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How to Wiki

Welcome to the EUSwiki! Thank you for your interest in helping contribute! There are a lot of ways to tackle a wiki, so on this page we've tried to sum up all best practices used on the EUSwiki. Syntax can be confusing, but stick with it. Copying and pasting code from articles that you like is how a great wiki can be built, there's no shame in that.
Google is your friend, there are better guides out there for specific tips you may be looking for. But here we've grouped tools that are already installed and ready for use. Mediawiki is the format that wikipedias are built on, including that in your search will help.
If you need any help, please reach out to the EUS Wiki Curator(s). Thank you for your contribution!

Signing Up For An Account

The Wiki has had some unfortunate run-ins with some very nefarious spam bots and as such now requires new accounts to receive approval. Navigate yourself to the top right hand corner of the wiki and fill out the "request account". The Wiki Curator(s) should approve you within 24 hours!

Text Editing

For those of you who may know HTML5, woo-hoo! This is similar to that, but not quite. There's a whole host of different syntax, but the same logic applies.

You can format your text by using wiki markup. This consists of normal characters like asterisks, apostrophes or equal signs which have a special function in the wiki, sometimes depending on their position. For example, to format a word in italic, you include it in two pairs of apostrophes like ''this''.


Description Youtype You get
Character (inline) formatting – applies anywhere
Italic text ''italic''

italic

Bold Text '''Bold'''

bold

Bold and italic

''' ''bold & italic'' '''

bold & italic

Strike text

<strike>strike text</strike>

strike text
Escape wiki markup <nowiki>no markup</nowiki>

no ''markup''

Section Formatting

Headings of different levels == Test 2 ==
=== Test 3 ===


Note: Any article with 4 or more headings will automatically create a Table of Contents

Test 2

Test 3

Horizontal Line Text before ---- Text after

Text before


Text after

Bullet list

* Start each line
* with an asterisk (*).
** More asterisks give deeper
*** and deeper levels.
* Line breaks <br/>don't break levels.
*** But jumping levels creates empty space.
Any other start ends the list.

  • Start each line
  • with an asterisk (*).
    • More asterisks give deeper
      • and deeper levels.
  • Line breaks
    don't break levels.
      • But jumping levels creates empty space.

Any other start ends the list.

Numbered list # Start each line
# with a Numbersign/Hashtag (#).
## More number signs give deeper
### and deeper
### levels.
# Line breaks <br />don't break levels.
### But jumping levels creates empty space.
# Blank lines

# end the list and start another.
Any other start also
ends the list.
  1. Start each line
  2. with a number sign (#).
    1. More number signs give deeper
      1. and deeper
      2. levels.
  3. Line breaks
    don't break levels.
      1. But jumping levels creates empty space.
  4. Blank lines
  1. end the list and start another.

Any other start also ends the list. </translate>

Indent text

:Single indent
:: Double indent
::::: Multiple indent

 :Single indent
Double indent
Multiple indent

Links

Description You type You get
Internal link
[[Launchpad]]
Launchpad
Piped link
[[EUS Constitution|constitution]]

[[EUS Constitution#TITLE III ELECTIONS|election section]]

constitution

election section

External link with specified link text
[https://mediawiki.org MediaWiki]
MediaWiki

Adding Colors

Mediawiki supports a host of vernacular terms to colorize content without needing to know the hexadecimal values. So, when using 'style', insert one of the names to the right instead of the actual color value. It saves the trouble of remembering those pesky alphanumeric values, and spreads consistency.

Redirects

Redirects are really important to link different phrases to the same article (not to mention all the acronyms). Let's use an example: redirecting SSF to Student Space Fund. Navigate to SSF, where a blank page should exist. In that blank page, add the text:

#REDIRECT[[Student Space Fund]]

Create the page as you would any other. That's it! Unfortunately you cannot add redirect to external websites, and if you redirect to a redirect (e.g. if SSF went to Stude. Space Fund), the path would stop at the second redirect.

Templates

Because a lot of wikipedia formatting becomes redundant, templates allow you to include the same basic format without having to enter in the same code over and over. That way, if the template changes, all of the pages that call the template will update accordingly.

Take for example, a simple notice that the page is not currently complete:

This article is a stub. Please consider expanding it.

The code is need on many pages. It is therefore added to a new page on the wiki named Template:Stub. Then, once saved, the template can be called upon using double curly brackets around the name of the template, i.e. {{Stub}} . As long as the code is created in a document labeled 'Template:XXXXX', it can then be called upon again by {{XXXXX}}.

Good templates

Below is a table of templates used throughout the wiki for consistency, such as TopBars, buttons, and labels. This introduces a good function of templates, variables. When creating a template, if you insert {{{1}}}, that 1 can be filled when the template is called, separated by vertical lines |. By adding templates, you can use the "what links here" tool on the left hand side, showing all articles that use that template. We can therefore see all pages that use Template:Empty, for example.

Template Page Display Description
Template:Empty

This article is empty. Please consider writing it.

Used to keep desirable articles marked created, but in need of content.
Template:Stub

This article is a stub. Please consider expanding it.

Articles with some information, needing more.
Template:In Progress

This article is still in progress. Please consider completing it.

Articles that are currently being developed.
Template:Retired
This EUS group is retired.
Articles of groups that have since retired.
Template:Button There's a heck of a lot of other options: change font color, make it an internal link, and more. Make sure to read Template:Button
1=Link
2=Text
3=FontAwesome
4=Color

Making buttons instead of links, jumps people's attention!
Template:FinanceBar
Menu for different financial related articles.
Template:HymnBar
Menu for different chants, songs in engineering.
Template:PolicyIcon 1=POLICY_ARTICLE
A button to link to policies/bylaws/constitutions. 1= the name of the article on the wiki to which it pertains to
Template:WebsiteIcon 1=websiteurl
A button for groups' websites to be accessed
Template:EmailIcon 1=emailaddress@gmail.com
A button for the email address of the position/group
Template:FacebookIcon 1=URL to faebook page
A button to navigate specifically to a groups' Facebook page.
Template:GroupIcon 1=Article Name of Group
A button used to link policies back to a groups Wiki article
Template:DriveIcon 1=GoogleDrive Link
A button used to link policies to their official google drive file

See also the Launchpad templates at

Categories

Categories can be used to group similar pages through the wiki. For example, [[:Category:Policies]] contains a list of all policies that are currently on the wiki. To add any page to the category, include the code [[Category:***]] to all the pages you'd like to add.


Generally the EUSwiki does not include the categories on the page themselves, as there's normally a disambiguation page; that is to say, we'd prefer people navigate to Policies instead of the category page. Thus, it is common practice to hide the category. This can be done by adding the power word __HIDDENCAT__ inside the category. It will then be hidden from all the pages.

Infoboxes

Infoboxes are the iconic boxes that can be seen on the top right of nearly every wikipedia page. To learn more about infoboxes, please go here.

Tabs

Tabs is an extension that provides a handy way to create multiple tabs and tables. This is very useful for containing nested information, and can be manipulated depending on your understanding of the mechanism.
To learn more about Tabs, click here.

What you enter

<tabs>
<tab name="Bingo">This is a test</tab>
<tab name="Bango">This is also a test</tab>
</tabs>

What you Get

This is a test
This is also a test

Collapsed Tabs

Nested Tabs are useful for having large amounts of information without overburdening the layout or flow of your article.
The syntax is essentially the same as above

<tab name="Open me!" collapsed> Contents </tob>

Font Awesome

A well known bootstrap based icon pack, FontAwesome is a very easy way to include icons without having to import anything. They're flexible in terms of resizing, color, and placement, and varied enough that you're sure to find the icon you're looking for. To see a complete list of compatible icons, navigate to our FontAwesome wiki page, which includes how to embed and a few examples.

PDFs

If you'd like to embed a PDF, upload a file as you would any other (lefthand sidebar, Tools>Upload File). You can then embed the pdf using the following code <pdf>File:Example.pdf</pdf>

Note: Please don't upload policies/bylaws as pdfs. Create the page and insert the content as plain text and link to the google drive. This prevents future obsolescence

Widgets

Widgets is a blanket term for easy to add HTML pages/elements. They avoid the security problems of raw HTML in editable wiki pages because the privilege to edit in the Widget namespace is managed. Most of the time you would be working with pre-written widgets.
This is the extension is used to facilitate YouTube videos, Google Docs/Spreadsheet embeds, and more. In order to use a widget, you must make sure the Widget:Namespace is an article on this wiki. More information can be found here, more widgets here.

Specific Widgets

{{#widget:Google Document
|id=1hhpWRL4oyH6Aqf42laXo_lElObX_1JiaV4FMt8llA_U
|width=500
|height=300
}}

Where the id is the unique key in the URL of the spreadsheet you're trying to embed. Make sure that the document is published (Note: this is not uniquely the same as viewable with link; on the document, navigate to File>Publish to the Web).

Spreadsheets are essentially the same mechanism as documents (above), simply call Google Spreadsheet instead. For example:

{{#widget:Google Spreadsheet
|key=po-s58YMwf85Q3UxRzdGOBw
|width=500
|height=300
}}
{{#widget:Google Form
|key=po-s58YMwf85Q3UxRzdGOBw
|width=600
|height=750
}}

You can display google calendars in the wiki too. Like other google products, just copy the id from the URL of the standalone calendar (which you can get by going to the calendar settings). You can include multiple calendars by inserting multiple id's and colors (processed sequentially). You can change the default view as well to be WEEK or MONTH or AGENDA.

{{#widget:Google Calendar
|id=mcgilleus.ca_lee6df3cc2qit6r0dcdhsip2eg@group.calendar.google.com
|color=2952A3
|id=mcgilleus.ca_lee6df3cc2qit6r0dcdhsip2eg@group.calendar.google.com
|color=2952A3
|title=Any title you'd like
|view=WEEK
}}

To call YouTube videos in documents, all you need is the video id (the unique key at the end of the video's URL). The height and width can be adjusted from the default 420x350 by adding |height=xxx|width=xxx after the id.

{{#widget:YouTube|id=DWef69ItVrU}}

If you would like to embed a playlist instead, simply replace 'id=DWef69ItVrU' with 'playlist=PL6FD8256CD24CFF1F'<vr>

{{#widget:YouTube|playlist=PL6FD8256CD24CFF1F}}
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