Contribution Guidelines

Guidelines have purposely been made fairly lax to encourage as much content creation as possible. We can clean it up as we go. From the mediawiki-wiki:

Editing rules, editing conventions, and formatting

The number one rule of wiki editing is to be bold. Go ahead - make changes. Other people can correct any mistakes you make, so have confidence, and give it a try! There are all kinds of editing conventions, rules, and philosophies for the editing of wiki pages, but the be bold rule is the most important of these!

An edit can contribute whole new paragraphs or pages of information, or it can be as simple as fixing a typo or a spelling mistake. In general, try to add or edit text so that it is clear and concise. Most importantly, make sure you are always aiming to do something which improves the contents of the wiki.

When you need to use some type of formatting, such as for new headings or bolding of text, you do this using wiki syntax or the buttons in the edit toolbar above the editing zone. See [Help:Formatting] for some of the common types of formatting used.

Types of Pages, Categories, Infoboxes

So far, we have the following types of pages being set up:

• Tools (can include safety, location, basic usage, more advanced useage, consumables (replaced by the lab or members, where/what to buy), recommendations of where to buy materials, basic troubleshooting, etc)
• Teams at the lab (can include what tools and areas the team is responsible for, how to contact the team, eg a slack channel, other info that isn't already on kos)
• Areas of the lab (can include what tools are there, area cleaning guidelines, anything else someone thinks might be useful)
• Other pages such as COVID-19 Restrictions, or TONs

For the first three types, the appropriate category tag should be applied so the page in question will automatically be included in that list. Category tags follow this format: [[Category:(CATEGORY NAME)|(DISPLAYED NAME)]]. So for those three categories:

• [[Category:Tools|Tools]]
• [[Category:Teams|Teams]]
• [[Category:Areas|Areas]]

Other categories can be created and used as members see fit.

Tool Page Infoboxes

On the Tools pages, we also have infoboxes. It's possible to set up an input form for editing or creating these boxes, but for now they can be inserted by adding the following code to invoke the Infobox Tool template:

{{ToolInfo
|picture=(filename)
|makemodel=
|serial=
|Area=
|Team=
|PPE=
|guests=(allowed values=Yes,No,With Supervision)
|trainingReq=(allowed values=Required,Optional,None)
|trainingLink=
|status=(allowed values=Working,Broken,Unknown)
|manual=(filename) }}

Pictures and manuals can be uploaded using the file upload page, then including the filename. The Area and Team sections will automatically turn into links, so just put the name of the area or team. For example, the tablesaw infobox is created using the following code:

{{ToolInfo
|picture=tablesaw.jpg
|makemodel=Bosch 4100 10"
|serial=
|Area=Woodshop (Area)
|Team=Woodshop Team
|PPE=Eye Required, Hearing recommended
|guests=With Supervision
|trainingReq=Optional
|trainingLink=[https://classroom.google.com/c/NTEyMDcyMTU5MDBa?cjc=7lco7qv Google Classroom 7lco7qv]
|status=Working
|manual=Bosch4100TableSaw.pdf }}

Some Basic Formatting

The category tags example above makes use of a couple pieces of formatting that are important to note. First, links inside the wiki are made with double square brackets, eg [[(stuff]] would link to a page called "stuff". Second, within a set of square brackets, you can set a different displayed text for the link by adding a pipe "|" and then the text you want to display. eg, this link to the Woodshop Area (which has an underscore and brackets in the actual link) is made with the following code: [[Woodshop_(Area)|Woodshop Area]]

Also,

• External links are made with single square brackets
• Lists are made by starting a line with "* "
• Sections are made by putting two or more sets of "=" around the heading. Two sets makes a level 2 section, and you can go up to level 6. Level 1 is the page name, so skip that.
• A table of contents should be automatically generated if a page has 4 or more sections
• A syntax-highlighted codeblock can be created by putting the code between <syntaxhighlight lang="LANGUAGE"> </syntaxhighlight> tags.

Our wiki has the "Enhanced Editing Toolbar" extension installed, so there should be a toolbar above the edit box with shortcuts for some of these and some other functions.

General Guidelines

• Remember that kwartzlab's Code of Conduct applies to wiki content as well. Don't include hurtful/discriminatory things, don't wantonly trash others' work (however, some amount of re-writing of other people's work is bound to happen while we figure out a consistent style)
• Try to include summaries of your edits (not many summaries were included during the initial setup of the wiki, but they become more useful as more people contribute)
• Feel free to create links to pages that don't exist. This will create a red link, which someone will hopefully see and fill in.