Wiki Basics

Here are some basic semantics required to start wikiing! Consult the mediawiki site for more.

This page was adapted from a Wiki by Jim Bizzocchi

Basic Wiki Syntax

Paragraphs

Mediawiki ignores normal line breaks. To start a new paragraph, leave an empty line.

Discussion

Note that it is considered good wiki etiquette add four tildes (~~~~) at the end of any item you add to a discussion page. This automatically adds your wiki username and the date / time you posted your message.

Formatting Syntax

from Help:Formatting

Template:Hl3|Description	Template:Hl3|You type	Template:Hl3|You get
applies anywhere
Italic text	''italic''	italic
Bold text	'''bold'''	bold
Bold and italic	'''''bold & italic'''''	bold & italic
Escape wiki markup	<nowiki>no ''markup''</nowiki>	no ''markup''
only at the beginning of the line
Headings of different sizes	==level 1== ===level 2=== ====level 3==== =====level 4=====	Level 1 Level 2 Level 3 Level 4
Horizontal rule	----
Bullet list	* one ** two *** three	one two three
Numbered list	# one ## two ### three	one two three
Definition list	;Definition :item 1 :item 2	Definition item 1 item 2
Preformatted text	a space at the   beginning of the line   creates   preformatted text	a space at the beginning of the line creates preformatted text

Linking Syntax

from Help:Links

Template:Hl3|Description	Template:Hl3|You type	Template:Hl3|You get
Internal link	[[Page]]	Page
Piped link	[[Page|different text]]	different text
External link	http://mediawiki.org	http://mediawiki.org
External link, different title	[http://mediawiki.org MediaWiki]	MediaWiki
External link, unnamed	[http://mediawiki.org]	[1]
External link, same host unnamed	[http://{{SERVERNAME}}/pagename]	[2]
Interwiki link	[[Wikipedia:MediaWiki]]	Wikipedia:MediaWiki

There are four sorts of links in MediaWiki:

• internal links to other pages in the wiki,
• external links to websites,
• InterWiki links to other wikis and
• interlanguage links to other language versions of the same wiki.

To add an internal link, enclose the name of the page you want to link to in double square brackets. When you save the page, you'll see the new link pointing to your page. If the page exists already, it is displayed in blue, empty pages are displayed in red. Selflinks to the current page are not transformed in URLs but displayed in bold.

The first letter of the target page is automatically capitalized and spaces are represented as underscores (typing an underscore in the link has the same effect as typing a space, but is not recommended).

myPages

These links can be found in the upper right corner of each wiki page.

my watchlist

• Note that at the bottom of the edit page for each article there is a checkbox for 'Watch this page.' If you check this box and someone else edits the page after you have, it will show up in the 'my watchlist' page from the link in the upper left.

my contributions

• This link contains a list of every page you've edited on the wiki.

my talk

• 'my talk' is the discussion page attached to your user page.