Welcome

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Welcome to the NESCent Academy wiki, a web site specifically created to facilitate sharing of course information and materials. This wiki is powered by MediaWiki -- the same technology that is used at Wikipedia. This wiki is publicly readable, and instructors have editing access. To edit the wiki (if you have an account), first login using the "login" link in the upper right hand corner.

Contents

Quick start

  • To navigate, use the links in the left-hand-side sidebar.
  • For new content, MediaWiki expects text marked up with formatting symbols. The markup is simple and much of it can be learned by mimicking existing text on a page.
    • To edit a whole page, click the "edit" tab on top.
    • To edit a section, click the "edit" link on the far right from the section's title.
  • To learn more:

Getting comfortable

For also see Navigation topic in the MediaWiki documentation.

What's on a page?

  • Left-hand sidebar -- navigation and tools
  • "My" line on top -- your personal page, look-and-feel preferences, etc.
  • Tabs on top of main body -- "edit" and "history" are most important.
  • Categories on bottom of main body -- these are essentially "tags" and are assigned by you, the (or a) page author
  • In the body of the page:
    • Sections -- between horizontal lines.
    • Table of contents -- on top; auto-generated; can be hidden or shown.
    • [edit] link for every section -- on the far right from its title.

How to find things?

All the tools are reachable from the left-hand-side toolbar.

  • See All Pages in the "wiki tools" box in the sidebar.
  • See By Category in the "wiki tools" box.
    • there, "nn members" refers to the number of pages marked by the category
    • "Blue" categories have a description on their page and then the list of member pages.
    • "Red" categories are ones no one yet bothered to describe. Just scroll past the edit box to see their member pages.
  • Search! The search box is right in the toolbar
    • "Search" button does a google-like search through the wiki -- try "file" or "image".
    • "Go" tries to open the page with the name you entered -- try "agenda". If not successful, it acts the same as "Search".
    • A few more useful tools are in Special pages, linked from the "toolbox" box at the bottom of the sidebar. Here are the particularly interesting ones:

Adjusting your preferences

Click "my preferences" link on top of any page. Here are some particularly useful things to adjust:

  • User Profile tab:
    • Real name
    • Signature -- if left blank, your auto-generated signature will be your (no-so-friendly) user name or email.
  • Editing tab:
    • Size of the edit window -- set Rows to about 15 or 20 (the default could be ridiculously low at 2 or 3).
    • Enable section editing via [edit] links -- check it, very handy!
  • Search tab -- just select all the Namespaces checkboxes until you are more familiar with this wiki.
  • Misc tab
    • Show table of contents -- have this checked.

What do others do?

  • Changes in the whole wiki: Recent changes -- in the "wiki tools" box of the sidebar.
  • Changes to the current page: use the "history" tab on top.
    • This shows the list of saved versions.
    • To see how the page changed between any two versions: select the versions' radio buttons, then click "Compare selected versions" on top.

Uploading files

  • to upload a file, create a Media link: [[Media:myfile.pdf|lecture notes]], which will appear as lecture notes. Click on the red link to upload the file. Then, the link will change to blue once the file is in the database.
  • some notes on file names (the name between 'Media:' and '|'):
    • the file name does not need to match the filename on your machine
    • the file name must be unique for this wiki. Avoid using names like "infile.txt" or "instructions.doc", as there may already be a file from another course or session with the same name. If you save the page, and the link is blue, then there is already a file in the database with this name.
    • the extension of the file name does need to match the uploaded file. You can't upload myfile.doc if the link is called myfile.pdf.
    • not all file types are supported by MediaWiki by default. You can see the list of default types on the Special:Upload page. If you try uploading a file and get an error about an unsupported type, email [1] and ask for that type to be added to the whitelist. Note that custom additions do not show up in the list on the Special:Upload page (for example, we have added *csv to the list).

Wiki Administration

For administrative tasks for this wiki, such as adding new users, making pages publicly visible, and customizing the left-hand sidebar, please coordinate your request with your group leaders and make them send it to help@nescent.org. You can also request that the necessary permissions to do these tasks are granted to users you designate.

Retrieved from "http://academy.nescent.org/wiki/Welcome"
NESCent Academy