Help:Editing

The MediaWiki software is extremely easy to use. Viewing pages is self-explanatory, but adding new pages and making edits to existing content is extremely easy and intuitive as well. Editing Simple Electronics wiki is much the same as editing on Wikipedia. To view how the examples here were entered, edit this page without saving.

Editing rules and conventions
The number one rule of wiki editing is be bold'. Go ahead – make changes. No damage can be done that can't be easily fixed.

An edit can contribute whole new paragraphs or pages of information, or it can be as simple as fixing a typo or a spelling mistake. In general, try to keep it brief and to the point.

If you're creating a large article ask yourself how you can instead split it into one main article along with sub-articles.

Editing the wiki
At the top of any wiki the page, you will see some tabs titled Page, Talk, Read, Edit, View history, Watch (a star) and Move. Clicking the edit tab opens the editor, a large text entry box in the middle of the page. This is where to enter plain text. Unlike regular websites using HTML and CSS, very little formatting code (known as "wiki markup") is required. At the top of this text entry box is a row of buttons and collapsed menus with small icons on them. Holding the mouse cursor over an icon displays a tool-tip telling you its function. These buttons make it very simple to use the formatting features of the wiki software. You can achieve the same effect by typing the correct wiki code, however using the buttons makes it very simple and also eases the process of learning the correct code syntax. Please do your best to always fill in the edit summary field.

If you don't have the editing toolbar enable it at Preferences:Editing and tick Enable the editing toolbar.

Below the text entry box is a single line box for you to enter a brief summary describing your edits. To make it easier for others following changes on the wiki please try to always enter something in the edit summary field.

Try it out on the sandbox page
Use the sandbox page to play around and experiment with editing. This is just a place to play and explore. Any content here won't be preserved. You can create your own sandbox area by appending "/sandbox" to the URL of your user page, or (if enabled in your preferences) click the Sandbox link in the personal toolbar area. Your own sandbox is where to rough out articles until they're ready for posting. Don't do articles in rough in the main wiki. Sandboxes will be indexed by search engines like any other page, unless the first line is  or.

Creating links and adding pages
Highlight some text with the cursor then click the Link button to create either a link to either a wiki page or to an external web page. A wikilink in the editor has the format e.g.  ie. surrounded by double square brackets. Use a vertical bar "|" (the "pipe" symbol) to create a link with a different name to original article eg..

Only the first occurrence of a link on the page needs to be the link, any further uses of the word/phrase can be in plain text. If the page doesn't exist already the link will be in shown with red text. Following a redlink opens up the editor window for creating that page within the wiki structure. Linking articles in a structured way is the preferred method of adding new pages to the wiki. Except for names, always use ordinary sentence case for article titles.

An external link to a page elsewhere on the Internet has the form, ie. the URL, followed by a space, followed by linking text in single square brackets. Please don't use interwiki links as they take users off wiki without notification.

Every article is part of a network of connected topics. Establishing such connections via internal links is a good way to establish context. Each article should be linked from more general subjects, and contain links where readers might want to use them to help clarify a detail. Only create relevant links. When you write a new article, make sure that one or more other pages link to it. Ideally there would be an unbroken chain of links leading from the Main Page to every article in the wiki.

Always do Show preview before Saving changes to confirm your edits will appear as you expect them to. Also check any links you have made to confirm that they do link to where you intended.

See also Wikipedia:Manual of Style/Linking

Headings
Headings help clarify articles and create the structure shown in the table of contents.

Headings are hierarchical. The article's title uses a level 1 heading, so you should start with level 2 heading and follow it with a level 3 (, and just use   after that). Whether extensive subtopics should be kept on one page or moved to individual pages is a matter of personal judgement.

Headings should not be links. This is because headings in themselves introduce information and let the reader know what subtopics will be presented; links should be incorporated in the text of the section.

Except for names, use ordinary sentence case for headings, ie. only the first word has an initial capital letter.

Lists
In an article, significant items should normally be mentioned naturally within the text rather than merely listed. Where a "bulleted list" is required each item/line of the list is preceded by an asterix or  for indenting a sublist use two asterixes  ). For numbered lists use a hash sign  and further hash signs for subsections. Lists of links are usually bulleted, giving each link on a new line.

Capacitor types

 * Polarised
 * Aluminium electrolytic
 * Tantalum bead
 * Non-polarized
 * Ceramic
 * Film Capacitor
 * Polyester
 * Polystyrene
 * Polypropylene
 * Silver mica

Definition lists
Are useful for more than just terms and definitions. Use semi-colons and colons:
 * Some term – this line starts with ;
 * And then a definition – this line starts with a :

Images
Very generic filenames should not be used when uploading, as sooner or later someone else will use same name and this will overwrite the first file. Without being excessively long File names should be descriptive. This is helpful to other editors.

Finding images

 * Category:Synth DIY, Wikimedia Commons. Upload your images here if you want others to use them.
 * Category:Electronic components, Wikimedia Commons
 * Public domain image resources, Wikipedia's large list of links to public domain image resources.
 * Google Advanced Image Search, allows filtering by licence/usage rights
 * Public domain and Creative Commons licensed content

Hotlinking
Hotlinking from from Wikimedia Commons is fine. You can first upload your file there, but be sure to use a long descriptive or unique file name. This is to avoid name clash. When files have the same name, some other other file might be displayed locally instead of the one expected.

See also Commons:Reusing content outside Wikimedia/technical.

Hotlinking is not recommended because anyone could change, vandalise, rename or delete a hotlinked image. There is no control over what is served locally. If you do hotlink, then it is still necessary to follow any licensing conditions.

Generally hotlinking is wrong because it exploits another servers bandwidth to supply the files. For files on sites other than Wikimedia, don't link directly to those files without permission. Either download a copy from the other site and then upload it to the wiki, or link to the other site's page on which the file can be found.

Illustrations
An article without at least one illustration seems incomplete. Just a few images can help to explain complex ideas. If not photographs then here are a few applications for creating images, that may be worth investigating:
 * LibreOffice Draw with LibreSymbols extension.
 * Inkscape, a vector graphics editor. See this page of links to learning resources.
 * WinFIG, this is a vector graphics editor for Windows, like [//en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Xfig Xfig].

Schematics
Options for quickly illustrating articles with simple schematics:

Eeschema
Open the KiCad Eeschema drawing, then do File, Plot, select Output Format SVG, in Options set Page size to Schematic size, unselect Plot border and title block, then click Plot All Pages. Import into Inkscape, select the wanted

Import into Inkscape, select the wanted section of the schematic, then do Edit and click Resize Page to Selection (or do Shift+Ctrl+R), then File, Export PNG Image (or Shift+Ctrl+E), then over at the right change Export area to only Selection, click Export As to give it a suitable name then click Export.

Alternatively use a screen capture.

Other programs

 * Some suggestions listed at StackExchange EE:Good Tools for Drawing Schematics
 * Wikipedia:Project Electronics/Programs.
 * CircuiTikZ is an add-on for drawing circuits in LaTeX
 * Inkscape, with the Open source SVG CircuiTikZ symbol set or the Electrical symbols library file from Wikimedia Commons.

Other file types
See Help:Editing/Multimedia

Tables
For tables use wiki markup not HTML or images. Visual Editor simplifies editing tables. Until you're more used to them another easy way to work with a table is to first edit it in a spreadsheet, then copy and paste it into the tab-delimited string to wiki markup converter. There are other methods also, described at Commons:Convert tables and charts to wiki code.

On the editing toolbar reveal the Advanced menu and then clicking the Table icon produces the following. Which displays as

For more in depth information on table markup see Wikipedia:Help:Table.

Formatting
Stick to plain text and ensure you keep the content meaningful. Relying on styling to indicate meaning is a bad practice (ie. for machine readability such as by search engines, screen readers using text-to-speech, and text browsers).

Inline styling
Inline styling allows more options than with wiki markup or templates but avoid using it unless there is no other alternative such as a template. See Mediawiki:Help:Formatting.

Inline CSS styling
Some HTML tags and inline styling is allowed, for example,  ,   and. These apply anywhere you insert them but depend upon which fonts are installed on the client. For example using. For colored text use the font color template e.g.  to produce example text.

Indenting text
Use a colon : at the start of the line to indent text, and another colon :: for another level of indentation.

Subscript and superscript
gives FooBar and  gives BarBaz.

Inserting symbols
On the editing toolbar reveal the Special characters menu for special symbols. Special characters can also be inserted by using HTML entities. For example &amp;#91; will show &#91; and &amp;gt; will show &gt;. These are case-sensitive. For a list of HTML entities see List of HTML entities

Preformatted text
For preformatted text use the  tags or indent it by one space at the start of the line.

Text boxes
Use templates for text boxes, e.g. . Find another page using one suitable then copy and paste.

Mathematical
See Help:Editing/Mathematical

Categories
Add one or more categories to pages or uploaded file, by simply adding eg. . Categories themselves need to be categorised to create a hierarchy for navigating through the wiki.

Standard appendices
Information that can follow after the body of the article should follow in this order:
 * Lists, e.g. a list of designs, or a table of usage
 * See also, a list of local wikilinks to related articles
 * Notes and references
 * Further reading, a list of recommended relevant books, articles, or other publications that have not been used as sources
 * External links, a list of recommended relevant websites that have not been used as sources

Templates
A template is a page that gets included in another page, (this is called transclusion). This is useful for text that is often repeated. For example, create a page called "Template:Main article" with the text
 * The main article for this is

and then to use the template insert " " where you want that text to appear.

Talk pages
Don't leave visible notes and comments in the article. At the top of every article, the second tab entitled Talk opens the articles talk page. This is where to dicuss the article or leave notes for other editors. Remember to sign you posts on talk pages, (second from last button). In articles to leave notes or explanations use HTML commenting. These will be hidden except from other editors. An HTML comment, which has the form:, will work fine in Mediawiki.