Difference between revisions of "Clicklaw Wikibooks Contributor Guide"

Those who do not supply a photo will have a generic profile graphic displayed.  

Clicklaw Wikibooks houses content for a number of organizations with publications. Each publication, or wikibook title, may have its own culture and arrangement with people tasked with updating it. An partner organization's work will be carried out by contributors, and these people might be staff of that organization with no wiki skills, freelance contractors who've done wiki work before, or volunteer lawyers, judges, advocates, etc. with a wide range of ability. Some wikibooks, such as those produced by [[Peoples Law School]], are administered by a small team of editors only, while other wikibooks, such as ''[[JP Boyd on Family Law]]'', involve [[:Category:JP Boyd on Family Law Contributors|numerous collaborators]] all of who are volunteers.

Be conscientious about which page you are editing. Please only edit pages from those titles (or chapters within titles) for which you are responsible.  Generally, let your discretion guide you, or email [mailto:wikisupport@clicklaw.bc.ca?Subject=Wikibooks%20Contributor%20Support wikisupport@clicklaw.bc.ca] for help.  

Having asked you to be mindful of the pages you edit, take comfort in knowing that you literally can't damage a page so badly that it cannot be restored.

# understand a few technical things that are happening and the limited things you need to know to:

#*change what alert boxes are saying on pages,

This page shows you how to do the above. You are not expected to do anything technically beyond what is explained here.

Make sure to click the ''star'' icon on all pages assigned to you (include your contributor bio page). This ensures you are monitoring pages in case other editors make changes or visitors leave feedback. Do this once for all your pages at the account setup stage, and also ensure that your preferences are set to receive email alerts for changes

Organizations with one username and account for editing might be responsible for dozens of pages, but organizations should still take this step.

Clicklaw Wikibooks uses a simple markup language to control how content looks, but to start off, you don't need to know much about this markup language. Buttons along the top of the edit window frame do most of the formatting and wiki markup for you.  

Bold text is rarely called for by the [[Clicklaw Wikibooks Style Guide]]. Italics are preferred for giving emphasis. That said, it is sometimes appropriate to bold the first word in a list item.

Examples of external links include any link to another website, or even a PDF or DOC file available somewhere online. Cases on CanLII, for instance, require external links. The simplest way to insert an external link is to just type the full URL, including the <code><nowiki>http://</nowiki></code> prefix.  

Much of the time, you won't want the link to appear so obvious. To have other words appear with links to online resources, select the text you want to contain the link, then click the Link button. You will be prompted to enter the URL (the link to the online resource). Make sure to select "To an external web page", then click "Insert link".

One page in a wiki often naturally leads to another page on the same wiki. For example, here is a link to the [[Clicklaw Wikibooks Style Guide]], which is a Clicklaw Wikibooks page. To make an internal link, click the Link button. You will be prompted to enter the target page, which must be the exact name of the page, and the text to display for the link. Make sure to select "To a wiki page" at the bottom, then click "Insert link".

Sometimes, you may need to make a reference to a section within the same page.

In some cases, you may need to direct readers to only a section on another wiki page. For example, when the section you are referring to is located in the middle of a lengthy wiki page. If you provided a link to the page, it would be confusing for the readers to land at the beginning of the page.

Will result in this proper mix of italics and working links according to the [[Style Guide]]:

Select the words that you want to become a heading, then select the Heading level from the Advanced menu. The results, when saved, will give you a primary section heading in the text of an article.

The following points apply to in page headings:

The [[Clicklaw Wikibooks Style Guide]] calls for the use of ''bulleted'' lists to break up serial information where the order is not important, and ''numbered'' lists where steps or some other sequence is important to understand the information.  

The edit toolbar has the buttons for making lists in the Advanced menu. They are also simple to create as you type. Authorities on plain language writing tend to agree that lists generally make information easier to absorb.

* '''Numbered list''': Place each list item on its own line, and start each line with a pound symbol "<nowiki>#</nowiki>". Click "Show preview" to see the list. Notice that the numbered list automatically ends at the last line that you started with a pound symbol. Alternatively, you can select the lines and click the Numbered List button.

* '''Bulleted list''': To make a list with bullets, follow the same steps as for a numbered list, but replace the pound symbol with an asterix. You can also use the Bulleted List button.  

More complicated lists with sublists are achieved by adding an extra pound or asterix symbol beside items you want to appear as indented subordinate list. Lists can include a subordinate list of another type, for example a numbered list can break off into a series of points in a bulleted list, or vice versa.   

There are several ways to embed an image — however only a couple work well and support PDF, EPUB, and print-on-demand viewing. Consistency is important, so please use the following approach:

Clicklaw Wikibooks supports videos embedded from Youtube. You will need to be working with videos that you have already uploaded to Youtube directly. You cannot upload videos to the Clicklaw Wikibooks directly.

The following script might look complicated, but you are only going to be changing one thing. You will only be changing the unique identifier, ''e.g. ivsBIwncoiY''. This is the unique alphanumeric string found at the end of a Youtube video's "Share" link.

Account holders, including all editors and contributors, have the option of adding pages to a watchlist so they can follow content that they are responsible for and receive a notification when the pages are altered. You receive email notifications (see [[Clicklaw Wikibooks Contributor Guide#Email notification | setting up email notificaiton]]) or be shown an overview of the changes from the [[Special:Watchlist | Watchlist]] page.

Access the [[Special:Watchlist | Watchlist]] from the top menu, or from the left menu. Once you are on the My Watchlist page, you should see a list of the recent changes from the last several days.

The [http://www.mediawiki.org/ MediaWiki] website also includes excellent support material — for example, instructions on [http://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Help:Navigation navigating a wiki], [http://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Help:Editing_pages editing pages], and [http://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/User_hub much more]. (MediaWiki is free, open source software that powers Clicklaw Wikibooks, as well as the hugely popular Wikipedia.)

We are writing with the public reader in mind, not lawyers or other legal advocates. Depending on the wikibook, you may need to aim for a very low reading level. For example, [[Legal Help for British Columbians]] serves very basic information so people can take the first step towards finding help for their common legal problem. [[JP Boyd on Family Law]], on the other hand, presumes a higher reading level, since it offers motivated self-represented individuals a slightly more detailed description of family law. Both groups of readers benefit from plain language writing methods.