How to contribute

Contributing material to the QNET Knowledge Base

In this article, the basic procedures for authoring content for the QNET Wiki are described. These notes are intended for those QNET users who have previously submitted a request to contribute a QNET article (eg, for an AC or UFR). The procedure for requesting new content is not described here but is outlined elsewhere on this site []. Therefore, the basic assumption is that a new QNET article has already been set up with individual links between the article pages in place. The notes contained here are intended to help the contributor to populate these pages with the basic technical content he or she wishes to add.

The information on this page is also of interest to visitors who wish to leave short comments on the Discussion page of each Wiki article. It is possible for a Discussion page to become a substantial document in its own right and some basic principles and guidelines described here may be helpful in maintaining a well-organised and presentable Discussion page.

We assume that the contributor is not an expert in HTML or web design but has some experience of viewing Wikis and similar online applications.

General Advice

Before editing Wiki pages, please bear in mind the following advice.

• Keep it brief! Each AC or UFR is intended to be the size of typical journal article. The Description, Evaluation etc pages within an AC or UFR should be no more than 4-6 screen-fulls of text at most. If your reader is scrolling up and down a very long page to get to the text he or she requires then they will quickly get tired and frustrated. Therefore, you should aim to have a page with a convenient length that is not too long for the average reader.

• Keep to the standard article format. All significant content in the article should be restricted to the pages that have been set up on your behalf by the Wiki Editorial team. Please don't add any extra pages on the Wiki and reference them from your article. It is desirable to keep to a standard article layout for the sake of readability and a common style.

• If possible, add equations in LaTex format. LaTex is an excellent way of ensuring that the equations are presentable and can be conveniently changed if there are any errors or inconsistencies in notation. LaTex should be preferred to equation images wherever it is practical to do so!

• Resist using HTML. Contributors should try to minimise the use of HTML as much as possible. Use Wiki text format for things like tables, lists, sub-section headings instead. HTML is reserved for use by site administrators for top-level elements in the Wiki but in general for articles they should be considered to be forbidden. With many rules there are always exceptions and you may be forced to use span links in your text in order to identify a particular section of a page to jump to from another page (described below). This is the only exception permitted at this time...

• Resist using Style elements! Using individual style attributes on WikiText elements often makes the wiki text difficult to edit or read. As with HTML they are reserved for the QNET Wiki Editorial team only and should not be used within articles. If you absolutely need them then contact us and we will seek alternatives where possible.

• Don't attempt to use JavaScript, Flash or similar items These cannot be added to a page for security reasons so please don't attempt to add them.

Basic Steps

Entering Edit mode

The user first goes to the page he or she wishes to edit.

Unlike systems such as Microsoft Word etc, the user must enter an 'edit mode' in order to make changes to a Wiki page. To enter editing mode, click on the 'edit' tab link at the top of the page:

The following image shows the page in editing mode. Note that any new text, including WikiText expressions, is confined to the editing area of the page.

It is also possible to edit particular sections within a page by clicking on the 'Edit' link that can be found at the top of each section. This is sometimes more convenient if the link to the Wiki is slow, the page is rather large and you only wish to modify a part of it, or if you are using a very slow client machine. An example of an edit link is given below:

[[Image::wiki_edit_section.jpg]]

Entering Basic Content

Having entered edit mode, the user can now enter the text of his or her article in the Edit area shown above. This section describes how simple content can be added and saved.

'Ordinary text', should be entered at the location of the cursor on the page: just scroll down to the part of the page to be edited, position the cursor and type in the text.

Paragraphs in the text are seperated by a blank line. Lists of un-numbered items (eg, lists of bullets) can be added by using the asterisks for each item, as shown in the following WikiText example. This shows two paragraphs followed by a list of un-numbered list points.

This is the first paragraph.

Here is a second paragraph.

* Item 1
* Item 2
* Item 3
etc

Section headings are delimited by one or more occurences of the equals symbol '='. The number of these symbols denotes the 'level' of that section. The highest level sections have one '=', whereas sub-sections and their child sub-sub-sections have 2 or more '=' symbols.

= Heading 1 =
Some text...

= Heading 2 =
== Heading 3 ==
Some more text etc...

Note that the article typically has the major section items defined for you in accordance with an article template.

Having entered the basic text you can save your changes by clicking on the 'Save page' button at the foot of the page. It is also possible to preview the page before saving the changes by means of the 'Show preview' button.

The user should use the Editing Tool icons bar at the top of the page to generate these and other WikiText elements more conveniently.

Links

Being a hypertext document, a Wiki benefits greatly from the use of links both within the page from one section to another, between pages in the same Wiki, and to external web sites. The notes in this section explain how to add these different kinds of link to a page.

Two basic types of link are possible:

• internal wiki links- eg, linking one wiki page to another wiki page, or
• a link to an external web site.

The first kind of link is based on the name of the Wiki Page title and takes the following general form consisting of two parts. The first part is a reference to the Wiki page title being linked to. The second part is the descriptive text that is displayed in the Wiki page as the hyperlink. If the first part is omitted then the Link information is displayed verbatim instead.

[[Link_page_title|Description of Link]]

For example, the link to the QNET Home page can be defined as follows in your article:

[[Main_Page|Back to QNET Home Page]]

External links are defined within the following format. As with internal links they have two parts, the url and a user-friendly name of the link displayed in the page.

[ {link url} {link name or description} ] 

For example, the link to Google would be defined as follows:

[http://www.google.com Search Google...]

How to add images

It is possible to add images to your article pages based on WikiText link elements described earlier.

• Save the image you need to a file on your machine, giving it a memorable name- whatever you deem appropiate.
• In the editing page make sure your cursor is in the required location for your image then on the top where all the tool icons are, click on the icon that looks like a little picture frame, titled "embedded file".

This will generate an internal image link which looks like this in WikiText:

[[Image:Example.jpg]]

There are a number of ways in which you can upload the file. The easiest is to click on the image link that you have just created to take you to a File Upload page. Alternatively, use the left hand navigation bar and click on "Upload file" under the "Tool Box" folder.

• Click on "Browse" to find the saved image on your own machine and then once located click on "Upload File".
• The desired image should come up with its precise location name. This is important because if you don't put the exact name of the uploaded picture into the image link, the picture will not be viewed in the wiki- instead a red link will come up showing that something is wrong with this image file. The name of the uploaded file will be shown in blue under the picture once you have clicked on the "Upload File" button.
• Go back into the page you are editing by clicking on the back bar, and type into the image link the name of your uploaded image ie; File:Wavevortex 1.gif; File:Wave vortex 1.GIF; File:Wave vortex1.gif

The examples described here are to show you how to enter your image name. Make sure you leave in

Image:.

. Note that the uploaded image name is permitted to have underscores, upper-case letters, spaces, numbers etc. Be sure that when you add the image link to your page it must be exactly the same name as the uploaded image.

Click on save at the bottom of the editing page and the image should appear in the wiki. If all that is seen is a red link instead of a picture it is probably because there is an error in the name and so has not been recognised.