Getting Started
The distinguishing characteristic of Wikis, is that (almost) all pages can be edited by all users. However, when you edit, always respect other people’s work. Only make changes where necessary; when you have something meaningful to add or when mistakes have been made. Be especially reluctant in editing chapter pages: only add links or images, or better still, first ask if that’s ok with the author.
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.
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 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.
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 on the main 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.