How to edit the wiki

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Mediawiki.png This article is a Wiki how-to!

Wiki how-tos serve as documentation how the project wiki is utilized by the developers in general or how it's used by a specific development department.

This article is meant to become the starting point for everyone who's interested in contributing to the project wiki.

How is the wiki utilized?

While this project wiki also contains information targeted at users who just want to play the game, that's not its primary purpose! This is a development wiki; it's where large parts of the development process of PARPG actually take place. This can't be overemphasized.

What kind of skills are expected?

As the project wiki is so important for the development of PARPG, learning how to edit and work with the wiki is essential for every developer who wants to contribute to the project in a substantial way. We don't expect that newcomers show up and already know all the ropes of how to utilize the wiki. That's simply an unrealistic hurdle to jump over and would (rightfully) scare away a lot of potential contributors. We do however expect that all developers are willing to learn how to work with the wiki.

It's fine if you don't want to bother with the wiki. Tossing around ideas at the forums or the IRC channel is a valid and accepted form of contributing to the project in a minor way. But in this case you can't expect that you'll have a substantial impact on the development of the project. This applies to all development departments. While there are obviously very wiki heavy departments such as writing or game mechanics, working with the wiki is even essential for every other development department. The programmers have coding standards they follow; these standards reside at the wiki. The graphics artists have an asset pipeline how to create new content and how to actually get it into it the game; this asset pipeline is documented at the wiki.

In a nutshell: learning how to edit and work with the wiki is essential for every developer who wants to make substantial contributions to the project.

What kind of content resides at the wiki?

The wiki is used for all kinds of project documentation:

  • General development guidelines: mission statement, roadmap, milestone planning, glossary
  • Guidelines for potential contributors how to get started in general and how to contribute to a specific department
  • Project- and department-specific workflows for the most important development tools we use (SVN, Trac, Wiki)
  • Project- and department-specific licensing details
  • Department-specific workflows how to create content (code and/or assets)
  • Department-specific content (game mechanics, writing content)
  • Project culture documentation: communication channels and guidelines, development philosophy

Editing guidelines

This section covers the most important editing guidelines you should become familiar with.

Wiki syntax

The most important syntax basics are explained here (Wiki markup rules):

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Help:Wiki_markup

In case you know already know about the basics but would like to look up the syntax of one specific wiki feature, check out these cheat sheets:

Formatting guidelines

These are project-specific editing formatting guidelines that are common in other projects as well:

  • Section headings use == Section heading ==, not = Section heading =
  • Therefore first level subsections use === Subsection ===

Working with categories

As a rule of thumb: don't add articles to categories directly. PARPG is utilizing specific wiki templates for categorizing its wiki articles. In case there is no template for your kind of article, add a link to the article at the wiki maintenance article. The programming department monitors this maintenance article and will set up new templates as needed.

Working with wiki templates

As pointed out above: we're using wiki templates for categorizing the wiki content. Most departments don't need to know how the templates work under the hood. In case you're interested in the details nevertheless, check out the wiki editing guide of the project management department.

All you need to know is how to add templates to your article. There are templates that are used project-wide, while others are department specific. For department-specific wiki templates, check the wiki editing guides of the departments in question.

Common templates

These templates are used throughout the project:

Personal tools
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