What is a wiki?
At its most basic, a wiki is a web site that is easily modified by its readers/visitors/users. It runs on software that allows pages to be edited in a simple format, rather than mess about with HTML. The software we're using here is called [UseModWiki].
(What is a wiki? Here are some definitions courtesy [UseMod] and [Wikipedia]. Wikipedia is a huge open-content encyclopedia, based on the wiki model and completely user-contributed.)
Have a look around the site. Notice how everything's interlinked. Also note the "Edit" link in red at the bottom of almost every page. It's for real. Anyone can edit the pages here. (See the Editing Guide for more about how to do this.)
Revision history: The wiki also keeps track of every edit made to a page, which is useful for tracking down who wrote something, or reverting to an older version in the case of an editing error (it's also how 'vandalism' is handled on wikis). At the bottom of every editable page, the wiki reports the time and author of the most recent edit. The "(diff)" link will highlight the most recent changes on the page. To go back further in a page's history, click the "View other revisions" link.
- Tip: Click on the title of any page to see a list of all pages that link to it. (Actually, it performs a general search for the title of the page, so if you click on the title on the Characters page, for instance, it'll show all pages that even mention the word "characters", not just links.)
The Recent Changes page shows a list of all pages that have been edited in the past month.
Under Preferences (visible when you've logged in), you can change how many of the above pages are displayed.
About the Puzzlebox Wiki
This is a repository of information about stories, characters, places and ideas surrounding Puzzlebox MUCK.
A few somewhat-standard conventions that have arisen since we started:
(we really don't know what we're doing; we're making it up as we go along)
- Subpages are a way of organizing several pages under a main page.
- Characters have subpages under the Characters page: Characters/Aex.Rat, for example.
- Other pages with this sort of structure: Factions, Warps, The Functions, Media Resources, Meta, Plots and Old Plots.
- Some places and topics specific to individual Warps are written up on subpages. For example, Strange has several, such as Strange/Library. There really isn't that much convention here, though, so don't worry about it. You can always move/rename pages later. (If you use the 'edit/rename pages' link at the bottom to do that, you'll be able to have all the links to the moved page changed.)
- There's only one level of subpage, incidentally - you can't have a page called "Strange/Library/Basement", for example.
- Some people have also created subpages for things related to one of their characters, or for posting some of their logs.
- When you link to a subpage, only the name of the subpage appears by default:
[[Artifacts/Bells]] shows up as just Bells. More about this in the Editing Guide under "Links".
- Author pages: Every time you make an edit, the editing history will include a link to your "author page" - a page with the same name as your login. A common practice is to redirect the author page to a character page (see the Editing Guide for more about redirection). Some people also use it as an out-of-character (OOC) page, often with links to their various characters and other creations.
- Most people use one login, though a couple use more than one if there's a secret alt they don't want to give away...
- The wiki is a collective notebook and scrapbook. The tone and voice used in the writing changes on every page. Some pages are completely IC, some completely OOC; some are not even that. Adding commentary and notes "in the margins" is common and encouraged.
- Sometimes a slow dialogue emerges in the successive editing. When this happens, there's a tendency to sign your additions, as I have for this line. --Twin
- You can edit anyone else's page, too, of course. A lot of character pages have sections specifically for other people to add comments and quotes. Strictly speaking, it's not necessary, but people do it anyway.
- As time passes, and an old discussion becomes less relevant, it's often good to "archive" them. For example, there was a series of comments left on the Factions page that have since been moved to Factions/Discussion so casual readers wouldn't be inundated with old chit-chat.