An Article Start to Finish: Using Basic Markup in MediaWiki
From Extension Collaborative Wiki
Week 3
Contents |
Learning Objectives
After completing this lesson the participants will:
- Use the MediaWiki editing toolbar to mark up section headings
- Use the MediaWiki editing toolbar to bold and italicize text
- Properly mark up numbered and bulleted lists
- Read marked-up MediaWiki content and interpret its purpose
Introduction to the Lesson
Formatting articles in MediaWiki is a bit different from using a word processor. Instead of a strict WYSIWYG ("what you see is what you get") approach, MediaWiki uses text codes to create particular elements of the page (e.g., headings, bolding, and lists). This is known as Wiki-markup.
When people first see Wiki-markup they are often overwhelmed, but it is actually quite simple. In fact, wikis are known for their ease of use. That is what has made them so popular and the tool used by millions of people who have contributed to projects like Wikipedia. Wiki-markup was designed for its ease of use, and for being human-readable. (As opposed to HTML markup which is meant to be machine-readable.)
Demonstrations and Learning Activities
Formatting your content
We're going to begin to format your content at this time. We know that your article will not be complete at this early stage. We expect that you will continue to flesh-it-out right up until the end of the seminar and probably long after. Content in a wiki is never quite finished. It's best to think of all wiki content as a work-in-progress.
Regardless, it's not too early to begin to describe your content by applying some Wiki-markup. You will note that the content that we are writing as a part of this seminar, A Guide to Blogs for Extension is far from complete. We're writing as we go as well, but we're going to give it a little more structure at this time. The next screencast will walk you through the process of getting-started with formatting your article.
Screencast 1:
Using Basic Markup in MediaWiki - section headings - (Transcript: Using Basic Markup in MediaWiki - section headings)
Screencast 2:
Using Basic Markup in MediaWiki - bold and italics - (Transcript: Using Basic Markup in MediaWiki - bold and italics)
Screencast 3:
Using Basic Markup in MediaWiki - bulleted and numbered lists - (Transcript: Using Basic Markup in MediaWiki - bulleted and numbered lists)
Hands-on Activity
- After watching the screencasts on Using Basic Markup in MediaWiki, login to the Collaborate wiki and go to your article page.
- Follow the examples that were demonstrated in the screencast and:
- Markup your level 2 section headers. (Remember that sections help online searchers locate your article, so if you do not have any sections yet, add some now.)
- Find any scientific names in your content and italicize them. The eXtension Manual of Style outlines which portions of your text should be italicized.
- If you have any words in your article that should be emphasized, make them bold.
- Markup any lists that you have in your content. You may create either bulleted or numbered lists, or a combination of the two.
- Continue to add to and edit your article
- Read articles of fellow participants and edit, or add comments on their talk pages
If you want to learn more
ADD: something about Table of Contents that appears "automagically" when there are 4 or more section headings in an article
Basic Wiki-markup
Wiki Markup is describing the content, if you've worked on the wiki you know you don't need to know the HTML, but there are some things you need to think differently about than if you were using a word processor. For example, in a word processor you may just use a different font, but we do it a little differently in a wiki
Describing the Content
Currently, the Communities of Practice (CoP) content is available to only CoP members, not the public. However, the goal of eXtension is to provide this information to the public, via the eXtension wiki. Once the website is launched, the public will be able to find information and answers to their questions on a wide range of topics researched within Extension.
When you publish your text to the CoP website, it should be straight text, without varying fonts or layout. Within a wiki, uniform text is important, for uploading reasons. The use of HTML coding is not required, nor is it very helpful for uploading text to the wiki. There are a few basic formatting needs, which have buttons on the screen to assist you:
- section headings
- bold
- italics
- links.
Wiki Mark-up vs. HTML code
There are several HTML code items that are useful. Please visit the Step by Step Guide for Basic Wiki Mark-up, to read and view some of these HTML codes, which can still be useful in a wiki environment.
Next Steps
Practice markup in any article in the Wiki
Bold for emphasis of words, up-style capitalization for titles, section headings, manual of style
Lists in a Wiki
basic lists, nested lists, mixed lists, unique situations
Basic Unordered List You have a line of text, something to describe it (introductory line), then you have an asterisk and put your first item, return put another asterisk and put a second item etc. The bullets are set by style sheet, set by the computer, this moves out of Wiki markup and into xHTML with the typical list items
Basic Numbered List Basically the same thing as an unordered list except it starts with a number rather than an an asterisk
Nested Numbered List Start with a number for the first item and then a double number for a sub item and then two numbers for another sub item and then one number for the second item etc.
Mixed Lists Items that would contain a number and then possibly a bulleted item under that list, here we'd have one item on the list done with a bullet and then a numbered item below that and then another numbered item below that then another bulleted item and then a numbered sub item
Unique Situations Where you are numbering items, but you want to have an explanatory paragraph to describe it and then you want to add a second item. As media wiki does its list, as soon as you get to a line by itself, that doesn't start with a # then it assumes the list is over
Basically you put an asterisk in front for an unordered list and a # for an ordered list
Nested lists work in a similar way, mix the items again,
- This is an item
- This is the first sub item
- Yet one more item
- and "yet one more item's" first sub
We have a bulleted item with one below it
save the page, and it becomes
- This is an item
1. This is the first sub item
- Yet one more item
1. and "yet one more item's" first sub
Thats how you create a mixed list, you can do the same thing and turn it around and do the numbered items followed by an asterisk, basically it's the exact same procedure
Go back to just a straight numbered list
- This is the first item
- This is the second item
- This is the third item
if I
wanted to have some text to explain I could indent the text with a colon
- this is a really difficult problem solve
and then I wanted to continues my list
- This is the fourth item
It breaks the list
Remember the rule we said, we have to put a number sign in before the colon so the list is continuous
- This is the first item
- This is the second item
- This is the third item
- this is a really difficult problem solve
- This is the fourth item
People often start a list and then want to write a paragraph, so just remember to put the number sign before the colon so the list stays continuous, but the paragraph is not numbered (Same with bulleted lists)
Next Steps
To summarize:
Use what you've learned, now that you know how to make lists, do it
Fix lists of others, people often manually number lists, so you can fix them or help others to fix them
Teach others, if they look like they need help, don't hesitate to help
