Help:Editing policies

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This page contains information on how one should edit this wiki, eg: best practices, protocols, templates and the like.

See for example:

Help:Recommendations for editors
How to configure your account and to make sure your information gets displayed correctly.
Help:Naming protocol
How to choose and spell names, terms, titles and the like.
Help:Categories and properties
How use, categories and properties and how to create new ones.

Semantic mediawiki extension

The snicdocs wiki uses the semantic mediawiki extension, which enables nifty things like dynamic generation of lists, tables and mashups based on tagged data in ordinary wiki pages. The annotation is unobtrusive, e.g:

I am competent with [[expertise::Python]].

to note that this page (or rather the person described by this page) is competent in Python. The search/generate syntax is equally straightforward

{{#ask: [[Category:Software]] [[Category:Bioinformatics]] |?centre }}

However, we must not let nomenclature run rampant and diverge (see: the problem with the semantic web). See naming protocol below.

Notice

In case the examples appear in red, or if you see similar broken links with double colons in them in other places on the wiki, do not edit the links. They appear because you have happened to come across the pages before we have managed to install the semantic mediawiki extension properly on our production server. This problem should disappear very shortly, and if it persists beyond your definition of shortly, it may help to edit the page, do nothing, and click save, to prod mediawiki to regenerate the links. If nothing works, please notify User:Joel Hedlund (NSC).

Creating pages

Ensure that you have set up your watch preferences and notifications correctly.
Watch all pages that you create. Unwatched pages rot and we do not want that.
Look at the example pages
These are in the proper layout and use all the nifty templates for getting all the required information right. Chances are that much of the tedious work has already been done for you.
Put some deep thought into the choice of page title.
This is a wiki, so it matters a lot. See the relevant example pages for more details. Read the naming policies for titles, headings and names so you get it right.
Create the talk page
Also called the Discussion page. As this wiki is not open for unauthenticated editing other than through the talk pages, these are our primary form of input from the general public.

Page examples, designs and templates

The examples and designs are all here:

Category:Example page

along with motivation on why you should not call them templates (because mediawiki has called dibs on that term).

Editing help

Editing help is available here: Help:Editing.