How to Wiki FAQ

Welcome to the Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ) page for how to do Wiki stuff!

When should I use Visual Editor versus Source Editor?

There are two editors available to edit a page on MoHA.wiki: Visual Editor and Source Editor. Visual Editor is the more user-friendly editor and works akin to most document editors like Microsoft Word and Google Docs). Source Editor is the less user-friendly editor which displays the page contents in wikitext code.

Visual Editor is the suggested editor to use unless something you’d like to edit is only available in code. In other words, use Visual Editor when it’s easier, and Source Editor when it’s necessary. You can toggle between the editors by clicking on the pencil icon on the top-righthand corner of the editors.

What are the different ways to edit the wiki?

Most edits can be done on the Wiki, such as creating, editing, and moving pages and uploading media files. Most users on this Wiki will use it like a content management system (CMS).

The other way to edit the Wiki requires backend access, which only very few admin-level users will be able to do. On the backend, you can install extensions, change certain Wiki configuration values, edit the interface, update the main baseline software Wiki runs on, etc.

How do I edit the link to an embed on a page?

Embeds, such as the one on the Volunteer Opportunity page, uses a form widget and is supplied by an extension. To change what link is embedded on the page, you will need to edit the page with Source Editor, find the form widget code, and replace the URL.

What is a template and how do I use one?

Templates can be used for anything. There is template source code, which is the infrastructure for the template. Template source code should not be edited unless you know what you're doing; for reference, a whole crew of Wikipedia folks focus only on templates. Any edits to the template source code will be reflected in any template instance. A template instance is a singular use of template source code. Template source code: Template instance:: prefab: object instance

You can use a template using Visual Editor or Source Editor.

In Visual Editor, to use an existing template on a page:

1. Insert > Template > call template by name > select the template you want.
2. A pop-up should show up. The checkboxes on the side are the parameters.
3. Click on the checkboxes to add parameters, then fill out the parameters.

In Source Editor, to use a template:

1. Go to a page that uses the template you want
2. Edit the page in source editor and copy the template code.
3. Go to the page you'd like to use the template and edit in Source Editor.
4. Past the template code.
5. Fill in the parameters to what you want them to be.

There are pros and cons to using a template in each Editor. Filling out parameters may be more annoying in Visual Editor. Filling in all the parameters and getting the source code right may be harder in Source Editor.

What are the best practices for moving and redirecting pages?

Moving a page is the process of renaming an existing page and moving the contents and history to the new page title. When moving a page, you have the option to leave a redirect behind which means that the old page title will become a redirect page to the new title. It's best practice to leave a redirect behind to make it easy for people to find the information that was moved, unless the old title wouldn't be findable. You can think of redirects as streams that feed into the river (aka the target page).

You can check the Special:MostLinkedPages page before redirecting, but rest assured, if your redirect goes to a weird page, you're able to redirect again or undo changes.

If you do not leave a redirect behind, then the old page title would be deleted. There can be some funky situations to navigate when moving pages. For example, if you move page A to an already existing page B, then you would delete page B. But if you do not want to delete page B, you will want to delete the target page first, then move to it. In other words, move page B to page C, then move page A to page B. Here's an actual example:

1. I want to move Fiscal Sponsorship at MoHA (A) to Fiscal Sponsorship (B).
2. Move B to “Fiscal Sponsorship Temp” with no redirect to open up “Fiscal Sponsorship” page title
3. Empty the page contents of A
4. Redirect A to now-empty “Fiscal Sponsorship” page
5. Move “Fiscal Sponsorship Temp” to B with no redirect
6. Now I see the contents I want on the Fiscal Sponsorship page, and a redirect was created from Fiscal Sponsorship at MoHA to the target page.

What happens when I delete a page? Should I delete a page?

If you want to delete a page, just make sure you don’t want that content anymore (on whatever level listed below). You can restore deleted content as long as the deletion is not permanent. There are levels of deletion listed below in order of least to most severe:

1. Delete a page on the Wiki - When you delete a page, you are moving it to a "recycling bin" away from the public. This is more accurately described as "hidden" than truly gone. Should you want to bring a deleted page back, you can easily undelete the page.
2. Suppression/oversight - You can suppress a deletion when the above level is not good enough. Suppression hides the deleted content from other users and is like a “super delete” where no one can see it.
3. Delete in the database - This involves manually deleting the record from the database, which would destroy the history of it ever being there. Legal reasons are one reason to do this, but deleting in the database is very rare.

How do I handle pages that share the same name but have different contents?

When there are pages that should be or might be titled the same title, you should create a naming convention to disambiguate page titles (if one does not exist already); and a disambiguation page. Follow the instructions below:

1. Determine a naming convention to disambiguate the otherwise identical page titles. Consider the differences between the pages, as well as how broadly you need to disambiguate the pages.
2. Identify the pages to disambiguate. Move the pages to the appropriate page title with the new naming convention.
3. Create the disambiguation page with the page title and append “(disambiguation)” to the page title.
4. On the disambiguation page:
   1. Add the first sentence, following this format: “Page title may refer to:”
   2. Then create a bulleted list with each page someone may be looking for and a short description, following this format: “Page title (type), short phrase that describes the page".

How do I look at a page's revision history? What can I do with it?

To view a page's revision history, scroll to the bottom of the page and click "View history". You can then view the edits made by users at different points in time to investigate the changes that were made.

What are Protected pages? What are Protected titles?

Protected pages are pages some users can’t edit. Protected titles are titles some users can’t edit.

Protection does not affect visibility, only editability. Protection is important for wikis that are truly open for anyone to edit. Though the point of a wiki is to generally keep pages open to edit, there are pages you may want to protect in the cases of vandalism, legal topics, conflict between users, slander, or spam.

What does it mean to "watch" a page?

Watching a page means to put the page on your Watchlist.

What is the Watchlist page? How do I read it? How should I use it?

The Watchlist page is a feed of any edits made to pages you are watching. You can filter through your feed, and you can also edit your list of watched pages. Your Watchlist doesn’t have to be a clean, super upkept page you maintain so long as it is usable for you.

More info on reading your Watchlist on MoHA.wiki is forthcoming.

What are namespaces? How should I be using namespaces?

Namespaces are high-level organizational zones that enforces a separation of what is the primary focus of the Wiki. Namespaces should be used sparingly; do not search well by design; and are only visible to certain users.

More info on namespaces on MoHA.wiki is forthcoming.

What's a category? How should I be using categories?

A category is simply a label, like hashtags on social media posts. Categories do not help with differentiating pages and permissions like namespaces do.

You can use categories to help make pages more searchable and intelligible. When a category tag is added to a template and that template is used on a page, the category is also added to the page. Any pages that use that template get that Category. When you see the words "a template defines a category," it really means that the template is applying the category.

What's on my Preferences page? Do I need to change any of my preferences?

Your Preferences page is where you can edit your user account preferences. The majority of the default preferences are fine as-is, but below lists some specific notes:

• Your Signature is how you sign off on Talk and Discussion pages.
• The Appearance tab is your preference for how stuff looks.
• Breadcrumbs are the list of recent pages you visited at the top of the Wiki (the top 5 pages you last viewed).
• In Watchlist tab, check off the “Add direct unwatch/watch markers (x/+)...” option, which enables you to more easily delete or add things to your Watchlist.
• The Gadgets tab is not recommended to edit because it opens up other people to edit gadgets. Gadgets are special features for the Wiki (MoHA.wiki doesn't have any) and are used more for Wikis with lots of users, like Wikipedia.

What are the links on the Tools dropdown (drop-up?) at the bottom of the page?

The links on the Tools dropdown at the bottom of each page provides more detail about the page you are currently on. In order from top to bottom:

• What links here - Lists the pages that have the page linked on it. This is good to check before moving a page. If you want all of those linked pages to point to the moved page, you’ll need to change the link to point to the moved page, before doing the move.
• Related changes - See changes on pages that are linked to or from that page.
• Upload file - Upload a file to the wiki in general. Note: You will have to manually add the file to the page.
• Special pages - A page with links to all of the Special pages.
• Printable version - Get a printable version of that page.
• Permanent link - Get a permanent link of this specific version of the page.
• Page information - View the stats of that page.
• Browse properties - View the page metadata (obscure info you don't really need to use).
• Cite this page - Info on how to cite that page for when you’re writing an academic article, for example.

What is querying? How do I query? When should I query?

Querying is a Semantic MediaWiki term. A query is a placeholder on the page that looks up data fields, like a substitution of the search. A query is specific to that page.

Info on how to query is forthcoming.

What is transclusion? How do I use transclusion? When should I use transclusion?

Transclusion is like using a template, in which you are embedding the contents of a page on another page. Edits to transcluded content is applied to every page where it exists (aka, there are no unique instances). Transclusion is helpful to use when you don’t want to repeat yourself / know that the exact text will be reused in multiple places.

To do transclusion, you can add that text into its own page. Then, go to the page where you want to transclude that text and transclude it like this in Source Editor: {{:PageName}}. When there is no text before the colon, it automatically pulls from the Main namespace.

You can also use Templates to pull in information.

Here is an example of how to use this using MoHA’s mission statement:

1. To create a page you can transclude the mission statement from, add the text about its mission statement to its own page
   1. Mission
2. Go to the page you want to transclude the text and transclude with {{:Mission}}
   1. About#Mission_&_Vision

How do I insert, format, and delete an image on a page?

In Visual Editor, to insert one image on a page:

1. Click Insert > Images and Media
2. Select the image you want
3. Edit properties in the “General” tab for changing basic formatting
4. Edit properties in the “Advanced” tab for changing advanced formatting
5. Image size > Default shows the size of the image that was uploaded
6. Editing Image size > Custom may be limited based on the set max size of files. It also maintains the proportions of the uploaded image when you change the size
7. Inserting the image without changing any properties will show the default image format

To edit formatting for an image that was already inserted, click on the image, then click “Edit” in the hover box

To delete an inserted image, click on the image and hit backspace on your keyboard.

How do I insert, format, and delete an image gallery on a page?

In Visual Editor, to add a gallery of images:

1. Click Insert > More > Gallery
   1. A pop-up should show up.
2. Add images to the gallery. In the pop-up:
   1. Select your first image
   2. Add more images to the gallery by clicking on the “+ Add new image” button on the lefthand side
   3. Edit the “General” formatting properties for each image in the gallery
3. Format the gallery. In the pop-up:
   1. Click on the Options tab
   2. Format the gallery's display mode (slideshow, packed, etc), image sizes, CSS, etc
4. Insert the gallery
   1. Once you’re happy with the gallery, click on the blue “Insert” button to add it to the page
5. Save changes once you’re ready to publish

To edit a gallery that was already inserted, click on the gallery, then click “Edit” in the hover box.

To delete an inserted gallery, click on the image and hit backspace on your keyboard.

What makes a Wiki different from a website? Where is the line?

There are different levels. A true Wiki is when anyone within the organization can edit any pages. There is also a combination of Wiki and website, which is what MoHA.wiki is. A combination is where anything you can edit with an edit button and can't be harmed if touched is fair game, but anything with configurations (like docker and backups) is very locked down.

How do I add helper text to forms?

You can add helper text as part of the form configuration.

1. Click “Edit” on the form page
2. Find which field you want to add or edit helper text to
3. In that field’s section, type your helper text before the field info, like below to make the text show up before the input box.
   1. [INSERT SCREENSHOT]

Here is an example of where helper text was added: Form:Event.

What characters should I NOT include in page titles and body text? What are forbidden characters on the Wiki?

Page titles:

• https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Manual:Page_title#Naming_restrictions

Body text:

• https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/HTML_restriction
• https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Help:HTML_in_wikitext - what characters are allowed

Property objects, ex. Barton Springs as a Location:

• You can use characters that are allowed as wikitext.

Can you use <nowiki></nowiki> on forbidden characters?

Yes, you can put anything within <nowiki></nowiki> to render as plain-text instead of wikitext.

What is needed to manage a growing Wiki and Wiki community? What are the steps to make it sustainable?

A growing wiki and wiki community requires multiple steps. More people will be needed who can monitor what’s going on. The wiki will need to get more users and onboard them, starting with 5 Wiki volunteers and training them with active, monitoring, and data tasks. To make the wiki sustainable, admin need to create opportunities for people to contribute and make them feel empowered.

How do I bulk update a bunch of existing pages? How do I bulk upload a bunch of new pages?

1. Set up a csv that directly matches how Wiki wants to take the info. Notes:
   1. You must include "Page title" as a field.
   2. The field names in the csv should be identical to the ones on the Wiki (such as for pages that use a form), and the values for the fields in the csv should be formatted with the correct wikitext (including empty fields).
   3. You can view a page in Source Editor or the form source code to understand how to do the correct formatting.
2. Go to the page Special:ImportCSV:
   1. Upload the csv
   2. Keep the encoding type UTF-8
   3. Select what kind of import you'd like to do under the text "For pages that already exist". Note: Your selection will apply to all pages in the csv you import.
      1. Choose “Overwrite existing content” to fully overwrite a page. Doing so does not delete the page’s history; it updates the content.
         1. This is the option to select if all pages in your csv are new pages to create, or you want to completely overwrite existing pages.
      2. Choose “Overwrite only fields contained in the file” to update specific fields for multiple pages.
         1. This is the option to select if all pages in your csv are existing pages that need the same, specific fields completely overwritten.
      3. Choose “Skip” if you want to not overwrite pages that already exist.
      4. Choose “Append to existing content” if you want to add more info on top of existing info on existing pages.
         1. This is the option to select if all pages in your csv are existing pages that need more info added to specific fields.
   4. Write the date you're uploading and a short description about your import in the textbox next to "Summary of import".
   5. Click "Import".
3. Leave the page open as the wiki does the import. Do NOT close the page, otherwise the import will be interrupted. You can look at the following pages to ensure everything has been imported before closing the import page.
   1. Special:NewPages
   2. Special:RecentChanges
4. Check individual pages that have been newly created or updated to resolve any errors that may have arose during the import.

I want to clean up the Wiki. What's the best way to do that?

Pages you may want to clean up can include: pages without categories, test pages, popular pages that will no longer be used, pages to move and redirect, pages that barely has content on it, etc.

You can identify pages to clean up with Special:AllPages, no need to make a semantic query. On this page, you can search for pages that start or end with certain characters, as well as skim through the full list and identify which pages to clean up.