Getting Started

Welcome to FaraWiki

A Wiki is a type of content management system that allows all users to easily and quickly add and edit content, create links and new pages. The term "wiki" comes from the Hawaiian "wiki wiki", which means "quick" or "informal" - and that a wiki system certainly is: all you have to do to create a new page or link to an existing one, is put a word (or several words) in [[double square brackets]] (hence the logo).

There is a wide selection of wiki software available. This wiki runs on MediaWiki. You may have seen it before; it is the same engine Wikipedia runs on.

All pages have their own discussion page (the 'talk' pages) where you can comment on the page's content; see the tabs at the top of your screen. There you'll also see a tab to edit the page. This is an essential part of the wiki way: all users can edit (almost) all pages; no one 'owns' a page. We trust you are all mature adults who respect one another's work, but even if we should be visited by a vandal, pages can be restored to their original state. That is what the history tab is for.

We hope however, that being able to edit and link will create a whole new level of interactivity. You might want to give just one option at the end of your chapter, and leave the other one to be filled in by whoever gets there first. Or maybe you want to enter a very long chapter without having to breaking it up into parts, and leave it to other users to edit in an option somewhere in the middle, in a place that best suits their needs. Perhaps you'd even like to create pages to provide background informations on (original) characters or locations, all easily linked to from your chapter and those of others. Artists are invited to join in by adding images.
It's all possible.

Finding your way around

The tabs

All pages have a ‘talk’ page attached, which you can reach through the discussion tab. Here you can comment on the page’s content by clicking on the plus sign next to the edit tab.
Note that also pages that are still empty (the pages in red) have a talk page: the perfect place to, for instance, speculate about how a thread may develop, enter your wishes, and hope the future author uses your advise to her advantage.

Registered users also have a page of their own where they can post a little about themselves. These pages also come with a ‘talk’ page attached; there you can leave messages to this user.

The history tab shows you a list of all previous stages of the page you're on. You can see when it has been edited, and by whom. You can even look at all the previous versions, compare them with each other, and restore the last proper version in case of vandalism. So there is no need to worry about the fact that everyone can edit everything: mishaps can always be restored.

If you are a registered user and signed in, there'll be one more tab: watch. Clicking here will add the page to your watchlist, a list of pages you monitor for changes - your favourites.

The menu

On the left of your screen you'll find a menu with links to the most important pages.

To find out what's new, check out New Pages and Recent Changes. As the names suggest, New Pages gives a list of all new pages, while Recent Changes tracks all changes that have been made: all comments that have been added, etc.

The Chapter List or Overview page lists all existing and (in red) non-existing chapters, branched out so you have an overview of the structure of the story. The User List produces a list of all registered users. From a user's page, you can look up a complete list of that user's contributions, leave a message, and if the user has enabled this function, send an email.
In the User List, you'll find one 'user' called Unregistered_Users. This user's page houses a list of people who have chosen not to register, but still want to have a page of their own, and to link their contributions together in a way.
The Hotlist is a list of links to pages that users found important. For example, someone may have asked other users' oppinion on something, and wants as many people as possible to see it, and share their thoughts. Or maybe someone's just done something fancy on her userpage. Whatever it is, if you want it to stand out, add a link to the hotlist.

From the search box you can search for pages containing your search term. Note that there are two buttons: 'Go' and 'Search'. If you enter a search term which is also the name of a page (for example Imrahil), the 'Go' button will land you straight on the corresponding page, whereas the 'Search' button will show a list of pages where the term is used.

The toolbox changes per page. On every page there is a 'What links here' link, which leads to a list of all pages that link to that page that you were on. This is very handy for backtracking, for example going to the previous chapter.
The 'Related changes' link in the toolbox works in much the same way as the Recent Changes page, but 'Related changes' will only list changes made in the pages linked to from the page you're on. Most useful will be the Related changes of the Overview page as it lists all changes made in pages linked to in the Overview page, i.e. all changes made in interactive story chapters.
On User pages the toolbox also contains a link to list of contributions of the user. And, if the user has enabled this function and you are logged in yourself, a link to send this user an email.

The toolbox also links to the list of Special Pages. These are all special system pages, that you might want to browse through once, just so you know what's there.

Wiki Basics

Creating Links, Creating Pages

The most important thing about editing in wikis, is the way they link. All you have to do to create a link, is to type a word in double square brackets like [[this]]. Here I've just created a link to the page "This". Since there was no such page, I have, at the same time that I have created the link, also create a new page. That page is still empty, and therefor the link is red. Still, the page is there, and so is its toolbox and all its tabs (for example, a page needn't have content to have a talk page, and you can already get to the 'What links here' page too).
If you meant to link to an existing page, but the link turns up red, that means you got the name wrong.

Piped Links

All you have to do to link to a page is put it's name in brackets, but sometimes you want something other than the page's name to show up in your text. You can find an example of this in the first section of this page:

We trust you are all mature adults who respect one another's work, but even if we should be visited by a vandal, pages can be restored to their original state.

Note that the link reads "vandal", while the page is actually called "vandalism".

The way to create such a link is by adding the text you want to appear on the page like this: [[vandalism|vandal]] - first the link, then the text you want to see.