Media Center Master's Wiki Editing Guide

This is a work in progress, please be patient.

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Warning

• Permissible material in the form of writings and images should be: creations made by the editor, or acquired from an open source having no copyright license.
• The use of copyrighted material is strictly prohibited; not allowed without, proper permission from the legal entity owning such source, and prior notice given to Media Center Master, Inc. for display consideration.
• All contributions fall in the public domain and become readily available for viewing on the internet to: read, copy, and edit.
• If an editor does not wish to leave a contribution open, unlocked and requiring no prior consent for:

• Reproduction, or
• Revisions by minor and/or major editing;

• The editor should not submit material to this Wiki.

This Wiki uses MediaWiki Software for it's operating platform. Individuals wishing to contribute are encouraged to consult the MediaWiki Help:Contents page for information on using the MediaWiki Software. It contains several helpful guides with examples for readers, editors, moderators, and system admins.

Intended Purpose and Requirements

The intended purpose of this guide is to provide information to all individuals, readers, and editors on some common editing practices used in this wiki. It, also, attempts to demystify the enter workings of a wiki for those thinking about, or wishing to edit, or contribute material to the wiki, but are hesitant because of a lack of knowledge, and/or experience in a wiki environment.

This Wiki has an open registration for any individual. The only requirement to register is: an individual must have an active email account. Registration is required to edit and contribute relevant information pertaining to Media Center Master, such as, and not just limited to: Installation, Graphical User Interface Descriptions, Common Usage (Real Life) Configuration Scenarios, Technical Guides, Networked Configurations, Interfacing with Other Media Center Programs and/or Products...

Terms and Definitions

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Some Basics on How Wiki Software Works

The terms and definitions listed below will apply for the purposes in this guide.

editor

a person who is registered in the Wiki, allowed to edit; it is not necessary for a person to be a user of Media Center Master to edit, make revisions to, the Wiki, e.g., a person/reader wishing to make corrections on spelling, punctuation, and/or grammar.

individual

a person who is new to a wiki environment, and/or new to the Media Center Master Community.

markup

specific, code, syntax, keyboard characters, used for formatting text and structuring the outline of the document as a complete package.

reader

a person who primarily reads Wikis is unregistered in the Wiki, not allowed to edit the Wiki; it is not necessary for a person to be a user of Media Center Master to read the Wiki (e.g., a person doing research)

user

a person who uses Media Center Master.

wikitext

what an editor enters in the wiki, markup/s with text that produces the viewable page layouts with formatted text for reading.

Additional Information

• The Wiki does more than just serve the Media Center Master Community as a Reference Guide.
• The Wiki, also, introduces Media Center Master to the world.
• Therefore, all material for contributions should be constructed in a professional style and manner.

Unlike word processing programs (e.g., MicroSoft Office Word, OpenOffice.org Writer...), wiki software requires editors to use wikitext, to create a wished for representation of the submitted material for the viewer to read.

The Wiki cannot be broken, messed up, beyond repair. Each edit is monitored by the software (down to the simple changes of single letters, a space, a period...), and the editor's user name is attached to the history record of the page's edit. Each time a revision to a page is saved the editor's keystrokes are recorded and are available for undoing an edit. The revisions can be seen on each page's "history" tab, located on the top of each page.

There is no specific area for an editor to practice editing with wikitext (i.e., a "Sandbox," an area to play in).

Minor editing, such as: spelling, punctuation, grammar and linking should be made directly to the page containing the errors in the "Media Center Master Reference Guide."

Major Edits require a more thought out process involving several edits, saves, and previews before a revision is complete. The Wiki is a real time, available now, source, and all edits to the "Media Center Master Reference Guide" affect current on line readers. Major editing in the "Media Center Master Reference Guide" can confuse reader's, turn them around, get them of track in their reading journey. In order to reduce the chaos, reading madness, caused by saving several edits in short periods of time, an editor should make major revisions outside of the "Media Center Master Reference Guide."

Another idea to keep in mind when starting out is all contributions should be web friendly. The Wiki falls in the public domain and should be kept accessible to all individuals using the internet. This does not mean, if you use two different browsers (e.g., MS Internet Explorer, and/or Google Chrome, and/or Opera, Safari, and/or Mozilla Firefox...) to view your edit/s and the text is read able, that it is web friendly.⁽¹⁾ Viewable with Any Browser also considers other issues, such as: page size, loading time, image size.... For the most part, MediaWiki Software will take care of a lot of the minor issues with basic text formatting, as long as the editor uses WikiText,⁽²⁾ examples from MediaWiki Help:Contents. As a rule of thumb, any character other than a letter, number, or any of the characters $-_.+!*'(), should be encoded to their hexadecimal equivalents.

There are several sites on the internet with additional information on the subjects of MediaWiki, wiki, markup, and wikitext.

that it is web friendly⁽¹⁾

The thought process to use two browsers is a beginning to bringing a conscience awareness to incompatibilities by using different methods to view the same material (i.e., putting yourself in another person's shoes, looking at it through another persons eyes).

WikiText⁽²⁾

This link is listed in the MediaWiki Handbook link under, Section 2 Handbook parts, 2.2 For editors, Formatting.

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Examples Used in the Wiki

Additional Information

• The examples shown are taken directly from the "Reference Guide." Using these examples will keep a uniform structure throughout the Wiki.
• The examples may be copied directly from these pages and pasted into a page for use, by replacing the text inside of the markups.
• Some practice with these examples may be required.

Information Boxes

Designed to be used in one (1) of four (4) levels of additional need to know material pertaining to the subject at hand, but not required in the general outline on the subject. They rank in scale starting at "Additional Information Box" up to "Warning Information Box".

Image Links

Images are reusable, only need to be uploaded once. To reuse an image just use the image file name in the markup. An editor will need to upload a new image to the server in order for it to be displayed in the wiki. A link to the "Upload file" page can be found in the editor's toolbox located at the top, left side of this page. The "Upload file" page also contains links to other pages related to uploaded files already on the server (e.g., list of uploaded files, upload log, deletion log). Follow the instructions found on the "Upload file" page to upload an image. Care should be taken when naming the file, with attention to details listed in the name. This will assist the editor, later, in remembering what the image is, and assist other editors, who may wish to use the image. Additional information may always be added in the comment area.

Navigation Boxes

Used to help the reader navigate through the pages of the Wiki. The intent of this wiki is for it to be constructed web friendly. The use of several images on a page slows the downloading of the contents to a viewer. By seperating the contents into different pages speeds up the page downloads, but can also creates a bewilder maze, confusion for the reader. One method to solve this is to use navigation boxes containing links related to the subject the reader has set his conscience on.

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