Down and dirty

The number one rule of wiki editing, is to be bold. Dive in and make changes. Other people can correct mistakes later, so have confidence, and give it a try! There can be all kinds of editing conventions, rules, and philosophy governing the editing of wiki pages, but the "be bold" rule overrides these! In general try to write clearly and concisely and make sure you are always aiming to do something which improves the wiki contents. An edit might be to contribute whole paragraphs or pages full of information, or it could be as simple as fixing a typo or spelling mistake.[1]

If you think a page needs to be written, write it. Leave it to the community to make changes and correct it. Wiki pages have version histories, and can be returned back to a certain state in time quite easily. Don't worry about making mistakes, they can be easily rectified.

How to edit an existing page

When you find an existing page you would like to change, click on the edit tab at the top. This will bring you to the wiki editor, which is basically just a text editor that opens in your browser.

Change what you think needs modification, then click on the preview button at the bottom. This will show you the changed version of the page. Once you're satisfied about the edit, you should type in a small summary in the Summary box. If its a minor edit, click the minor edit check box. What is a minor edit? If your change did not significantly alter the text of the page, then it is a minor edit. Read up on the finer points of minor edits on the Wikipedia page.

The changes you make will not actually be saved until you press the Save changes button at the bottom of the page.

How to make a new page

Be sure that you know Shellium Wiki Naming Policy

You may have noticed that certain links on the wiki are colored red. This means that the page does not exist, but the editor thought that it should, and made a link to it. You can click on these links and you will be taken to the edit box for a new page. If you write anything and save it, a new page will be created. To get a complete list of pages that do not exist check the Wanted Pages.

Translating

Translating is by far the most work the Shellium wiki needs. Since there are so many languages we support, and pages are being created and modified all the time; translation work is needed continously.

Translating a page with a language bar is easy enough. Simply clicking the appropriate link should take you to the page if it exists, and open the edit box if it doesn't.

A page without a language bar can have the ''{{languages}}'' template added to the top. Then you can simply click on any language and start translating. Clicking on a language will create a new page with /xy appended to the original page's name; where xy is the language code.

A simple way to translate would be to copy the source from the edit box of the main page and paste it into the new translated page. Then just replace all the English language sentences.

Read up more on translating at How to translate, and other ways to contribute at Contributions