Help:Contributing
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Accounts
You need a user account to edit pages, you can register here. The account thing is just a precaution against spammers, and everyone is welcome to join in and contribute, no matter what level of paddling, or wiki, experience they may have.
Getting Started
Once you have your account, before you get started for real, you can experiment with editing WikiPages. You can use either your user page which you access by clicking your account name at the top of the page or in the public Sandbox. Read the help on editing pages before you start.
User Page
Every account has its own user page and you can add anything you want to your own page; biography, contact details, links you found helpful, text you use a lot, anything really - it's your page to do with as you will.
Sandbox
The Sandbox is a test page, but there is only one, so be aware that next person to use it will probably overwrite anything you did - it's really just a temporary area to experiment.
Creating or adding Content
If you're not sure how to use/create all the formatting you see on other pages, don't worry about it. The important thing is that you add what you know about a location to the page. If you add the text '[[Template:Tidyme]]' to the top of the page this will mark it as a page that needs a bit of a tidy up, and hopefully a more experienced editor will come along and do it for you.
Use the preview option to see your changes before saving them.
Editing and existing Entry
If you find a page that you want to update, click on the edit tab and go for it.
Starting a new entry
Once you're happy with editing wiki pages, chances are you'll want to create a new page. Here's the quick guide, in this example a river named River Foo.
- Chose a name for the page, having read the page naming guidelines. In this case the name will be 'River Foo'. Note the capitalisation as names are case sensitive.
- Enter your page name into the search box and click 'search'. You will (hopefully) be told that the page cannot be found and be given the option to create it. If the page does not exists then Click on 'create this page' to create it. If the page does exists, then there are two possibilities: a) The page found refers to the same location, in which case you should have a look at that page and perhaps update it if you have any further information. b) The page found refers to a different location with the same name. In this case you want to amend your page name to be more specific, e.g. 'River Foo (Scottish Borders)'. There should also probably be a disambiguation page to direct people to the correct location, see the River Dee page for an example. Contact an editor if you need some help with this.
- A short page will appear giving you the option to create either a blank page, or to use one of the predefined page templates. Click the most suitable option.
- Change the text to describe your new location, using the preview button to see how your getting on.
- Save the page.
If there is no predefined page template:
- Find a page similar to the one you want to create. Click on the 'edit' button to see the 'source' of the page, select it all and then copy it using the 'copy' function from your browser's 'edit' menu. Don't bother saving as you won't have made any changes.
- Paste this text into the new blank page, using the 'paste' function from your browser's 'edit' menu.
Images
There is a separate help page for images.
Licence
Everything on the site is freely available under our chosen Licence.
