Help:Guide for contributors

Welcome, wiki editors!

This page is for novice wiki editors who are looking for a place to start. Regardless of skill level, anyone can make contributions to the wiki with just a few clicks and some typing. Please don’t be intimidated, as you’ve got the support of a team of experienced collaborators and proofreaders.

The number one rule of wiki editing, is to be bold. Dive in and make changes. Other people can correct mistakes later, so have confidence, and give it a try! There can be all kinds of editing conventions, rules, and philosophy governing the editing of wiki pages, but the be bold rule overrides these!

Remember – you can't break finiki; all edits can be reversed, fixed or improved later. finiki is allowed to be imperfect. So go ahead, edit an article and help improve finiki.

Getting started
It's very easy to edit the contents of a wiki. It only takes a few clicks.


 * 1) Click the "" button at the top of the page. This will bring you to a new page with a text box containing the editable text of the current page.
 * 2) Make changes to the text. When you have finished editing, you should write a short edit summary in the small field below the edit-box. To see how the page looks with your edits, press the "Show preview" button. To see the differences between the page with your edits and the previous version of the page, press the "Show changes" button.
 * 3) If you're satisfied with what you see, be bold and press the "" button. Your changes will immediately be visible to all finiki users.

Simple as that!

Consult Help:Basic Wiki Syntax or the User's Guide for detailed information on using the wiki software. Basic help can be found in Help:Editing. Until you are comfortable with the markup language, use the sandbox to test your edits. ''Please be advised that not all MediaWiki features are enabled in finiki. Try things out on the sandbox before committing them to a reference page.''

Editing rules, editing conventions, and formatting
The number one rule of wiki editing, is to be bold. Dive in and make changes. Other people can correct mistakes later, so have confidence, and give it a try! There can be all kinds of editing conventions, rules, and philosophy governing the editing of wiki pages, but the be bold rule overrides these!

In general try to write clearly and concisely and make sure you are always aiming to do something which improves the wiki contents. An edit might be to contribute whole paragraphs or pages full of information, or it could be as simple as fixing a typo or spelling mistake. Please remember to never use the pronoun "I".

Editing toolbar
The editing toolbar will look familiar to most users. The Vector skin is the default choice for finiki editors. For help on its use and functionality, see Help:Edit toolbar.

Style guidelines
A style guide or style manual is a set of standards for the writing and design of documents, either for general use or for a specific publication, organization or field. The implementation of a style guide provides uniformity in style and formatting of a document. The Wikipedia Manual of Style (MOS) is a style guide for Wikipedia articles that encourages editors to follow consistent usage and formatting. Use this guide for reference.

The following sections are extracts of key elements that should be followed on finiki.

Article titles

 * Use "sentence case", not "title case"; that is, the initial letter of a title is capitalized (except in rare cases, such as eBay). Otherwise, capital letters are used only where they would be used in a normal sentence (Funding of UNESCO projects, not Funding of UNESCO Projects).

Article titles should not be acronyms, they should be fully expanded. To handle the case where users may search using the acronym, create a redirect, an alternative title to the article. Redirects help to organize a wiki by making articles findable under different names. See Wikipedia:Redirect for guidelines and a more detailed explanation.


 * Note: The Search box is case-insensitive, so a search for "Mutual Fund" and "mutual fund" will both find the article Mutual fund.

Redirect
A redirect is a page created so that navigation to a given title will take the reader directly to a different page. A redirect is created using the syntax:


 * 1) REDIRECT target

where Target is the name of the target page. Example:
 *  #REDIRECT Guaranteed Investment Certificate  (redirects to the Guaranteed Investment Certificate article)

Section organization
An article should begin with an introductory lead (or lede) section, which does not contain section headings (see Manual of Style/Lead section). The remainder is divided into sections, each with a section heading (see below) that can be nested in a hierarchy. If there are at least four section headings in the article, a navigable table of contents is generated automatically and displayed between the lead and the first heading.

Section headings
Headings are produced by typing multiple equal signs. A primary section heading is written, a subsection below it is written  , and so on (a maximum of five levels is possible). Spaces between the equal signs and the heading text are optional, and will not affect the way the heading is displayed. The heading must be typed on a separate line. Include one blank line above the heading, and optionally one blank line below it, for readability in the edit window. (Only two or more consecutive blank lines will add more white space in the public appearance of the page.)

The provisions in Article titles (above) generally apply to section headings as well (for example, headings are in sentence case, not title case).

Creating a New Page

 * See also: Wikipedia:Writing better articles

From the search page
A Topic Index on the Main Page exists as a guide to creating pages. If a topic is missing, editors can and should add it.

If you search for a page that doesn't exist (using the search box and “Go” button on the left of the page) then you will be provided with a link to create the new page. (Note that this technique doesn't work if you use the “Search” button).

Using Wikilinks
For an existing page sentence, Where are the customers' yachts?, you may decide to that yachts should have its own page. You would enclose yachts with thus yachts and the sentence would look like Where are the customers' yachts ? The red highlighting will disappear as soon as you click on yachts, add text to the new page, and save it.

A new page should be started with which should remain until the page is substantially complete. If references are included, the page should end with ==References== .

If a citation is needed but not yet provided, you can use one of the available templates.

Standard appendices and footers
For consistency, references should be organized in a common format. Please list references as follows. Unused reference section headings may be omitted.

Explanatory footnotes (those that are not references) appear first.
 * ==Notes==

This is the first header for links and is used for internal wiki page links.
 * ==See also==

Footnote references (citations) appear after the See also section and before the External links section.
 * ==References==
 * Reflist

A reasonable number of editor-recommended publications that would help interested readers learn more about the article subject.
 * ==Further reading==

This section contains outside links to any websites would be of particular interest to a reader of an article but only if they were not used as sources for the article.
 * ==External links==

Saving a page
Before you press the "" button, you will notice a couple of input areas, an input box marked Summary: and a check box to indicate "This is a minor edit".

Summary
It is considered good practice to provide a summary for every edit, especially when reverting (undoing) the actions of other editors or deleting existing text; otherwise, people may question your motives for the edit.

Accurate summaries help other contributors decide whether it is worthwhile for them to review an edit, and to understand the change should they choose to review it.

Minor edit
A check to the minor edit box signifies that only superficial differences exist between the current and previous versions. Examples include typographical corrections, formatting and presentational changes, and rearrangements of text without modification of its content. A minor edit is one that the editor believes requires no review and could never be the subject of a dispute. An edit of this kind is marked in its page's revision history with a lower case, bolded "m" character (m).

By contrast, a major edit is one that should be reviewed for its acceptability to all concerned editors. Therefore, any change that affects the meaning of an article is not minor, even if the edit concerns a single word; for example, the addition or removal of "not", which can change the meaning of a sentence, is a major edit.

Because editors may choose to ignore minor edits when reviewing recent changes, the distinction between major and minor edits is significant. Logged-in users might even set their preferences to not display minor edits. If there is any chance that another editor might dispute a change, it is best not to mark the edit as minor.

Renaming articles
If you find an article that you believe is misnamed, please do not copy and paste the contents of the old article into a new article — among other things, it separates the previous contributions from their edit history (which we need to keep track of for copyright reasons). The preferred method is to move the page to the new name. If it is your first move, please read the warnings on the move page carefully, as there are a number of issues to consider before moving a page. For more information, see How to rename (move) a page.

Editing conventions on talk pages

 * Always sign your name after your comments. Use the four tildes “ ~ ” wiki syntax (or the signature button in the toolbar above the editing textbox).
 * Start a new discussion with a ==level 2 heading== at the bottom of the page (or use the “+” tab)
 * Indent replies with colons at the beginning of the line.

=Tools=

Templates
Templates are Wiki tools that allow pre-formatted entries to be made. Templates are included in a page by inserting the name of the template between double curly brackets. The content of the template will then be inserted at that point. For example, will display the "Fact" template, which warns that a citation is needed, as shown below:



A list of available templates is here. Before you create a new template, check to see if there is an existing template that would serve your needs. For assistance in creating templates, see Creating, editing and using templates.

External Tools

 * Quick link to Excel-to-table generator Use this link to convert pasted Excel tables to wiki-format tables

HTML Tools
wikitext allows a number of HTML elements that are useful in writing an article.

= Editing guidelines =

finiki's editing guidelines are loosely based on Wikipedia's editorial policy and core content policies. Note that there are no guidelines on what subjects to include or exclude. We hope that common sense prevails.