Help:How to edit a page

From SourceWatch

SourceWatch is a wiki, meaning that anybody can easily edit any article and have those changes posted immediately. This page is the reference for Wiki markup. You might also want to learn about:

• how to start a page
• informal tips on contributing to SourceWatch
• editing tasks in general at the SourceWatch:Editing FAQ
• layout conventions, at the SourceWatch:Manual of Style
• SourceWatch:Naming conventions for articles themselves
• SourceWatch:Search engine optimization of articles
• Help:How to add a badge to a page
• SourceWatch:Portal - Building and editing portals on SourceWatch
• ... and finally, the full kaboodle of utilities for editors.

It's very easy to edit a Wiki page. Simply click on the "Edit this page" link at the top or bottom of a Wiki page to change the page. This will bring you to a page with a text box containing the editable text of that Wiki page.

Then type away, and press "Save" when finished! You can also preview your changes before saving if you like.

It is often more convenient to copy and paste the text first into your favorite text editor, edit and spell check there, and then paste back into the browser to preview. This way, you can also keep a local backup copy of the pages you authored so that you can make changes offline.

Each article has a corresponding "Talk" page where you can discuss its comments and debate editorial decisions if necessary. To see the "Talk" page, click on the "Discuss this page" link.

In the left column of the table below, you can see what effects are possible. In the right column, you can see how those effects were achieved. In other words, to make text look like it looks in the left column, type it in the format you see in the right column.

You may want to keep this page open in a separate browser window for reference. If you want to try out things without danger of doing any harm, you can do so in the Sandbox.

Sections, Paragraphs, Lists and Lines

== New Section ==

=== Subsection ===

==== Sub-subsection ====

A single newline
has no effect.

But an empty line

starts a new paragraph.

You can break lines<br>
without starting a new paragraph.

* Lists are easy to do:
** start every line with a star
** more stars means deeper levels

# Numbered lists are also good
## Very organized
## easy to follow

* You can even do mixed lists
*# and nest them
*#* like this

; Definition lists : list 
of definitions
; item : the item's definition

:Lines can be
::indented
:::several levels

:A colon will indent a line or paragraph.
A manual newline starts a new paragraph.

IF a line starts with a space THEN
  it will be formatted exactly 
    as typed;
  in a technical looking font;
  lines won't wrap;
ENDIF
this is useful for:
  * pasting preformatted text;
  * algorithm descriptions;
  * ascii art;

WARNING If you make it wide,
you force the whole page to be wide and
hence less readable.

 IF a line starts with a space THEN
   it will be formatted exactly 
     as typed;
   in a technical looking font;
   lines won't wrap;
 ENDIF
 this is useful for:
   * pasting preformatted text;
   * algorithm descriptions;
   * ascii art;

<center>Centered text.</center>

A horizontal dividing line: above
----
and below. 

<div style="-moz-column-count:2; column-count:2;">
* One
* Two
* Three
* Four
* Five
* Six
</div>

When adding a comment to a Talk page,
you should sign it. You can do this by adding three
tildes for your user name: 
~~~
or four for user name plus date/time:
~~~~

Links and URLs

Images

What it looks like	What you put in
A picture: Only images that have been uploaded to SourceWatch can be used. To upload images, use the upload page. You can find the uploaded image on the image list.	A picture: [[Image:Experts_small.gif]] or, with alternate text (preferred) [[Image:Experts_small.gif|Trust Us, We're Experts book cover]] which will be displayed in text only browsers, like Lynx displayed in any browser, when display of images is disabled by the user spoken in text to speech browsers, e.g. for blind people
Clicking on an uploaded image displays a description page, which you can also link directly to: Image:Experts_small.gif	[[:Image:Experts_small.gif]]
To include links to non-image uploads such as sounds, or to images shown as links instead of drawn on the page, use a "media" link. Movie Link to image	[[media:Foolbush.mov|Movie]] [[media:Experts_small.gif|Link to image]]
To link to a section on the same page, use a "#" sign and then paste in the title of the section you want to link to. WARNING: If someone changes the name of a section heading, the link will break, so use this sparingly.	[[#Articles and resources]]

Videos

YouTube videos can be added to SourceWatch articles using <youtube> tags,

Video from YouTube can be shown on any SourceWatch page using simple code. The video is not uploaded to SourceWatch, but embedded, meaning it is stored on YouTube, then called from there to be viewed on SourceWatch.

To add a YouTube video, you need the id code for the video. The easiest way to find this is to look at the URL of the You Tube page for the video. The string of letters and numbers after "v=" in the URL is the id code. So for the URL: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CCz1kmfqL7g the id code would be CCz1kmfqL7g.

YouTube videos are embedded with the code:

<youtube></youtube>

The id code for the video you want to show goes between the two tags:

<youtube>id code</youtube> 

"id code" is the code from the URL. So in our example, you would use:

<youtube>CCz1kmfqL7g</youtube> 

Video display options

1. To specify how big you want the video to appear on the page, use the "size" parameter, which can have values of "tiny", "small", "normal", or "big".
2. To specify that you want the video to float left on the page or right, use the "align" parameter.
3. To include a caption, use the "caption" parameter.
4. To put a border around the video, use the "border" parameter and specify the border's color by name (options are black, silver, gray, maroon, red, purple, fuchsia, green, lime, olive, yellow, navy, blue, teal and aqua).

Example: The video at right was inserted using the following code:

<youtube size="small" align="right" border="red" caption="This is a caption.">CCz1kmfqL7g</youtube>

For examples on real SourceWatch pages, visit the article on Coronet Instructional Films, the Coal Issues portal or Al Franken.

Character formatting

''Emphasize'', '''strongly''', 
'''''very strongly'''''.

You can also write <i>italic</i> and <b>bold</b>
if the desired effect is a specific font style
rather than emphasis, as in mathematical formulas:

:<b>F</b> = <i>m</i><b>a</b>

A typewriter font for <tt>technical terms</tt>.

You can <strike>strike out deleted material</strike>
and <u>underline new material</u>.

À Á Â Ã Ä Å 
Æ Ç È É Ê Ë 
Ì Í Î Ï Ñ Ò 
Ó Ô Õ Ö Ø Ù 
Ú Û Ü ß à á 
â ã ä å æ ç 
è é ê ë ì í
î ï ñ ò ó ô 
õ ö ø ù ú û 
ü ÿ

¿ ¡ « » § ¶
† ‡ • —

™ © ® ¢ € ¥ 
£ ¤

Subscript: x<sub>2</sub>
Superscript: x<sup>2</sup> or x&sup2;







&epsilon;<sub>0</sub> =
8.85 &times; 10<sup>&minus;12</sup>
C&sup2; / J m.

α β γ δ ε ζ 
η θ ι κ λ μ ν 
ξ ο π ρ  σ ς
τ υ φ χ ψ ω
Γ Δ Θ Λ Ξ Π 
Σ Φ Ψ Ω

∫ ∑ ∏ √ − ± ∞
≈ ∝ ≡ ≠ ≤ ≥ →
× · ÷ ∂ ′ ″
∇ ‰ ° ∴ ℵ ø
∈ ∉ ∩ ∪ ⊂ ⊃ ⊆ ⊇
¬ ∧ ∨ ∃ ∀ ⇒ ⇔

<i>x</i><sup>2</sup>&nbsp;&nbsp;&ge;&nbsp;&nbsp;0 true.

• Note that any characters can be added inside of <nowiki> < / nowiki>. Following a <nowiki> instruction, any characters including a left angle bracket '<' will not be interpreted as instructions and will appear on the page in the browser. (Except, of course, the nowiki instruction. Remove the space before and after the slash in the < / nowiki> example cited here.)

Tables

<table border="1">
<caption>An example table</caption>
<tr>
<th>First header</th>
<th>Second header</th>
<th>Third header</th>
</tr>
<tr>
<td>upper left</td>
<td>upper middle</td>
<td rowspan=2>right side</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td>lower left</td>
<td>lower middle</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td colspan="3" align="center">bottom row</td>
</tr>
</table>

If your table doesn't look right, make sure that all <tr> and <td> tags are closed with corresponding </tr> and </td> tags. Do not indent lines, and do not include empty lines within a table. Otherwise, you will get spurious space above the table or even a browser crash.

Here's a more advanced example, showing some more options available for making up tables. You can play with these settings in your own table to see what effect they have. Keep in mind that though colors are possible, it's best to use them sparingly. Check the above tables to see what can be done to the text inside the cells.

An example table

First header	Second header
upper left		right side
lower left	lower middle
A table in a table Two book covers

<table border="1" cellpadding="5" cellspacing="0" align="center">
<caption>'''An example table'''</caption>
<tr>
<th style="background:#efefef;">First header</th>
<th colspan="2" style="background:#ffdead;">Second header</th>
</tr>
<tr>
<td>upper left</td>
<td> </td>
<td rowspan=2 style="border-bottom:3px solid grey;" valign="top">right side</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td style="border-bottom:3px solid grey;">lower left</td>
<td style="border-bottom:3px solid grey;">lower middle</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td colspan="3" align="center">
<table border="0">
<caption>''A table in a table''</caption>
<tr>
<td align="center" width="150px">[[Image:Experts_small.gif]]</td>
<td align="center" width="150px">[[Image:Experts_small.gif]]</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td align="center" colspan="2" style="border-top:1px solid red; border-right:1px solid red;
border-bottom:2px solid red; border-left:1px solid red;">Two book covers</td>
</tr>
</table>
</td>
</tr>
</table>

Acknowledgement: the content of many of the help pages in SourceWatch have been adapted from Wikipedia.