Help:Editing

Starting an Article
There are 2 ways to start a new article:


 * 1) Typing the URL into the address bar. For example: http://gentoo-wiki.com/New_Article
 * 2) Creating a link on an existing page, then clicking the link.

Please pay attention to the naming conventions and style guide.

Formatting Articles
For specific on wiki markup and formatting articles, please see the following articles.


 * Naming conventions
 * List of templates
 * Style Guide

For general help on editing the wiki, please see the Mediawiki Help.

Summary Comments
Please use the summary comment to describe what you're doing, especially for large edits. If people don't understand why you've made a specific change. Not using comments can lead to misunderstandings (for example, large deletions might inadvertantly be seen as malicious and reverted).

Merging Articles
Please consider carefully before merging articles. The articles on this site should generally be easy to follow with as little potential cause for confusion as possible.

Articles should generally only be merged if there are a number of very small articles (eg. only a few lines) on very closely related topics, or where articles cover the same topic.

In many cases it is better to use links and categories to group related articles.

When you do merge articles, don't forget to also merge the contents of the discussion pages.

Moving Articles
Any user can move a page, but this function should generally be used sparingly. You should also be aware that there are a number of other considerations when moving a page:


 * Ensure the new name is compliant with the current page naming conventions (which are occaisionally changed, so please check them if you haven't done so recently)
 * Update all internal links (using "What Links Here" in the Toolbox on the bottom left)
 * If this isn't done, double redirects are created. These occur where a redirect leads to a redirect, in which case only the first redirect happens automatically and the user has to click the link to perform the second or later redirect.
 * Always move the talk page with an article, unless you have a very good reason for not doing so.

Note that the new article name must either not exist, or exist as a redirect page with only 1 entry in the page history.

Deleting or Clearing Content from Articles
Only administrators can delete pages. Other uses should instead use Template:Delete to recommend templates for deletion, giving their reasons.

Users should not clear the content from pages except where the content is obviously spam.

Subpages
Subpages are a way to split up articles to make them easier to follow. They should be used where there are sections which only apply to certain setups or are optional extras.

As a general guide, if you think a page article should be in different (or extra) categories over those of the main article, it probably shouldn't be a subpage.

Also, subpages should not be used as a way to categories articles (for example, using Wireless/Atheros 5xxx instead of just Atheros 5xxx just ends up using Wireless as a category).

Temporary Pages
If you wish to create a temporary article, please use a subpage of your User namespace. For example: User:AllenJB/Temporary Article. This helps to keep the main namespace tidy and prevents the pages from turning up in normal searches (the User namespace is not searched by default).

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