Help:Editing
From LOST
One of the great things about a wiki is the simplicity with which it can be edited. You don't need to know HTML code to edit an article, all you need to know is English and a simple wiki code. Best of all, you don't even need to register or log in to edit articles.
To find an article which needs editing or creating go to our Finding Material to Edit Article. For more specialized information on the page layout and writing style, see our Manual of Style.
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[edit] Getting Started
To start editing an article, you need to click on the edit button, which is at the top of each page. Once you get to the editing screen you will see the editing box. The editing box is where you will type your text.
Just type the text as you would on a word processor. You can also type in the simple wiki code to format text, make links, add pictures, and so on. There are also buttons above the editing box that add in common wiki code.
If you see something interesting on a page, you can always click the Edit or View Source link at the top to see how it was done. Feel free to copy, paste, and edit!
[edit] Basic Editing
Above the editing box you will find several editing buttons: 
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Bold button. This button will make highlighted text bold. Another way to make text bold is to put three apostrophes (single quotes) on each side of the text you want bold.
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Italic button. This button will make highlighted text italic. Another way to make text italic is to put two apostrophes (single quotes) on each side of the text you want italicized.
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Internal link button. This button will link a word to an article of the same name inside LOST Wiki. Another way to create an internal link is to put [[Link title]] around the word you want to make a link.
| Advanced techniques: Adding a pipe ( | ) allows you to control how the link appears. For instance, this: [[Australian Secret Intelligence Service|ASIS]] will appear on the page as this: ASIS. You can also use a pipe to hide anything before a colon or in parenthesis. This can be useful when linking to pages with disambiguation tags.
To link to a page section, add a pound sign and the heading, like so:
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External link button. This button will make a link to an external web page. Another way to create an external link is to put [http://www.example.com] around the website address.
| Advanced technique: Instead of using a pipe, use a space to control the look of external links. For instance, this: [http://www.thehansofoundation.org The Hanso Foundation] will appear on the page as this: The Hanso Foundation. |
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Level 2 Headline button. This button will start a level 2 headline, the biggest headline, used for the top-level sections. Another way to create a Level 2 Headline is to put ==Headline Title== around the headline title.
| Advanced technique: Add more equal signs for smaller headlines. When a page has four or more headlines, it will automatically generate a Table of Contents at the top. |
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Embedded Image button. This button will add an image to your article. Another way to create an Embedded Image is to put [[Image:Example.jpg]] around your image title.
| Advanced technique: Use pipes to add modifiers to the image. Modifiers include thumb, size in pixels (e.g. 200px), left, right, and so on. You can also add a caption.
For instance: [[Image:Example.jpg|200px|right|thumb|This is an example]] will produce an image scaled to 200 pixels, on the right hand side of the page, with "This is an example" as a caption. |
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Media File Link button. This button will create a link to a non-image media file.
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Mathmatical Formula button. This button will allow you to add a mathmatical formula to the text.
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Ignore Wiki Formatting button. This button stops the highlighted text from following the wiki code format. Useful for writing pages like this one.
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Signature button. This button will add your timestamp and the date. Please use this to sign your posts in the Community Portal and on Talk pages. You can also type in four tildes: ~~~~
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Horizontal Line button. This button will add a horizontal dividing line on the page. We suggest you use this feature sparingly.
[edit] Adding Categories
For a list of categories, see: Categories
To add a category, put something like this at the bottom of the article:
[[Category:Characters]]
To add more than one category, simply list them all, like so:
[[Category:Characters]]
[[Category:Lost Experience Characters]]
[edit] Advanced Editing
- To rename a page, click Move at the top of the page (between History and Watch). Note: You must be logged in to move a page. A redirect page will be created automatically, so moving a page does not break links. The page's history and talk will be moved along with it.
- To revert a page to a previous version:
- Click on the history tab
- Click on the date stamp of the version you want
- Click on the edit tab
- Choose "Save Page." You can also do any editing you want before saving. Either way, it's polite to include a note in the Summary box mentioning that you are reverting the page.
- To suppress the "Edit" links that appear to the right of each heading, add __NOEDITSECTION__ to a page. This is useful for short pages that utilize headers.
- If you have added a picture and there is not enough text to separate one section from another, you can add <br clear="right"> or <br clear="left"> or <br clear="both"> (depending how the picture is aligned) at the end of the text. That will keep the next heading from running into the picture. If there is enough text to separate the sections already, the tag will not add space.
[edit] Saving
Once you have written your text, you can either save the page or show preview. We suggest that you always choose the show preview button before saving the text. However, remember that whatever happens, you or someone else can always edit your work later.
It may be useful to include an edit summary in the text box, to let others know what you did.
[edit] Testing
If you want to try something out just to see how it looks, you can use the Sandbox. The sandbox is just for experimenting, so any changes made to it are expected to be temporary. It can be useful for getting feedback on something new before making real changes to an encyclopedia page, or for testing things in different browsers.