Help:Contents

The best way to get involved is to just get reading, editing, and adding content. A wiki only works if it’s built atop a vibrant community. finiki is built using MediaWiki, the same platform used by Wikipedia, so if you have used any of those great resources, your knowledge should transfer perfectly. In any case, the following articles are here to help you master finiki.

This help page will continue to grow, so keep your eye on it. If you have a question to which you find no answer here, please ask it on the Discussion page for this page and we will try to answer it as soon as we can.

Reading

 * Navigation
 * Searching
 * Tracking changes

Editing

 * Getting started
 * Editing
 * Wiki syntax
 * Guide for Contributors
 * Formatting
 * mw:Help:Links Links
 * Cheatsheet
 * Starting a new page

finiki Help
The guidelines for writing articles for finiki are fairly straight forward.
 * Articles should cover financial topics from a Canadian perspective. Remember that finiki has a Canadian orientation and is not Wikipedia. Search Wikipedia first before you make a suggestion. If it's covered there, it's highly unlikely we'd cover it in finiki unless it had a Canadian aspect. As an example, Wikipedia covers preferred shares but finiki covers Preferred Shares in a Canadian context.
 * finiki has a neutral has a neutral point of view, consistent with
 * Wikipedia's Five pillars.


 * Material challenged or likely to be challenged, and all quotations, must be attributed to a reliable, published source.
 * Verifiability


 * No original research

Editors can also post questions related to finiki-wide issues on the Financial Wisdom Forum finiki lounge. Discussion of the contents of a particular page should take place on the page's Talk page. That makes changes internally self-documenting.

Other things to consider:
 * It's good practice to fill in the Edit Summary field, or add to it in the case of section editing, as it helps everyone to understand what is changed, such as when perusing the history of the page. It's a good idea to set your user preferences (under Editing) to "Prompt me when entering a blank edit summary". (If you really want to keep it empty, you can just confirm the message or enter a blank space to avoid the message.)
 * Formally, page titles should be written out, not abbreviated: Exchange Traded Funds, not ETFs.
 * Stop with the questions; do. That's why you are an editor!

I want to help out, how do I get involved?
Writing and editing privileges must be applied for either using this thread on our companion discussion forum, or, if you are not already a member of the Financial Wisdom Forum, by contacting the [mailto:managing_editor@finiki.org?Subject=Hi,%20I%20want%20to%20be%20a%20finiki%20writer Managing Editor] and requesting a login ID.

How to check and see if a page already exists in the wiki
Type the title in the search box (upper left corner of the sidebar on left) and hit return. If the page exists, your search will go directly to the page. If the page does not exist, a list of possible matches will appear. If your page is similar to a page that exists, considering updating that page instead.

How to create a page
You can create a new page in one of two ways:
 * 1) If you are in a current wiki page, you can create a new page by using the internal wiki link syntax title of new page around the text you wish to signify as the title of the new page. This as yet unwritten page will appear in red type on the page.
 * 2) A  more common way to start a new page is to type the title into the sidebar search box and hit the Go button. You will see the message: There is no page titled "name of title". You can create this page . If you click  create this page you will be taken to an empty page box. As soon as you place content in the box and save it you will have created a page.