Help:How to contribute

Looking for wiki policies?

The wiki runs on MediaWiki, the same wiki software that powers Wikipedia and probably every other wiki you've come across on the internet. As a result, countless other people have written guides far better than we could ever hope to write about how to contribute to the wiki. So, no point in reinventing the wheel with this one.

Please try to keep in mind the specifics of how contribution will work here. None of the policies of Wikipedia or any other wiki applies here, we have our own policy articles. We are not written from a neutral point of view and referencing guidelines are fairly relaxed . For syntax and the technicalities of editing, you can't get much better than what's already written on other MediaWiki wikis.

Formatting

Using Wikitext

Wikilinks

Try to use wikilinks when writing articles. You can write wikilinks like this:

[[Article]]

That will produce Article. You can also produce red links, that look like this. This is good for indicating to other editors that an article on this topic needs to be written, and doesn't exist yet.

Wikitext guides

You can find information on how to use Wikitext to write articles effectively at Wikipedia.

Wikipedia help article on how to format articles using Wikitext (very recommended)

Styling of articles

You can find a Manual of Style at Wikipedia. Manual of Style.

Using images

Main page: Help:Pictures

You can upload images to this site using the "upload file" tool in the left panel.

You can access images directly from Wikimedia Commons without having to upload them. See https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/InstantCommons#Using_files_via_InstantCommons

Writing math

To write math, enclose text in <math></math> tags.

<math>(5+12)/(41.9999)</math> displays as

$(5+12)/41.9999$

<math>\frac{1}{2}e^{i\pi} = \frac{-1}{2}</math> displays as

${\frac {1}{2}}e^{i\pi }={\frac {-1}{2}}$

For more information, see Wikipedia's guide on how to render mathematical formulae.

Citing papers

We want to cite scientific research where possible to justify this approach. One way is to use the 'proveit' gadget that should appear in the bottom right corner while editing - see the video tutorials mentioned above for more details.

Repeating references

It is possible to reference the same document several times from within an article. On the first one, give the reference a tag : <ref name="habits">citation here</ref>. Then subsequent mentions can simply use the tag with an empty body: <ref name="habits"></ref> or xml shorthand <ref name=habits" />

Biomedical citation maker

Another (external) tool is http://sumsearch.org/cite/ - if you have a unique reference for the journal in one of various formats (such as a https://doi.org/... url), you can enter that into the box and will generate a fancy <ref>{{cite...}}</ref> sequence with title, authors, journal, etc. that you can simply paste in.

It provides a bookmarklet which allows you to generate a citation by simply selecting the doi using mouse, and pressing a button.

Creating new pages

Creating a new article

To create a new article, enter in the URL of the article you would like to create. You'll be taken to a page where you will be asked to create the article if it doesn't exist already.

Alternatively, create a redlink, like this. Then click on the redlink to create the article. You can place redlinks in articles to indicate there are articles that need writing.

Creating a redirect

Redirects move anyone who lands at that page to another page. This is used for terms that are similar, like Myopia and Shortsightedness. This is important to prevent duplicate articles that cover the same topic, and to aid in navigation of the wiki.

To create a redirect, type the following in the entire body of an article, and nothing else:

#redirect [[ArticleName]]

Using talk pages

See Help:Talk pages