Sin bravely

Have no fear.

Learn by doing. We learned how to talk by talking badly and how to walk by walking badly. You can't learn to ride a bike by reading books about it (unless it is a very good book!). You will learn how to be an editor on the wiki by editing pages on the wiki. Learn one thing at a time and eventually you, too, will be a wikimaster.

It is very difficult to break the wiki.

Every page on the site has a history.

If you make a terrible mistake while editing a page, all you have to do is Cancel the edit.

If you make the mistake of saving a terrible mistake, all you have to do is go to the history tab at the top of the page and ask the wiki to revert to the previous edition.

All of your sins will be washed away at the touch of a button.

The worst case is that you do something so disastrous that the whole site will blow up, sparks will start flying out of our server, and our ISP's place of business will go up in smoke. That's OK. They have insurance and they keep copies of our site on someone else's equipment away from the burnt-out ruin of their business. We'll be back up and running in no time and--here's the neat thing--we will have learned something from the experience.

Write anything. It can all be fixed up later.

First task: log in

• When you arrive at the Ameliapedia, look in the upper-right corner for tiny, nearly illegible print that says "log in."

• Click on that link.
• Enter your username and password.
• If you have the right username and password, you will be logged in.
• If the login doesn't work, write me and we'll try something else.

Edit your own user page

• After you've logged in, the upper-right corner of the screen will change.

• You should see red links for your username, talk page, and probably preferences.

Red links, blue links

• Red links mean that the page has not yet been edited AND SAVED.
  • Click on the red link for your username. You will be thrown into the edit screen for the page that belongs to you most personally. Your heart will pound. You may feel a little woozy and lost. That's perfectly normal. Just click the back button on your browser and you will come right back to this friendly little non-threatening totally dead normal web page.
  • If you're feeling bold, go ahead and type something in the text area.
• Blue links mean that the page has been edited AND SAVED.

Saving pages

• Saving is a big @#$%*&! deal with computers. They're totally obedient morons (TOMs). They will do what you tell them. They won't read your mind for you. They won't do what you don't tell them. Tell the TOM to save your page and he will. Don't tell him and he won't. What's wrong with that moron? Maybe if you marry him, you can change him. Maybe.
• If marrying the stupid lunkhead isn't an option, try clicking the "Save Page" button at the very bottom of the screen. Sometimes this button hides away from you where you can't see it. Besides being a moron, the (blessed) system plays hide and go seek. Especially after you've done a preview.

Two dumb scrollbars, two things that scroll

• The outside scrollbar scrolls the whole screen up and down.
• The inside scrollbar scrolls only the text area where you are trying to learn how to edit.

Preview the page

• When you do a preview, the wonderful "Save page" button disappears ==
• At the top of the page, you see how your article is shaping up.
• Under the preview is your text entry area.
• At the very bottom of the page is the all-important "Save page" button.
• Grab the OUTSIDE scrollbar (or use CTRL-END) and go to the bottom of the page.
• Press "Save page" to save the page. Whew! All the work you did is now saved!

Summary / minor edit

• These are optional. They're useful for making more meaningful feedback when browsing recent changes. If you don't use them, the system will fill something in anyway.
• Some day we may develop wikicops who will harass other editors for not using these options. We'll cross that bridge when we come to it.

Peek at other people's pages

• Every editor can edit any page on the wiki.
• You can look at the "source code" for any page by clicking on the "edit" tab at the top.
• Block, COPY, and paste the stuff you want to steal into your own page that you're editing.
• Find the bottom of the screen.
• Click cancel.

to be continued