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.

Basic Steps

General Advice

Before beginning to edit pages, please bear in mind the following advice.

• Keep it simple! 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 3-4 screen-fulls of text at most. If your reader is scrolling up and down a long page he or she 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. LaText should be preferred to images wherever it is practical to do so!

• 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.

• JavaScript, Flash or similar items cannot be added to a page so please don't attempt to add them.

How to add images

• 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;

[[Image:Example.jpg]]

• To upload the image you have saved go to 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, capitol letters, spaces, numbers etc you have to make sure that when you name the image link it must be exactly the same name as the uploaded image.

Then click on save at the bottom of the editing page and the image should appear in the wiki. If all you get is a red link instead of a picture it is probably because the name has not been recongnised.