a new page

• A list of pages we want to have that don't exist yet: http://www.sprocketschool.org/w/index.php?title=Special:WantedPages
• Here are instructions for starting a new page from scratch: http://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Help:Starting_a_new_page

Editing an existing page

• Beginning to do this is easy: just click the "edit" link at the top of each page.
• A list of pages that exist already (which you may wish to edit): http://www.sprocketschool.org/w/index.php?title=Special:AllPages
• Here's Mediawiki's guide to basic editing: http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Help:Editing

On cooperative editing: things to keep in mind

• Anyone can edit any page on the wiki, provided they've registered for an account (see top right corner). This means that, ideally, every page will ultimately be written by anyone in the community with relevant knowledge!
• Because this is a tool intended to serve a relatively small field, everyone should try to register under a real or otherwise recognizable name. The current user list is here.
• You can look at an individual page's editing history and how it's changed over time by clicking the "history" tab at the top of any page. Any change that's been made can be unmade from here, too.
• Each page also has a "discussion" tab at the top. This is a good place to ask questions and make suggestions about a given topic. You can "sign" your contributions to the discussion page (or any other page) by typing "-- ~ ~ ~ ~" - without the spaces! - or by just hitting the little button that looks like a signature at the top of the editing box.