Wiki Help

'''WIKI_TASK: Help your fellow editors. Everything you struggled with when you first started as an editor here, they will struggle with too. Help write a short introduction and reference guide for new editors and readers so they will spend less time looking for those answer. Please have a quick look at the discussion page to read up on the intention/design goal of this page.'''

You are entirely new to a wiki or forgot most what you knew about it but you want to contribute to this wiki now? Then you came to the right place.

The first and most important lesson to take away from here is: This wiki depends on the contributions from you. In order to contribute, you need to edit. Therefore, do not hesitate to start editing if there is anything you feel you can contribute. Don't be shy. Whether it's fixing a simple spelling or grammar mistake, or an incorrect fact or adding new information - just go for it. Don't worry to mess things up - it's easy to correct or entirely roll back mistakes. You can also use the indestructible Sandbox page to mess around first. You will quickly notice that editing a wiki is very easy. If you want to get a heads start, read on.

The second lesson is: Firstly, this wiki is based on MediaWiki software - the same wiki software used by Wikipedia. Therefore, if you are looking for help how to do things here and you don't yet find the information below, just look it up on the Internet - there is plenty of information, often available in your own language. Good starting places are the MediaWiki wiki, the MediaWiki help pages and the Wikipedia help pages. Secondly, this wiki is hosted by Gamepedia, therefore it is additional support available. Make sure to consult their help pages too; actually, maybe go there first before heading out further. Once you found what you were looking for, include it in this page so others will find the same answer quicker next time.

The third lesson is: If you don't know how something (e.g. fancy formating or tables) can be done on a wiki, look for wiki pages (either on this wiki or any other MediaWiki) and edit the source - take a peek and use that wiki source from that page as a starting point.

Enough introduction, lets get started.

What is a wiki
Wikipedia says: "A wiki is a website which allows collaborative modification of its content and structure directly from the web browser".

There exist many different wiki software. This wiki is based on MediaWiki - the same wiki software used by Wikipedia, in fact, this software was created by the Wikipedia Foundation who created Wikipedia.

Types of Users
Our quick help we will focus on three general types of users: readers, editors and admins.
 * Readers: They are looking for information on this wiki. Also see Wikipedia's explanation.
 * Editors: They edit or create pages and contribute to this wiki by adding or correcting information. Also see Wikipedia's explanation.
 * Admins: They look after the wiki and make fix things normal editors can't do. Also see Wikipedia's explanation.

Of course, this is an oversimplification and incorrect terminology. Read up in the help file for a proper explanation on wiki user groups and permissions. Here you find an even better description of the main user groups: Administrators, Wiki guardian and Bureaucrats.

Please note that editors can modify almost all pages on this wiki. You don't even have to register and sign in with an user on this wiki to do so, although there are many good reasons why you should register your own user.

The focus of this help page is on editors and admins, but we'll address readers briefly in the next section.

For Readers - how to find information on this wiki
Here are tips how to find information on a wiki for new wiki readers.


 * Your best starting point is the main page. Here you should be able to directly access most of the important pages of the wiki.
 * Your next best choice is the sidebar on the left of all pages, it provides links to the main sections of this wiki. You can expand or collaps some sections of the sidebar by clicking on the triangle.
 * If you want to know more about the game Squad, head over to the game description page.
 * If you want to know how to play Squad as a new player, go to the page Getting Started.
 * You can use the search box on the top right-hand corner to search for keywords.
 * If you want to see a full list of all existing pages on this wiki, go to this page.

For Editors - useful information
The following links should be useful to you:
 * Wiki Help - this page here
 * Gamepedia Help Wiki - extremely useful!
 * Squad_Wiki:Community_portal - the community portal for the Squad Wiki - your first stop if you want to help with the wiki as editor
 * Wiki Style Guide - please read it and follow it
 * Editor Dashboard - useful links for working with this wiki
 * Synref - useful quick reference for frequently wiki syntax

Common mistakes of new editors
Before we get into the depth of editing, lets review a few common mistakes new editors make. Try to avoid them, they only create additional work for yourself or other editors/admins.


 * 1) When editing a page, don't accidentially remove categories or templates from a page.
 * 2) Do not remove the stub template from a page before the page is really finished. The stub template helps to group unfinished pages in the wiki maintenance category.
 * 3) Be careful when linking to other wiki pages. The link is case-sensitive. If you either get spelling or its case wrong, you will link to a new page with a similar title and the next person clicking on that link will assume that this page does not yet exist and starts working on a duplicated page. Always double-check your links.
 * 4) Before creating a new page, first check if it already exists. Use the search function or look at the list of all pages.
 * 5) When working on a completely new page, do not worry about too much about spelling and grammar. Any text you write now will most likely have been rewritten 3 times and 5 different people in the next 6 weeks. Polishing grammar and spelling comes at a late point when the page's content is solidifying and settled.
 * 6) Please always add a short summary description when you save your changes, even if your summary is just one or two words long(e.g. "typo"), it still helps to understand what you did to the page and why.
 * 7) If you think a page title is misspelt or badly worded, use the "move" function to rename it. Do not create a new page and copy & paste the content over.
 * 8) "Oh, there is a Wiki Style Guide I should comply to as editor? I didn't know that."
 * 9) As a completely new user, you might be prevented from some kind of edits. In this case you get the error message "Something went wrong. This action has been automatically identified as harmful, and therefore disallowed. If you believe your action was constructive, please inform an administrator of what you were trying to do. A brief description of the abuse rule which your action matched is:", followed by the rule that caught and prevented your edit. This error message was created by the AbuseFilter Extension we use for this wiki to prevent SPAM and other form of vandalism. Many rules apply to new users, hence the easiest workaround is to do a simple edit first (e.g. a small text change) before doing a more elaborate edit. If you are still having problems, contact an admin.

Edit an existing page
You'll be surprised how easy it is to edit a page. Just click "Edit" or "Edit Source" at the top of any page.

"Edit", if you have enabled the visual editor in your preferences/editing, will start the visual editor. Here editing is as simple as writing in Microsoft Word.

"Edit source" allows you edit the wiki markup directly. Don't be afraid, the syntax is simple and will be explained in the following sections below.

Edit the main page
The main page is divided into 4 sections. Depending on your screen resolution, these sections will be arranged differently. Each of the sections contains a template with the actual content.

This means, if you want to edit the content of a section on the main page, you need to edit the corresponding section template.
 * Squad Wiki/Section 1 - Welcome to the Squad Wiki, Communicate.Coordinate.Conquer.
 * Squad Wiki/Section 2 - Factions, Gameplay, Other
 * Squad Wiki/Section 3 - Maps, Modding, Server Administration
 * Squad Wiki/Section 4 - empty

Create a new page
Creating a new wiki page is easy. Anyone can do this, no admin is needed.

The easiest and best way: type in new page title into the search field and search for it. This will do two things: Firstly, it will give you a list of existing pages which have matching keywords. You might find that the page you wanted to create already existed or that your page title already exists as a subheading on some page. Secondly, if no exact match with an existing page title was found, the search results will always provide a link "Create the page 'XXX' on this wiki!" - click on it and it will create your new page.

Please choose a page title carefully and also make sure the page is really necessary at all. For this, please read the Wiki Style Guide.

Please also make sure to assign a suitable category to your new page - see Wiki Style Guide.

Rename a page title
Changing the title of a page is simple. Use the "move" function under "more" at the top right of the page. Basically, this will create a new page with the new title, move everything from the current page over, and add a redirect from the current page to the new one.

Please choose a page title carefully. For this, please read the Wiki Style Guide.

Read more about it here: http://help.gamepedia.com/Moving_a_page

If you want to understand it better, you will find a better explanation here: http://help.gamepedia.com/Moving_a_page

Add redirect to another page
You can automatically redirect visitors from one page to another. This is useful if you moved the content from one page to another or when you renamed a page.

The wiki markup is:
 * 1) REDIRECT pagename

Read all about redirects here: http://help.gamepedia.com/Redirects

Embed images
First you have to upload the image. Second, you add the image to your page using the command.

Please make sure to assign a suitable category to your image - see Wiki Style Guide.

Example:



See also:
 * Our Wiki Style Guide on image use
 * https://help.gamepedia.com/Basic_images
 * https://help.gamepedia.com/Advanced_images

Embed videos
There are two ways to add a video to a wiki page: (for general video types) or xxx (for YouTube videos specifically).

It will look like this: SHeLfkKEggE

Examples:
 * SHeLfkKEggE
 * SHeLfkKEggE
 * SHeLfkKEggE

Please do not embed a lot of videos to a page, this will slow down the loading of the page significantly. If you have a lot of videos, either just provide links or a YouTube playlist.

For more information, please see Gamepedia Wiki Help.

Using links
You will be using links to other wiki pages or websites a lot on a wiki, so it's important to know the syntax in and out. It's simple but still has a few quirks.

Here are listed the typical wiki markup you most frequently need:

You can find out more about links here: http://help.gamepedia.com/Links

The following link is an even better resource: https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Help:Links

Modify sidebar navigation
You can edit the sidebar at the following link: MediaWiki:Sidebar (only wiki admins see and can edit this page).

Please note that the syntax for links in the sidebar is different than on normal pages - see info below.

Note, it may take a few hours until the sidebar updates with your latest changes.

Hint: By the way, you can collapse and expand some of the grouped lists in the sidebar by clicking the triangle.

More info:
 * https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Manual:Interface/Sidebar
 * https://help.gamepedia.com/Navigation#Sidebar

Templates
Templates allow you to reuse pre-saved wiki markup. This is an extremely handy tool you should make use of whenever appropriate. Templates are used for many different purposes. Because they contain wiki markup, you can combine them with more advanced wiki commands, e.g. categories.

If you want to include a template into a wiki page, the wiki markup is:

The template name is just the name of the wiki page that contains the template.

If you see this wiki markup in a page, you know it's calling up a template.

Read more about template here: http://help.gamepedia.com/Templates

You can list all the templates available on our wiki here: http://squad.gamepedia.com/Category:Templates

How to customize the wiki skin (appearance)
Read all about it it here: Skin Customization

Important links for this wiki:
 * MediaWiki:hydradark.css- the wiki's current CSS; this is used for all users by default
 * MediaWiki:mobile.css - the wiki's current mobile CSS; this is used for all users using mobile devices
 * Special:MyPage/common.css - your own CSS with which you can overwrite the wiki's CSS just for yourself; useful if you want to experiment with the look of the wiki without affecting the wiki for others; please note that you need to be logged in with a user for it to work; we recommend you paste the wiki's current CSS into your own and then start modifying it
 * Background image - this is the image that is shown in the background of the wiki
 * Favicon - this icon shows up in your browser's window title

You might also find the following links useful:
 * http://help.gamepedia.com/What_is_Hydra
 * https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cascading_Style_Sheets
 * https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Manual:Skinning_Part_1
 * https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Manual:Skin_configuration
 * https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Manual:Gallery_of_user_styles

How to Reference
References are a good way to link to sources or to better explain something without cluttering up a page.

Adding a reference to a page is simple, start off with typing ".

At the bottom of the page create a new heading for them, simply named "References". Once made, hit enter to bring it down a line, then click on the "Insert" drop down, click on "More" and select "Reference list". This will ensure the reference content is added into the right place.



For help on adding references through the use of wiki syntax use https://help.fandom.com/wiki/References