Soyjak Wiki:Beginner's guide

Do you want to contribute to the 'ki but don't know where to start? This page is for you.

Overview

You can click Edit to get started. You should make a few edits before creating a new page. You may also check out the Manual of Style, which provides guidelines for editing.

Basic info

• You can make edits using the visual editor by clicking the "edit" button at the top of an article, or using the source editor by clicking "edit source" instead.
  • The visual editor is easier to use. It's recommended to start with this. It's more intuitive in multiple ways, but doesn't allow for complete control like the source editor.
  • The source editor is the advanced editor. You should ignore it for your first few edits, then check it out when you're comfortable with the visual editor. It allows for direct access to the markup language, and generally has more features and control. One downside is that you have to click Preview to see how it'll look. You might find yourself using this more often as you gain experience.
  • Source editor is forced on some namespaces (Talk: and Soyjak_Wiki: for example). This is okay. Proceed as normal, and do add a signature when you write on talk pages.
• The wiki uses a markup language called wikitext for formatting. For example, '''bold''' for bold text and [[link|text to display for the link]] for a link. The visual editor can handle most of this.

Your first contributions

If you want to start contributing but don't think you're ready to start making new articles yet, try one of the listed activities, and keep in mind the Manual of Style.

• Report on the latest happening. When doing this, you'll want to use archives and insert the archive links at the end as citations (cite button in the visual editor)
• Add links to pages. See Special:LonelyPages and Special:DeadendPages
• Fix typos
• Document the latest GET
• Improve pages in Category:Coal Articles. You can also check out Special:RecentChanges to find the newest articles being created or worked on and gem them up.
• If you're feeling brave, the blackboard on the Soycripture portal should have some tasks to do.

Your first article

Ready to make an article? First off, look to the right and search the name of the article that you want to make in the search box. Make sure that the name of the article is singular and in lowercase except for when it's a proper noun like a name, so "Soyjak" instead of "Soyjaks" and "New toss" instead of "New Toss" (other guidelines like this can be found in the Manual of Style.)

• Make sure that the topic of your article actually has to do with 'jakking. If your article is irrelevant (some SNCA media or namefag), it is liable to be 'nished by wiki joons. If you want to write an article on yourself, do it in your user page by clicking on your name at the top of the page.
• Don't writed in a ESL. Use proper grammar and a semi-formal style that allows you to be serious and funny at the same time. Try your best to be funny, it's hard to pull off sometimes but important.
• Insert templates at the top of the page, but don't put too many. Two header templates and one quality indicator template like {{Gem}} or {{CoalShort}} is enough.
• Add images. You can actually use all images that are on Wikimedia Commons right away without uploading them here first. Click on this flag and then "more details".
• Use (archived) sources that are peer-reviewed and fact-checked by Snopes and Fauci. This is especially important if you're trying to convince everyone that the random fag you're obsessed with is a brown transgender armenorussoukrainian bbw queen.

Advanced section

You can ignore this section until you have some experience under your belt.

• If you want to add colored text, backgrounds, and borders, then the wiki also supports HTML and CSS styling, mainly through the source editor. To use this, first surround the text you want to style in html tags like <span>this</span> or <div>this</div>, and then in the first tag, add style="property1;property;2;property3; where each property has a semicolon after it, for example <span style="font-size:10px;color:red;font-weight:bold;>test</span> becomes test.
• Speaking of colored text and backgrounds, the styling above is how templates are made, which are the funny boxes and text at the top and bottom of each article and the infoboxes you see on the right side of articles on people and soyjaks. Templates work through something called trans clusion. Transclusion is basically a feature where you can have the wiki automatically copy one article into another and update this copy when the original changes. You can do this by clicking Insert > Template or typing {{ in the visual editor which pulls up a wizard that does this for you, or with the code {{Template:Name of Template}} if the article's name starts with Template:, and {{:Article Name}} if it does not.

In the box below, I have used both HTML <div> tags (which generates a box, unlike <span>) and transclusion to automatically transclude a test article into this guide. Hit "view source" on this article to see what this actually looks like in wikitext.

This is a test article made just for the purposes of this guide.

By the way, transclusion is how all images work too. Did you notice that all files uploaded to the wiki are actually just pages? When you insert an image or video into an article you're just transcluding that file's article into the page.

Soyjak Wiki Guides and Policies Guides: The Manual of Style - Beginner's Guide - About - Staff - Coal Articles - Rollback Policies: Rules - Moderation - Privacy Policy