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Articles tend to be about whatever someone sees as important, useful, or fun enough to write about! | Articles tend to be about whatever someone sees as important, useful, or fun enough to write about! | ||
== More about what to write about == | |||
The FlightGear Wiki has a few main areas that continuously needs work: | |||
; Development related articles | |||
: Documentation for FlightGear core, scenery and aircraft developers | |||
; Usage related articles | |||
: Documentation to get the users started, how to use various features, FAQ:s etc. | |||
; Aircraft related articles | |||
: Documentation about the official aircraft | |||
If you do not yet feel fully ready to start an new article there are also categories various articles that could need some true loving care like, [[:Category:Stubs|very short articles (stubs)]], [[:Category:Articles considered for deletion|articles considered for deletion]] and [[:Category:Cleanup|articles needing cleanup]]. Helping out with those could be a way to getting to know the wiki and familiarize yourself with the wiki markup. | |||
Other interesting pages include things like [[Real Life Experience]], [[Linux software audio mixing with FlightGear]], [[Current events]], or [[Presentation Recipe]]! | |||
== Creating a new article == | |||
There are some things to think of before starting a new article. | |||
=== Choosing a good title === | |||
Consider giving the template a meaningful name. Usually one would try to only have the initial character upper case. Do not use abbreviations for an article title. You your article title should instead be spelled out and a redirect page for the abbreviation to your article should be created. | |||
=== Search first, then create === | |||
To create a new article, please start by using the search function. This way you will find if there already is an article with that name or if there is one with a very similar name. If there is no article with that name you will be presented with the option to create that page. Click on the red link to open up an edit window. | |||
=== Preview early, and preview often === | |||
This is important. First of all, and specially if you are new to editing a wiki, you will get a better feeling for what your article will look like. Sometimes you will find that some sections are way longer than you thought, or that an image needs to be larger to be intelligible. Some of the wiki markup is more fragile than other, in particular [[Help:Tables|tables]], and it is much easier to fix such markup early on knowing where in the markup things broke than later. In addition to that reading your own text will often help you find a better phrasing. | |||
Before saving the article, do have an extra preview, and a more thorough read through. | |||
=== Creating redirect pages === | |||
Creating a ''redirect page'', an empty page whose only purpose is to redirect to your article, is recommended if your article title is also known as an abbreviation (for example an ICAO airport code), another less common name or is often misspelled. | |||
Creating a redirect page is very easy. The same way you search and then create the article, you search and then create the redirect page. The only contents of the redirect page should be like below: | |||
<nowiki>#REDIRECT [[Article name]]</nowiki> | |||
== Typical article disposition == | == Typical article disposition == | ||
Consider this a recommendation. Though most of the articles follow this convention some don't. | |||
<nowiki>{{Some messagebox}} | <nowiki>{{Some messagebox}} | ||
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== Heading == | == Heading == | ||
Some text... | |||
=== Subheading === | |||
Some text... | Some text... | ||
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[[Category:Some category]]</nowiki> | [[Category:Some category]]</nowiki> | ||
;Messageboxes | |||
:One or more ''messageboxes'' could sometimes begin typical article page. The messageboxes would tell a reader or editor something about the article, like for example that it is outdated due to new developments. | |||
;Infobox or navbox | |||
:Often an ''infobox'' or ''navbox'' will follow. An ''infobox'' will contain more detailed information about a piece of software, an aircraft, an airport etc. that is the topic of the article and a ''navbox'' could help the reader find his way around a series of or similar articles. | |||
;Images | |||
:Many articles would be helped by additional images. While it is often a good idea to have at least one of them on top of the article, as this will help a reader to figure out if he landed on the right article and what it is about. While they can all be in the beginning of the article text, they can just as well be spread out within the article. Most of the time having just thumbnail images will be preferable. | |||
;First section | |||
:The ''first section'' of an article should be a ''short summary'' of the article or an ingress. Preferably the '''page title in bold''' should be within the first sentence or the first section. | |||
:This short summary of the article would help a reader to quickly figure out if he found the page he was looking for, as well as help a him grasp the main concepts of an article a bit faster. | |||
;Article text | |||
:The article text that follows is preferably broken up in not too long, but not too short ''sections'' separated by headings and subheadings. Often it would help the reader if there are images and tables to help understand the article text. Sometimes it is a good thing to mark more some important words differently. | |||
;Links to related content | |||
:''Links'' to related content, like other articles forum topics etc. can be put in the end, though in general having the internal wikilinks within the article text is preferable. | |||
;Links to external resources | |||
:Links to external resources should be put at the very end of the article. | |||
;Navbox | |||
:Many pages end with a ''navbox'' with for example other aircraft by the same manufacturer. | |||
;Language links and categories | |||
:All articles should end with one or more ''categories''. They are preceded by ''language links'', if there is any translations of that page. | |||
== Editing the wiki markup == | == Editing the wiki markup == | ||
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=== Navboxes === | === Navboxes === | ||
Navboxes, or navigation templates, are boxes helping navigating a series of related articles. They come in two flavours, one kind that is found to the top right of the article, often linking together a series of articles on a certain topic, and a kind that is found at the bottom of the article linking together related articles, for example aircraft by the same manufacturer or different articles related to building FlightGear from source files. | Navboxes, or navigation templates, are boxes helping navigating a series of related articles. They come in two flavours, one kind that is found to the top right of the article, often linking together a series of articles on a certain topic, and a kind that is found at the bottom of the article linking together related articles, for example aircraft by the same manufacturer or different articles related to building FlightGear from source files. | ||