Toward a Minor Tech:Editing guide

Newsletter sprint

Some practical notes for the newsletter sprint during the workshop:

Editing technical specifications

• images: at least 1000px wide, keep in mind that we will print in one color
• screenshots: as big as you can
• captions: if you have images, make sure they have captions. We suggest to use frame or thumb as image formats, these make the caption show up.
  • In wiki syntax: You can add the caption in the image element ([[File:Imagename.jpg|frame|caption here]]).
  • In the visual editor: click on the image > edit > caption.
• bibliography: format it as you like, coherence is a forced illusion
• footnotes: you can use <ref> system, see: https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Help:Cite
• title of your text: use a header1 (=Title here=)
• other subtitles in your text: use any ohter headers (header2 ==Title here==, header3 ===Title here===, etc.)
• quotes: you can use <blockquote>Your quote here</blockquote>. Make sure this is separated from the body of your text with returns before and after the <blockquote> tags.

We also need

• Contributors page (required): we are collecting information about all of us at Toward a Minor Tech:Contributors. Please leave something about each author there in max 32 words.
• Cellular contributions (optional): To make the newspaper we will work with a grid system, it's an endless Tetris game, so we anticipate that there will be empty cells in the newspaper. We're celling that space. ;) Anyone is invited to use this space for any convivial polyfill content here. Limitations:
  • for images: width 208px, height 144px (high res!)
  • for text: 50 words

Other links that can be useful

• Timezone settings of the wiki: under Preferences > Appearance > Time offset

Peer-annotations

We will work with peer-annotations using embedded etherpads.

To enable peer-annotations:

1. Copy this line of code to the writing area:

<div class="pad"><eplite id="CHANGEME" show-chat="false" /></div>

2. Change the id="" value from CHANGEME into an etherpad name of choice.

For example into the title of your contribution.

NOTE: You cannot use spaces in the id="" value.

3. Scroll down and click "Save page" to save the page.

4. The etherpad should appear on the right side of the screen.

Editing

To edit a page, you can use the visual editor or the wiki syntax editor.

Visual editor

• to use it, click Edit
• uses a WYSIWYG editor
• Visual editor user guide

Wiki syntax editor

• to use it, click Edit source
• uses a specific mark up language: wiki syntax
• Wiki syntax user guide

Categories

NOTE: It's recommended practice to add the category assigners at the bottom of your page.

Add your page to the category Toward a Minor Tech, by including the following line in your page:

[[Category:Toward a Minor Tech]]

1000 words

If you work on your 1000 words version (the preliminary text for the workshop), please include the following category assigner in your page:

[[Category:1000 words]]

500 words

If you work on your 500 words version (shorter version as part of the workshop), please include the following category assigner in your page:

[[Category:500 words]]

5000 words

If you work on your 5000 words version (for the online journal APRJA), please include the following category assigner in your page:

[[Category:5000 words]]

Skins

The interface of MediaWiki's are called skins.

The default skin that is used on this wiki is Vector, but more skins are installed.

You can change the skin for yourself only, by following these steps:

1. Click on Preferences in the right-top corner.
2. Click on Appearance.
3. Select a skin from the list.
4. Click Save.

NOTE: This does not change the skin for everyone. It only changes for your user account.