Main Page

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.

Starting a new page

• First check to see if the page you want to work on exists already or not by looking at the list of All Pages: http://www.sprocketschool.org/w/index.php?title=Special:AllPages
• If there's no page for what you want to add, you can create a new one. The easiest way to do this is to simply replace http://www.sprocketschool.org/w/index.php?title=THISPART of the URL with the name of the page you want to create and click "create" at the top of the resulting page.

Editing an existing page

• Beginning to do this is easy: just click the "edit" link at the top of each page. Adding links and fancy formatting is a little more complicated, but fairly simple. Here's Mediawiki's guide to basic editing: http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Help:Editing
• Another great thing about wikis is that even if you can't figure out how to format something properly or make it look exactly how you want it to - even if all you feel like doing is dumping a bunch of text into the editing box - someone else can come and make it pretty for you.

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 (see the current user list here: http://www.sprocketschool.org/w/index.php?title=Special:ListUsers).
• 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.