Help:Getting started

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A wiki is designed for people to contribute to it. It is designed so that anyone who can see a gap in the information or an error can add something to make it better. This is a community project and, unlike a chain, we are as strong as our strongest link.

1 New to wikis?
- 1.1 1. The wiki is very hard to damage
- 1.2 2. Simple Text Changes are Easy
2 Wiki Formatting
3 Creating a new page
4 Adding content to a new page
5 Categories on AiC
6 General wiki conventions
7 Further Reading

New to wikis?

Absolute beginners just need to know two basic things before they can jump in...

1. The wiki is very hard to damage

Don’t be afraid to jump in and contribute. Nothing is ever lost on a wiki, information is just added. If you break something, or make a mistake it is a basic function of the software to be able to go back to the previous version. All you need to do is click on the “History” tab on the top of the page to get a list of all changes. Clicking on a previous version of the page will roll it back.

2. Simple Text Changes are Easy

The wiki is a little harder to use than a word processor, because it does have a mark-up language (which is like html and which tells the document how it should look and what it should do), but you should be able to make a simple change to text knowing three simple things:

How to find the “edit” links. There is a tab at the top of the page and there are often [edit] links at the start of each section, running down the right hand side of the page. Click on an "edit" link to call up the editable text on a page. It will be in a window in the centre of the page. This is will also show you all of the code that describes a page.
How to change the text. Find the words you want (you can use your browser’s Find command to do this), and make your changes as you would with any word processor.
How to save them, and leave the editing window. Press the “Save Changes” button at the bottom of the page.

You should probably also check out the wiki conventions below.

Wiki Formatting

Once you want to move beyond simple text corrections you'll need to know a little more about wiki formatting.

The easiest way to see how a wiki page works is to go up to the tab at the top of the wiki page and click “edit”. It will show you exactly how the page looks with all of the formatting code in place.

We have templates for our major page types, so you’ll very rarely have to start from scratch. They can be found ][:category:Guidelines|here]].

Learning some of the basics will make reading formatting simple.

Headings

Headings are created by adding equal signs on either side of text. Heading 1 (the biggest and used only for the title of the page) has one set of equal signs. It looks like this

= Heading 1 text = .

Likewise, Heading 2 (the second most prominent heading) is called by putting two equal signs around text like this:

== Heading 2 text == .

Heading three uses three equals signs, and four uses four. Click [Heading Samples|here] to see what they all look like one under another.

Keep in mind that the headings also define how a page will look in the table of contents, ie. it defines the topics and sub-topics.

Spacing

The spacing on the wiki is a little odd, so beware. For the wiki to recognise a new paragraph you have to leave a full, empty, line between your text. If you just leave a single return, the text will run on like there is no break. The only exception to this is if you use a heading (ie something with the equals signs around it). Keep in mind, however, if you put anything else on the line with the heading it won’t work. The heading has to sit by itself.

Also, if you leave a space at the start of a line you won’t get an indent, you’ll get a box. It looks like this: Here’s a little box to separate information from the main text. I was created by a space at the start of the sentence.

It you want an actual indent you have to use a colon at the start of a sentence.

: This will create an indent that looks like this:

Indent 1. Using more “:” will create a bigger indent.

Bold and Italics

You can create ‘’’bold’’’ writing by placing apostrophes around text like this:

'''the text you want to be bold''' .

You can create italics in the same way, but is only requires two apostrophes on either side of the text like this:

''the text you want in italics'' .

Bullet Points and Numbers

If you have a list of things you would like to represent in the wiki you should use bullet points. They are simple to create, just place an asterisk at the start of the line.

For example:

*This is something that needs a bullet point.

* So is this.

Here’s the first level of indent. If you want to have a second level under it, then put two **at the front of the next line.
- It will look like this.
  - And with three.

Numbers follow a similar system but use #. One hash at the start of the line produces the start of a numbering sequence. The hash on line one will automatically be a 1, the hash on line two will automatically be a 2 and so on. Likewise, if you use two hashes at the start of a sentence you’ll get a number sequence in a number sequence.

For example:

This is point one. It has a # at the start of the line.
This is point two. It still has a single # at the start of the line.
1. This is part one of point two. It has two # at the start of the line.
2. This is part two of point two. It has two # at the start of the line.
This is point three. It has one # at the start of the line.

Links

Wikis see links two other pages in two ways: as external links and as its wiki links.

External links can be to anything on the web, a webpage, a pdf file or a picture.

They are simple, just put the web address inside square brackets. Make sure to include the “http://” part of the address. The wiki code for external links look like this:

[http://www.externalwebsite.com] . On the page they will look like this [1].

Since you don’t just want them to look like a little number you should also give them a description. You do this by just writing the name or description of the website after the website URL, with just a space separation. The wiki is clever enough to know where the URL ends. It looks like this:

[http://www.externalwebsite.com A fictitious external website ] . On the page it will look like this: A fictitious external website .

Wiki links will point to other pages on the Australian Innovation Community wiki

These links use two square brackets. They look like this:

[[Main Page]] . It will look like this in the page: Main Page

The square brackets tell the wiki to go to the wiki page of that name. If you want to write a description of the link that is different to the name of the wiki page you just add a | and then the description. For example, :

[[Main Page|Wiki overview]] . It will look like this in the page: Wiki overview.

You also use internal links to point to documents which are on the AiC wiki. When you upload a file using the tool on the left hand side of the page in the “toolbox” section, you will get a page name for the document, usually “Image:” plus the name of the document. If you place this name (including “image:”) in the square brackets, then you’ll have your link to the document. It’s a good idea to give it a name or description.

If an internal link is red on the wiki page, it means that either the page name is wrong and it is not pointing to anything, or that the page is yet to be added.

Creating a new page

Creating a new wiki page (like a new company profile, submission, or idea page) can be done in two ways. The first is to find the place where you would logically expect to find the link to the page, and then simply add it. Once you save the changes you’ll see the link you added is red. Click on it and you’ll be taken to the new page to edit.

If there isn’t an appropriate page for the link, or you can only find category pages which would be appropriate, then you can directly add a new page by typing the page name after http://aussieinnovation.com/wiki/ in your browser’s address bar. It will create a new page of the name you enter and take you there. If there is already a page by that name, it will open that page.

Adding content to a new page

Once you have a blank page we recommend that you open the appropriate template page and copy and paste the wiki formatting onto the new page. This will ensure you have all of the relevant information and that your page is consistent with the rest of the wiki.

The easiest way to work is to hit the “Preview” button at the bottom regularly. This allows you to see how the page will look on the wiki, while still letting you edit it in a window at the bottom. Note well, the Preview button doesn’t save your work, so make sure to hit “Save Page” before you close the page.

Categories on AiC

Wikis contain a massive amount of information and one of the problems that creates is being able to keep track of it all and being able to find what you want. Categories help us do that, by giving us an index of all the pages that look at particular topics or article types. For example we have categories for Category:White papers and Category:Professional profiles, but we also have categories with names like Category:Government which have all of the pages relating to government bodies and Category:South Australia for pages that involve that particular state.

If you click on “Categories” in the Navigation box on the top left of the page you can see every category on the wiki at the moment.

Clicking on any one of those will help you find related articles. When you create a page please have a look at the categories that exist and add the relevant ones to your page. You add a category to your page using this format

[[Category:The category]] at the end of the page.

A page can have as many categories it requires. So it can be a Government white paper about South Australia and be in three of the above categories. It could have six or seven categories, if the article was relevant to that many discussions.

By default categories don’t appear where you put them in a page. No matter where you add the category it appears at the bottom of the final page. It is a good idea to put all categories at the end of the document so they are easy to find.

If you wish to link to categories just add a colon in front of the category name like this

[[:Category:White papers]] .

General wiki conventions

There as some general “best practices” guidelines for the wiki. These have evolved out of years of trial and error to make wikis more readable and easier to use.

All page names and category names should be sentence case. That means they should follow the rules of general sentence construction, ie. the first word is capitalised and then the rest should be lower case unless a proper noun. Hence the title of this page is “Getting started”, not “Getting Started”.

If it were “Getting Carter” or “Getting Australia,” or “Getting the New South Wales State Government”, then there would be all capitals as those are all proper nouns (the names of specific things or people).

Use the third-person point of view on the wiki and keep a neutral tone. This is a shared knowledgebase and a collaborative enterprise; it needs to invite discussion and revision.

If you present anything that is likely to be challenged please reference your sources. Right after the quote or statement list the reference like this: ^[1]

Use the headings in a way that is consistent with the rest of the site. For example, Heading 1 is reserved for the overall name of the page. It is not to be used for emphasis. Bold or italics are usually sufficient.

If in doubt, have a look at a similar page and emulate the formatting you see there. We heartily encourage innovation, but we also want to encourage a functional and readable innovation website.