Help:Editing pages

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(Certain parts of this page, marked in its source, is/are in the public domain.)

It is very easy to edit the contents of a wiki page. It only takes a few clicks.

Click the edit page tab at the top of the page.
Make changes to the text.
(Optional, recommended: use the preview button to preview without saving.)
Click the Save page button.

Simple as that!

Editing rules, editing conventions, and formatting

Be bold. Dive in and make changes. Anyone may correct mistakes or make changes.

In general try to write clearly and try to keep to the spirit of the work you are editing (given to you by the guidelines section). If you are editing a story that uses short concise sentences, aim for short and concise. If you are editing a story that seems as if it were written by Charles Dickens, no sentence is too long. If you are editing a poem, stay in the meter and rhyming scheme (if they exist). Of course, all works are fluid and constantly being perfected, and you may decide with other authors on the talk page to take a piece of writing in a new direction, which is fine.

An edit can be as small as fixing typo/spelling mistakes, or as ambitious as contributing whole paragraphs or pages. All levels of participation are welcome.

When you need to use some type of formatting e.g. new headings or bold text, you do this using wiki syntax, see Help:Formatting for some of the common types of formatting used.

Guidelines

This is important. The first author(s) of a story, poem, plot, or character description should write down guidelines on the talk page in a section called "Guidelines" (the heading is automatically generated). In general, you should strive to follow the guidelines, as they are intended to give a story direction and purpose. They exist so that all authors have an idea of what the end result or goal should be.

As an example, see the Guidelines for "3-Word_Story".

Since this is a communal effort, of course, if enough people want to modify the guidelines, that is allowed as well.

Edit Summary

Before you save a change, you can enter a short note in the Summary box describing your changes. Don't worry too much about this, or spend too much time thinking about it, but try to give a little description of what you just changed e.g. "fixed typo" or "added more dialogue during the confrontation scene".

The summary gets stored alongside your edit, and allows people to track changes in WikiStory more effectively.

Preview

It is a good idea to use the "Show preview" button to see what your change will look like, before you save it. This is also related to tracking changes because every time you save, this is displayed to others as a separate change. It is good to get into the habit of eliminating mistakes in your own work, by using a preview before saving, rather than having to save several minor corrections afterwards.

Other types of editing

With edits you can also start a new page, move (or rename) a page, or even delete a page:

Remember you should always aim to improve the story, poem, plot, etc. with your edits.

Discussion

Every page has its own "talk page" where you can ask questions, make suggestions, or discuss corrections. See Help:Talk pages

Reviews

Every story, poem, plot, and character description has a "Reviews" page where you can write and read reviews of a story. The reviews pages for all types of content are located in the same namespace, and each review has an action tab that links back to the story, poem, plot, or character description.