User blog:Nelanvir/Tutorial on wiki editing

So I wrote this sort of guide on wiki edition while I myself began to learn how to do it, so I may as well post it.

Intro to contributing to the BBB wiki
Hello! I'm making this little tutorial in the hopes of encouraging more people to contribute to the wiki, because I know understanding how to do it might seem daunting at first with the templates and the wiki markup. I'm by no means an expert, but I thought listing what I have learned while editing might help others not make the same mistakes I did and help them getting started as editors.

These are no rules or anything like that (those should be defined and agreed on by the wiki community), just some general editing recommendations and some explanations of the most common things you will likely use while editing (Our templates and how and when to use them, adding common elements like images, links or categories to pages, etc). While I mostly refer to the way to do them using Wiki markup, the visual editors have the same options.

Part of this guide is adapted from the One Piece Wiki Guidebook. I recommend checking the Fandom Community Central for more general tutorials and help about the platform. I have also linked the specific help pages in each section for people who want to read more about a topic.

Lastly, please don't hesitate to leave a comment if you have any questions, comments or just want to give feedback.

Let's begin!

What's MediaWiki & the Unified Community Platform (UCP)?
Before getting to the guide I thought I should do a brief mention of UCP, since you might have seen some discussions and notices about it in the Fandom Platform. Wikis run on the MediaWiki software, and Fandom currently uses a heavy customized old version of MediaWiki (1.19) because at the time the core code didn't provide all the necessary functions wanted by the platform. Now the platform's software is outdated and maintaining it is costly, so all Fandom wikis are going to gradually be migrated to a modern version of MediaWiki (1.33) as part of the Unified Community Platform (UCP). You can read more about it in Community Central: Fandom is upgrading to a modern version of MediaWiki UCP: The Vision, Purpose, and_Process On the Importance of Upgrading MediaWiki Help:Unified Community Platform

This wiki has already migrated to the new platform.

EDITING
Firt of all: Don't hesitate to write short articles! They can still provide meaningful information and be expanded later. Some content is still alway better than none at all (as long as it isn't nonsense, spam or off-topic). And don't forget: wikis are community projects, so you can edit any of the articles without worries.

To create a new article, click the "Add" button on the main navigation menu, or "Create" if you reached a page that wasn't created. To start editing an article, click the "Edit" button on the top right of the page. If you want to see the page's history, rename it or open the Talk's page, just select the arrow next to the edit button to open the submenu with those options. There are two ways to edit a page, with the VisualEditor or in Source Mode.

Source Mode vs Visual Mode
Source mode allows you to edit the WikiText (markup language) of a page, while the Visual mode shows you what the page itself looks like. Currently there are two editors available: Visual and Classic, both having a source and visual mode. The Visual Editor should be the default one, but sometimes the classic one shows up. It's up to you to decide if you prefer using the source or visual mode. You can read more about the editors in Community Central Help:Editing

If you want to read more about Wikitext (aka wiki syntax, wikicode or wiki markup), you can check these links: Wikipedia's handy WikiText Cheatsheet Community Central Intro to Wikitext Wikipedia's Wikitext help Wikimedia's Help HTML in Wikitext

Page History
You can see the edit history for any article, compare between two versions of the page to see the changes made to it, and undo an edit. To see a page's history, open the dropdown menu from the arrow next to the edit button and choose "History". You will be taken to a page with a list of the edits done to an article.

Further reading: Community Central Help:Page History

Naming Articles
If the subject's name has been spelled in English in the manga, the B5 databook or in the anime, you can just use that for naming the article (This was the case for most of the main characters, where the B5 fanbook and anime used the English alphabet for the names), or use the one from official translations (Funimation, Dark Horse). Since Back 2 Back hasn't been officially translated, you will have to determine a transliteration for proper names or the translation for artifacts names (You can propably just go with the one used in the only fan translation available). Remember that pages can be moved or renamed if necessary (but if you mispelled the page title, reach to an admin or content moderator so that they can delete it)

Please note the wikis namespaces are case sensitive, so beware of capitalization: "zed o'obrien" is not the same as "Zed O'Brien".

Headings
Headings help in organizing a page in sections. A table of contents will be automatically created when four or more headings are added to a page. You can use from level 2 to level 6 headings (level 1 is reserved for pages titles), and you shouldn't skip heading levels(meaning, don't pass from heading level 2 to 6 directly).

From the Visual Editor, you can add headings from the "Paragraph" option in the toolbar. From source mode just surround the text with equal signs ("="), the number depending on the heading's level:

Lists
Usage Example: Original Soundtrack

You can add numbered or bulleted lists, an even mix the two. In source mode, to make a bulleted list use * and for a numbered list use #. More * or # indicate a deeper level:

Bulleted List:
 * One
 * Two
 * Three
 * Three point one

Numbered List:
 * 1) One
 * 2) One point one
 * 3) Two

Mxed List:


 * 1) One
 * One point one
 * 1) Two

It will look like this:
 * One
 * Two
 * Three
 * Three point one


 * 1) One
 * 2) One point one
 * 3) Two


 * 1) One
 * One point one
 * 1) Two

Adding Links to other articles
Further reading: Community Central Links Help

It's really important for every page to have links to other articles in the wiki, no page should be a dead end.

In visual mode, all you have to do is select the text you want to put a link to and click on the link symbol in the toolbar. A prompt will open for you to search the desired page, and to optionally write an alternative text to be displayed.

In source mode you have to put the name of the page between two square brackets: Article Name Article Name/A Subpage

The page's name will be displayed by default as the text for the link. If you want to display an alternative text, use the | (pipe) after the article name and on the right write the text you want displayed as the link. Like this:

Text displayed For linking to a category use Category:CategoryName. That colon after the double opening brackets prevents the page from being added to the category and instead being parsed as a link.

For example, this is how you link to the characters category See the Characters Category This will look like See the Characters Category

For external links, you need to put the URL between one square bracket, like this: Displayed text, with the text to display on the right separated by a space (not a pipe). If you don't want an alternative text, just put the URL alone without brackets to display the web adress.

You can link to a page section if it is marked with a heading, just by adding a hash (#) followed by the section's name after the link, like this: Kekkai Sensen (manga). Be aware that if the section's name changes or is deleted the link will broke, so you will need to leave a comment in that section to warn other editors or put an anchor.

Always check if a link is working correctly by previewing the page. A red link indicates a destination that doesn't exist (either because of a misspelling or because the page really doesn't exist). Be aware this check only works on internal links, for interwiki links and external links you have to manually check it.

Adding Images to articles
The toolbar has buttons to add images and galleries. From there, you can search for existing images or upload new ones (in my experience, the search box of the visual editor doesn't really work. The one in the classic editor does).

In source mode, adding an image is similar to adding a link, enclose the Image page title in double square brackets:

You can also add options to an image link to control its size and positioning: : The image appears in a smaller size at the right of the page. : The image is justified on the right. you can also do it with "left". : The image will be  pixels in size.

Options can be combined, separating them by a | (pipe), like his: See the "IMAGES" section below for some considerations and recommendations on uploading images.

Adding Galleries
Usage Examples: Curious, Hellsalem's Lot The toolbar of the Visual Editor has a button for adding galleries. From source mode, just put the images name+extension inside a

Adding a Redirect
You can see a list of redirects in Special:ListRedirects Documentation: Redirect Help Usage examples : Mary Macbeth, LHOS, Nej

Redirect pages are automatically created when a page is moved(renamed) to prevent broken links. Redirects are also useful for articles of subjects that have multiple names, either for differing names spellings or because of in-universe aliases.

You can create a redirect using #redirect Article Name in source mode. In the VisualEditor the option to create a redirect is in the hamburguer button at the right of the menu. A redirect page should not have any content besides the redirect directive.

For example, the Nej page redirects to Amagranoff Luozontam Ouv Lee Nej, with the Nej page only containing #Redirect Amagranoff Luozontam Ouv Lee Nej. If you click on the Nej link, you will see the redirect mentioned at the top of the page as "Redirected from Nej" (if you need to edit the redirect page, just click the link in the mention)

Adding References
Further reading: MediaWiki's Cite Help

Footnotes are written using the

Reference list
Try using the alternative syntax if that doesn’t work or doesn’t show in the reference list

Here is some example text that has a reference attached.

Reference List:

Adding a Navigation Box
To add one of the navigation boxes to a page (see the "Templates" section below for more info on naviboxes), just add the template by putting the name inside double curly brackets:

Anime navigation box (episodes, ost, dvd/bd)

Manga navigation box (chapters and volumes)

Adding Categories
All categories can be explored in: Special:Categories and Special:CategoryTree

Categories allow for articles to be organized and sorted, and pages can be put in various categories. You can create new categories, but I would suggest you only do it if there is no category that fits for the content you are uploading. Categories help organize the wiki's contents and a messy Category Tree is difficult to maintain (don't be afraid to make new ones! just consider if it is neccesary: does it help in sorting content? is there going to be more pages/files that fit that category?)

In the "" section of this post I'm putting an overview of the current categories in the wiki.

Avoid WikiText from being parsed
if you need for some wiki markup to not be parsed, surround it with  tag, or use   for a code box. This was used extensively in this tutorial.

Our wiki
All right, with basic editing covered we can now dig into the specifics of the kkss wiki! In this section you will find a list and short explanations of the custom templates of our wiki, some general layouts used in the different kind of pages of the wiki (Chapter pages, Characters pages, Artifact pages) and an overview of the Category Tree.

Templates
Our templates can be seen in the Templates Category.

Templates are standardized blocks of text that are stored in the "Template:" namespace. When a templated is edited, they get automatically updated in the pages that use them, so there's no need to manually update every page. For using a template, just add the Template name between two curly brackets, like this

You can check about some general templates in the Community Central (be aware some are not currently available in our wiki, like the Delete Template used to mark candidate pages for deletion). Aside for some of the general wikia templates we have our own, and you can create new templates that you consider necessary or edit existing ones (please, check this doesn't break anything and consider discussing changes with the community beforehand). Using the templates helps to keep a consistent look across the wiki, so it is encouraged.

Infobox Templates
Infobox templates are sidebar templates used to display an overview of the page's subject. Even if you aren't going to fill some of the fields (parameters) of the infobox, try to copy the whole template so it's easier for other editors to add the missing data (the empty fields aren't displayed)

We have some Infobox Templates for a variety of subjects.

Character Templates
We currently have two templates for characters. Use whatever one you like, depending on the information of the character.

Characters Profile Template
Template Documentation: Template:Character Usage Examples: Chain Sumeragi, Femt

Template parameters explanation:

An example of how to fill it and:

Character Profile (simple) Template
Documentation: Template:Character_Profile_(simple)

Template code:

Organizations
Documentation: Template:Organization Examples: LHOS, Thirteen Kings

For articles of organizations and societies that have appeared or been mentioned in the series.

Locations
Documentation: Template:Locations Usage examples: Hellsalem's Lot, Zooloody's

For anything that can be considered a location, be it cities, venues, districts, etc.

Artifacts
Documentation: Template:Artifacts Usage examples: Book of Demise, Senza Nome, //All Seeing Eyes of God//

For artifacts/objects, like the Gods proestethics, weapons, tools, etc

Episode box
Documentation: Template:Episode box Usage example: Episode 1

For individual episodes.

Chapter box
Documentation: Template:Chapter box Usage example: Chapter 3, B2B Chapter 7


 * fill the one corresponding to the magazine where the chapter was published. Currently, B2B is being published quarterly in the Jump SQ Rise magazine, so for example the parameter "issue5" could be completed as "SQ.Rise 2020 Autumn"

Volume box
Documentation: Template:Volume box Usage example:Volume 14

For volumes of the manga.


 * Until we have an official english release, these do not apply.

Song box
Documentation: Template:Song box Usage examples: Fake Town Baby, Original Soundtrack

For songs or albums pages.

dvd box
Documentation: Template:DVD box Usage example: DVD&BD vol.6

For the DVDs & BD of the anime.

Nihongo Template
Documentation: Template:Nihongo Usage Examples > Leonardo Watch, All Seeing Eyes of God

Used for japanese names (kanji, hiragana and katakana) with its romanization and english name. Mostly used in the introduction of articles.

English Name/Translaion (kanji or kana)

example: All-Seeing Eyes of the Gods (神々の義眼)

Will look like this: All-Seeing Eyes of the Gods (神々の義眼)

Heading Template
Documentation: Template:Heading Usage Examples: Steven A. Starphase/Image Gallery

A red box heading with a title. It's mainly used in Gallery Pages

Navibox
List of navigation boxes: Category:Nav Templates Usage examples (at the bottom of the articles): Episode 1 (anime navibox), Chapter 1 (manga navibox)

A navigation box presents a list of organized links to related articles. In general, they are put at the bottom of articles. We have two so far, one for the manga where volumes and chapters are listed, and other for the anime that lists the episodes, music and DVDs/BDs. If you update it, preview your changes before commiting them and ask without worries if you have questions.

This is how they look like:

Manga Navibox
Visual mode should have an option in the toolbar to insert a navibox. In source mode, you only need to put the template at the end of the page (before the categories) for the navibox to appear:

Navigation
You won't be updating this template a lot (chapters come out every three months and volumes like once a year, so) but once you are a little more familiar with the use of templates it should be fairly simple to edit this one and the Anime Navibox.

Anime Navibox
You will want to know this one for when season 3 gets announced :´) (let me dream)

Just like the other one, all you have to do is put the template at the end of the page (before the categories) for the navibox to appear:

Characters Page Gallery Templates
Listed in Category:Gallery Templates.

These templates are used in the Characters page page for presenting links to the character's pages in a prettier way, as tables with images. I'm showing only one since they are similar.

Beyondian Gallery (example)
Documentation: Template:Beyondian Gallery

There are five columns per row, each cell uses the template which takes an image, an article's title and a name to display as parameters. Once a row is completed with five charas, you can add a new row to the gallery, like this:

Layouts Examples
Some common layouts (or structures) for pages like Character's articles.

Characters
Examples: Zapp Renfro, K.K.

A brief introductory paragraph of the character (like name -in english and japanese- and who they are)

Appearance
a description of the character's appearance.

Personality
a description of the character's personality.

Plot
For the character's involvement in the story. You can separate it in subsections by chapters/argumental arcs.

Power and Abilities
a list and description of their power, abilities and weapons.

Gallery
It would be better if you create the Character/Image Gallery subpage and linked it from here, but you can put a gallery directly too.

Trivia
Curiosities and random information that didn't fit in the other sections. (a personal opinion: try to not put appearance comparisons to other characters unless it was intentional by the author)

Manga Chapters
A brief introductory paragraph (like chapter name -in english and japanese- and chapter number)

Characters
a list of characters appearing or being mentioned in the chapter.

Summary
a summary of the chapter.

Anime Episodes
A brief introductory paragraph (like episode name -in english and japanese-, episode number and adapted chapters from the manga)

Characters
a list of characters appearing or being mentioned in the episode.

Synopsis
a brief synopsis.

Summary
a more complete summary of the episode.

Manga Volumes
A brief introductory paragraph (like episode name -in english and japanese-, episode number and adapted chapters from the manga)

Cover Characters
a list of characters appearing in the cover.

Chapters
The list of chapters collected in the volume.

Summary
a brief summary of the volume.

Galleries
Usage examples: Steven A. Starphase/Image Gallery

There is no template for gallery pages, but most use this layout. You can just copy it and replace the images, to keep a consistent look across the wiki.

Helpful Tools
There are some special tools or pages in all wikis that are really helpul for contributors. I will list and explain some of them here (if you have an account here, you can add some of these to your toolbar -you can see it floating at the bottom of the browser window- for easy access).

For a list of all special pages see Special:SpecialPages

Recent Changes
Special:Recent Changes

You can see all contributions and all wiki activity on this page. It's really useful to monitor the wiki and quickly spot if somebody is spamming or vandalising pages, and to just see the latest contributions. There is a similar page called "Wiki Activity", but is not going to be part of the UCP and it doesn't list everything. Further reading: https://community.fandom.com/wiki/Help:Recent_changes

What links here
For every page, file or template in the wiki you can see which other pages link to it. In you user toolbar at the bottom, choose "My Tools">"What links here". Alternatively, go to "Special:WhatLinksHere" and write the title of the page you want to see.

Miscellaneous
Other miscellaneus pages of interest.

Special:WantedPages provides a list of linked articles that don't exist yet, so it's useful to get an idea of what pages are missing from the wiki.

Special:WantedCategories lists the categories that still don't have their page created, so they are not organized nor reachable on the Catgory Tree.

Special:All Pages lists all articles on the wiki

Categories of our wiki
Gotta be honest here, our category tree needs a little more maintenance since some categories aren't reachable from the Category Tree's root (Browse), it's a work in progress. Still, there are plenty of categories already created to organize the content, so here I'm listing them so you can get familiar with it.

You can reach all categories from Special:Categories

General Categories
 * Category:Browse
 * Category:Article stubs
 * Category:Content
 * Category:Artifacts
 * Category:Characters
 * Category:Locations
 * Category:Media
 * Category:Organizations
 * Category:Terms
 * Category:Images
 * Category:Templates

Media category
 * Category:Media
 * Category:Anime
 * category:DVD/BD
 * Category:Episodes
 * Category:Manga
 * Category:Chapters
 * Category:Volumes
 * Category:Music

Characters Category
 * Category:Characters
 * Category:Anime-only characters
 * Category:Blood Breed
 * Category:Libra
 * Category:Antagonists
 * Category:Beyondian
 * Category:Human
 * Category:Male
 * Category:Female

Images Category
 * Category:Images
 * Category:Anime Images
 * Category:Animated Gifs
 * Category:Anime Design Images (chara design sheets of the anime)
 * Category:DVD-BD Cover Images (for the DVD & BD covers)
 * Category:Episode 1, Category:Episode 2, etc. (for screenshots of the episode)
 * Category:Episode Images (cover images for the each episode's page infobox)
 * Category:Galleries ((All the article's galleries should be categorized here)
 * Category:Manga Images
 * Category:Chapter Cover Images (for the chapter cover)
 * Category:Magazine Cover Images (for manga magazines issues where kkss got the cover)
 * Category:Volume Cover Images (for the volume covers, both english and japanese editions)
 * Category:Vomic Images
 * Category:Portrait Images (icons used for the Gallery Templates)

Further readings: https://community.fandom.com/wiki/User_blog:FishTank/Categories_and_Navigation_on_Fandom https://community.fandom.com/wiki/User_blog:FishTank/Organized_spaces_on_Fandom https://community.fandom.com/wiki/Help:Category

General Considerations for Editors
These are a list of general considerations regarding content. Remember these are not rules for the wiki, just some points to take into account when contributing.


 * Remember to write the summary of the changes you are making to an article in the Edit Summary field (some of the current Editors don't make the summary box that obvious, and if you touch publish from the preview it might not prompt you to write it). If your edit is minimum (like fixing a typo, a broken link, a change in formatting. So nothing that makes any real change to the content) check the "minor edit" checkbox under the summary box. If you have created an account and see you usually forget to fill it, you can allow for a reminder in your settings, go to "My preferences > Editing" and check "Prompt me when entering a blank edit summary"


 * Try to link only once to any other article, preferably in the first mention of it. For example, if a page mentions Klaus Von Reinherz and links to its article, there should not be more links to it in every subsequent mention of Klaus. Further linking in Infoboxes is okay since these work as quick summaries, or for long articles you can link again for every major section.


 * Try to break long paragraphs into shorter ones to make it easier to read For the same reason, avoid long and complex sentences.


 * Don't forget you can always use an article's Talk Page for discussions specific to that page, the Discussions (ex Forums) for more general questions/discussions with the community, or reach out to one of the Admins or Content Moderators.

Further readings: https://community.fandom.com/wiki/User_blog:FishTank/Short_and_long_pages_on_Fandom https://community.fandom.com/wiki/User_blog:FishTank/Main_Pages_for_Fandom#Don.27t_bury_the_ledes

Uploading Images
Only registered users can upload images to the wiki. It is important to give meaningful names to the images you upload to make them easier to find, so avoid unhelpful names like "ashafgthfhbc", "154842000548" or the like. For example, if you are uploading an image of Chain from the anime to use as the infobox portrait, you can name it something like "Chain Anime Portrait.png" or "Chain Anime Infobox.png". In the "" section, you can see a list and description of some of the most important categories in our Category Tree, including all subcategories for Images.

Most images you upload are going to be copyrighted, so you need to choose the "Fair use" licensing when uploading them. If you forget to do it, go to the image's page and edit it as you would do any other page to add the Fair Use Template, like this:

Licensing
Before uploading a new image, its recommendable to check if a similar image doesn't already exist in the wiki. You can search files using the advanced search (in the search results page, click "Advanced" and uncheck all checkboxes except Files), or search trough the Images Category. Sometimes the upload form of the Editors fails -I have received the "invalid token" prompt many times-, but don't get frustrated with it, you can always add the image later (Hopefully this will be fixed when the migration to UCP is complete). You can upload images outside the editors by expanding the submenu (three dots) on the right of the "ADD" button from the main navigation.

Probably okay to upload:
 * single panel, single page or contiguous panels from a single page from the manga.
 * screenshots of a single frame from the anime.
 * animated gifs showing a single scene from the anime (like an attack technique). Consider the file size and dimension -big files may cause slow loading times-. No subtitled or signed gifs.
 * official character sheets designs.
 * covers (dvd/bd, volumes, magazines) and promotional material.

Better not:
 * Fanart.
 * Images unrelated to the wiki's subject.
 * Photo manipulation (images with altered colors, added drawings or text, etc). About cleaning images, I leave it up to your discretion (for example, erasing backgrounds for portraits)
 * Images showing multiple pages from the manga.
 * Images for user page usage (try to use an external hosting like imgur)
 * Pornography, nudity or explicit scenes -even from official sources-. This is according to FANDOM/UCP terms of use: Fandom TOS

Image information uploading from the article (at least in some of the current visual editors), doesnt give you some of these options, but they can be added later.
 * Description (optional, but helps give a clue on the usage of the image). You can also add the image's source(where the file comes from *which episode, chapter or volume. For unreleased content, the website from where it came from. Promotional images should source the magazine, web or place where it appeared)
 * Licensing (Please provide the correct licensing. Most images will be copyrighted and fall under Fair Use)
 * Categorization( See the wiki's Image categories. If you are not sure, check for similar images or ask other editors in the discussions)

Image replacement You don't need to provide an explanation or ask permission to replace an image on a page. Take note this does not mean other editors will consider it a better choice, and in these cases you can use the image's talk page or discussions to argue your decision/choice. Try not replacing images for others of lower quality. To upload a new version of a file, go to the page for that image and search for the link "Upload a new version of this file" (or "Replace" in the menu next to the edit button).

Unused and duplicated files You can check for unused files in the special page Special:UnusedFiles Images take up memory and unused images serve the wiki in no way, so unused and duplicated files might get deleted.

DELETING PAGES
Pages can only be deleted by Administrators or Content Moderators. If you think a page should be deleted because is duplicated, spam, vandalism, nonsensical, breaks a rule, or because you created a page by mistake, contact one of the admins or content moderators leaving a message in their Message Wall. (The Delete Template, for marking pages as candidates for deletion, is not in the wiki. You are free to add it if you want). For other reasons, you should start a discussion in the page's Talk Page stating why you think it should be deleted so the community can decide together.

You can see who are the Admins and Moderators in the Community page