Help:Wiki help

This page lists a number of terms frequently used in a wiki and gives a brief definition of each one. Entries are alphabetically arranged.

Discussion

Every page within a wiki has its own talk page: you can access to it by clicking on the 'Discussion' tab, next to the 'Page' tab, on the top left of the page.
The discussion page structure is very similar to a forum discussion page: to create any new 'Topic' you must be logged in. A 'Topic' is anything that anyone could note about that specific page; a single discussion page can have one or more topics. Before add a new topic a user must check if anyone before him/her has already opened a 'Topic' on the same subject.
Users can (and they are strongly encouraged to) partecipate to the discussion on all the topics of their interest, trying to contribute to their resolution. Obviously several or many topics could remain unsolved, however this is not relevant because we strongly believe the discussion itself is important as much as its final resolution.

Links

Links are obviously one of the most used functions within a wiki. It is possible to link both to internal and external resources. To learn how to code links using the wiki mark-up, see Help:Formatting.

External links

An external link points to an address outside the wiki; it is easily recognizable because next to it there is the symbol .

Internal links

An internal link is a link between two pages within the same wiki. It can point both to an already existing page or to a page to create:

• this link points to an already existing page and is blue (it turns violet after you click on it);
• this link points to a not existing page and is red (it turns a bit brighter after you click on it).

Namespaces

Namespaces are used to group or separate pages. Usually one can recognize if a page is in a particular namespace by looking at the URL of the page. Some examples:

• http://mediawikiarchivio.unigre.it/mediawiki/index.php/Category:AKC_Letters
• http://mediawikiarchivio.unigre.it/mediawiki/index.php/Special:ListUsers
• http://mediawikiarchivio.unigre.it/mediawiki/index.php/Page:AKC_1652_APUG561_277.pdf/1

In these cases the Category:, Special: and Page: namespaces have been used. So, as we can see, usually a namespace preceeds the name of a page with a structure like NamespaceName:PageName. This is always true except for the Main namespace (see below). In a wiki there may be several namespaces and they are used for different purposes: maintenance, development, discussion, articles and so on.
Following a list of the most used namespaces is provided.

(Main)

The so called Main namespace groups all the article pages within a wiki. This is the only namespace whose name is not visible in the URL, e.g.:

• http://mediawikiarchivio.unigre.it/mediawiki/index.php/Main page

Although this namespace has been imagined by the Mediawiki developers to host the articles of Wikipedia - seeing them as entries of an encyclopedia -, it can be used for other purposes too. In this wiki it is used to store reviewed transcriptions of the letters, transcription of works, pages created during the annotation process.

Category

Within the Category: namespace all the categories of a wiki are grouped (see Categories for a detailed description).

Form

Pages in this namespace are structured as forms to fill with data; the output of the form pages are article pages usually structured as tables. This means that the pages created with a form are stored in the Main namespace.
A form page example is the Form:Bibliography_entries, in this wiki used to create bibliographical data. Almost every user can create or edit an article page using a form, however the form itself can be modified only by administrators.

Index

The Index: namespace contains pages where books or manuscripts to transcribe are described. Together with Page namespace, it is part of the Proofread Page extension.

Page

This namespace is used to perform transcriptions using the Proofread Page extension. When you create or edit a page within this namespace, you always see at the right or at the top of the screen (according to your user preferences) the image of the book or the manuscript that you are going to transcribe. See also Index namespace.

Special

The Special: namespace groups a lot of pages related to the management and maintenance of the wiki. Not all the pages are visible to and editable by all users, however some of the Special pages are very important to properly work on a wiki. E.g., through the Special namespace you can access to your own preferences (Special:Preferences) or to our wiki chat (Special:Chat); you can also access to a special search for the pages where you can filter them according to their namespace (Special:AllPages); and many other useful stuffs!

Talk namespaces

Usually on a wiki each namespace is associated to a Talk namespace. This is one of the best known feature of the Mediawiki software architecture, devoloped to foster the discussion among users (without this feature Wikipedia wouldn't exist as we know it). Talk pages are used to propose improvements to a page regardless to the namespace of the page. E.g. one can propose:

• a better reading of a word within the Page namespace;
• a correction within an article in the Main namespace;
• an alternative structure for a form page within the Form namespace.

A user can access to the Talk namespace of a page by clicking on the 'Discussion' tab, next to the 'Page' tab in the top left of the page. Some tips about how to use 'Discussion' pages are presented within the Discussion section of this page.

Search

You can search the wiki in several ways. The easiest one is to fill the search bar on the top right of any page; this search mode is the easiest to perform but also the less accurate, because it searches JUST the pages within the Main namespace. This means that pages grouped in other namespaces, e.g. 'Page' or 'Index' namespaces, are not queried at all and consequently the results pertinent to your search stored in other namespaces will be excluded from the results list. Besides, this 'easy' search queries the whole article pages, so if you are interested, e.g., only in Kircher correspondence, the results related to other projects will be returned too. So if you want to search only one project, it is strongly suggested to use the search tools devoloped for each project and accessible through their home pages:

• Athanasius Kircher Project
• Epistolae Bellarmini cardinalis
• Angelo Secchi Correspondence

However if you actually want to search the whole wiki in an easy way, you can use this modality. We also remind you that within the 'Main' namespace are stored only the reviewed transcriptions of the letters.
If your needs are instead more complex, e.g. you want to search a term within a specific namespace, you can use the advanced search form at Special:Search.

Wiki markup

Wiki markup is the specific coding language used within any sites based on Mediawiki. Once a user understands its basic functions, it is very simple to use. Besides this wiki implements both a more intuitive editor (named Wiki Editor) and an extension to insert specific wiki markups (named CharInsert), so pages editing is even easier for users. Although this facilitation, we strongly recommend to read the Help:Formatting page, where you can learn how to properly use wiki markup.
Using Wiki Editor, the default editor when you click on the 'Edit' tab, is easier. E.g. if you want to use the italics

• with wiki markup you should digit ''italics'' to obtatin italics;
• with Wiki Editor you just have to select the text and click on , then the '' '' will be automatically added.

This is one of most common and simple cases, however if you have to insert more complex elements, e.g., a table, the Wiki Editor becomes really useful.