Solar CookIng Wiki tips

You're a part of the wiki!

When you first see a wiki, it doesn't seem like it could possibly work. If anybody can come along and change things, then how can the information be trusted? Doesn't it just get vandalized, or fall into chaos?

Once you start participating, you see that that "weakness" is actually a wiki's greatest strength. Sure, anybody can add anything -- and then everybody else gets to proofread it, and fix mistakes. Information that looks suspicious can be verified. Vandalism is quickly fixed. It's possible for someone to post errors, or nonsense -- but over time, the best wins out.

If you're reading these words, then you're a wiki editor. If you see a problem on one of the pages, don't roll your eyes and complain about it. Just fix it! Click edit at the top of the page and dive in. Be bold.

If you want help editing, the the tutorial on the Central Wikia has a good overview of the basics. There are also more help pages in the help category and Central Wikia help.

The spirit of the wiki

This wiki was inspired by requests to make the Solar Cookers World Network more interactive. We hope you will use this wiki to get ideas and contribute your own, to make contacts, to inspire others or to be inspired. We also hope this wiki will turn into the place on the internet to get information on solar cooker theory, designs, plans, strategies, contributors (large and small), activities, etc. This is our online village where we share our knowledge and plans to make solar cooking a reality around the world.

Create a user name

Log in and create a user name -- it'll help you (and everybody) keep track of your contributions. It's possible to post anonymously on this wiki, but be advised that anonymous posters are treated more skeptically. If we can see the pages you've added to, then we'll be more impressed with you, and more likely to trust.

You're also invited to post your name on your user page -- either your full name, or just a first name and an initial. It's not required, but it helps everyone get to know you and trust you.

Set your preferences

There's a lot of useful stuff on your Preferences page.

You can set your language. This changes how the wiki talks to you, but not the text of the articles, which will still be mostly in English. #Using other languages has more on this subject.

You can change your display so that links show up as blue or red words, without the underlining. You can also change your time zone, and the number of items you see on the Recent Changes page or the Category list.

Using talk pages

If you want to discuss anything about an article, you can use the talk pages. For more general discussion, use the forum.

Sign forum and talk posts

When you post on a forum or talk page, put an asterisk (*) at the front of your post to make a bullet. Sign talk posts with four tildes -- ~~~~ -- to automatically add your user name and a date stamp.

Identify active talk pages

When you post a question on an article's talk page, you can list it in Active Talk Pages by adding a talk box. Just add this template to the top of the article page: {{talk}} -- that'll automatically add a box pointing people to your question, and it'll list you on the Active Talk Pages. You can browse through that list to find other ongoing discussions.

History tab

Nothing is ever lost on a wiki! You can see all of the changes that have been made to a page -- and who made them -- by clicking on the "History" tab at the top of any page.

External links

The simplest way to add a link is just put it in: http://solarcooking.org. This is good if you want the link to show when the page is printed.

To hide the URL but make the link clickable, put one set of square brackets around it like this: [http://solarcooking.org]. That'll look like this: [1]

You can add a description to the link by adding a space before the description, like this: [http://solarcooking.org Solar Cookers World Network]. That comes out like this: Solar Cookers World Network.

Link sanity

Only link a name the first time it's used on a page - or in each section if the page is long. Please don't link every single capitalized word -- it makes the page confusing and messy.

Uploading and formatting pictures

Click on "Upload image" on the left navigation bar to upload pictures. You can add your image to any page using this code:

[[Image:yourpicture.jpg|thumb|300px|Caption for your picture]]

Images should not exceed much larger than 300 pixels wide for article tidyness.

The Wikipedia has a good succinct article on image syntax that applies to this wiki.

Using other languages

If you set your language preference to some language besides English, the wiki interface will appear in that language (mostly).

If you would like to translate pages in this wiki from English to any other language, that's great! Please contact one of the admins.

If you would like to create a version of this wiki in another language, that's great too! Again, please contact one of the admins. You would need to commit to being the admin - and to recruiting several people to help. It's a lot of work.

Creating new articles

Before creating a new article, check that something similar doesn't already exist. You can search for it using the search box in the left menu frame, or look at the list of all the articles.

You can create a new article by including its name in double square brackets on another page: [[New page name]]. After saving the page, click on the red "New page name" link to create the page.

Alternatively, you can enter the page title in the box below and click the button: <createbox> bgcolor=#f3f3ff </createbox>

In general, the first word of a new article name should be capitalized and the rest lower case (How solar cookers work) unless it's a proper noun (Solar Cookers International Association). Avoid ending article names with a dot; the URL breaks if pasted into an email. Article names should be singular, not plural, unless plural is the only form. The name should not begin with "a" or "the" unless it is the title of a book, film, or something similar.

This is an international site. Articles can be in any language.

Categories

You can put an article into a category by adding this code: [[Category:YourCategory]] . You can change the way the article is alphabetized within the category like this: [[Category:Who's who in the solar cooking movement|Sponheim]].

Before you create a category, check the Category list to see if there's a similar category that already exists. If the category doesn't exist yet, then adding that code will create the category. Be sure to add some text to the new Category page, or the link from your new article won't work properly.

Keyboard shortcuts

Some browsers support helpful shortcuts to navigate within a page.

Alt-T: Talk
Alt-E: Edit
Alt-P: Preview
Alt-S: Save
Alt-H: History
Alt-R: Recent Changes

Dealing with vandalism

Vandalism isn't much of a problem on a wiki, because everybody has the power to fix it when they see it. See the Vandalism help page for instructions on how to fix vandalized pages, and how to discourage the vandals.

Recent changes

To follow the changes to this wiki, and to look out for new events and problem edits, use recent changes.

Some product info is okay but please not your whole catalog

We want to make it easy for people to buy solar cookers, so a brief summary of your products and your company contact information is fine - one or two entries on the Manufacturers and Vendors page and an overview of your company on your company page. Save the detailed specs for your own website.

Contact administrators

See Special:Listadmins for a list of admins on any wiki.

If you have questions or comments about the wiki, you can leave a message on an admin's talk page.

Check the Help pages for more information on contributing to this wiki!

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This page uses content from another wikia. The original article was at Muppet Wiki FAQ. The list of authors can be seen in the page history. As with Solar Cooking, the text of any wikia is available under the GNU Free Documentation License.