Help:Writing a Wiki Article

HELP

This page outlines to new users of the wiki how to go about writing new pages. It also gives an outline on how we expect the pages to be stylised to maintain a consistent look across the wiki. We encourage you to practice editing pages in the Sandpit area so that you don't accidently delete or change work on current wiki pages. Please feel free to print this page to help you begin editting and writing wiki articles.

Creating a New Page

Say that you are looking around on the WikiClinical Portal and currently there is no page on a specific subject.

Firstly you must check that this page truly doesn't exist by using the search facility on the left hand side of the page. If it doesn't exist follow these steps:

• First find an appropriate place of where a link should exist. For example a page on endocarditis would be best suited under the sub-heading endocardial disorders on the cardiovascular conditions page rather than on the opening page of WikiClinical.
• Then click on the 'edit' button at the top of the appropriate page.
• This introduces you to a page of wikiscript. Scroll down to where you want to add your new page and type in

[[name of your new page - WikiClinical|name of your page]]. 

For example typing

[[Arrhythmias Overview|Overview of Arrhytmias]] will create this on the actual page: Overview of Arrhytmias

• You must ensure that to the left of the vertical line you have the name of your page followed by the section that it is in, so a page on a new drug in Wikidrugs would read [[new drug - Wikidrugs. To the right of the line is what you will actually see on the finished page, so you should write the name of your page here.

• If you now save your edit your will notice that the link to your new page appears in red. This is because there is currently no text on your new page.

• Now click on your link and it will take you directly to the editting section of your new page.

• The first thing you must write is

{{unfinished}}

This will appear as follows on the finished page

• Your page is now ready to be edited.

Writing a Page

All the writing is done by using wikiscript on the edit section of your new page. To practice what we mention below please use the sandpit first to build confidence before launching into writing the page.

First you need to write a brief introduction on what this page is about. Then decide what major headings you want. Say I had a page on dog breeds my main headings would want to be the classifications of breeds. So I would write:

 ==Toy Breeds==
 ==Hounds==
 ==Gun dugs==
 ==Utility dogs== 

This would create the following:

Utility Dogs

Once you have got your major headings in place you can then fill in the sections. We encourage that you get an equal balance of prose and bullet points in your text, as this results in the easiest format to read. Good examples of this balance would be these pages:

The Eye, Spleen and Spinal Column.

Try to use bullet points when a list is beneficial for learning or if you are trying to write a stepwise process. Below is an example of how to write bullet points.

 *Point 1
 *Point 2
 **Point 2a
 **Point 2b
 *Point 3
 **Point 3a
 ***Point 3ai 

This will result in

• Point 1
• Point 2
  • Point 2a
  • Point 2b
• Point 3
  • Point 3a
    • Point 3ai

You can do the same with numbers by using # instead of * .

To make text bold type three pairs of apostrophes around it. For example '''dalmation''' , this will result in dalmation.

To make text italic type two pairs of apostrophes around it. For example ''poodle'', this will result in poodle.

To make text bold and italic type five pairs of apostrophes around it. For example '''''boxer''''', this will result in boxer.

To add further subheadings type an extra = before and after a phrase eg.

==Main heading==
 ===sub heading===
====further sub heading==== 

results in

Main heading

sub heading

further sub heading

Finally once a page is in your opinion finished and ready to be reviewed by the Wiki admin, replace {{unfinished}} at the top of the page with {{review}}. This will make the following banner appear:

This flags up to both the wiki users and wiki admin that this page needs reviewing.