What's a Wiki?
A wiki is simply a web page that anyone can edit. Each page is an article, and the articles are linked to each other, much like any web page, in order to organize them together into a whole. The central idea is that by harnessing lots of small efforts by a large number of people, the wiki ends up being an extensive repository of knowledge on whatever subject the wiki is geared toward.
The concept of a wiki is sometimes difficult for people to grasp, mostly because the idea that anyone can edit anything seems, well, dangerous. With enough people looking at the wiki, though, errors are corrected and malicious edits are quickly spotted. Most wikis also support the ability to look at previous revisions of any given article, and revert to a previous revision if necessary.
Wikis are driven by the contributions of its users. Some people might contribute complete and original articles to the wiki, while others might build on what someone else has already written, or just add a little piece that was missing, or correct spelling or grammar. Contributors can stick to the subjects they know a lot about, or just what they're interested in, or just help organize the overall set of articles. It's up to each contributor to decide what kind of involvement they want to have.
The single best example of a wiki in action is Wikipedia, which already covers significantly more subjects than any other encyclopedia.
The concept of a wiki is sometimes difficult for people to grasp, mostly because the idea that anyone can edit anything seems, well, dangerous. With enough people looking at the wiki, though, errors are corrected and malicious edits are quickly spotted. Most wikis also support the ability to look at previous revisions of any given article, and revert to a previous revision if necessary.
Wikis are driven by the contributions of its users. Some people might contribute complete and original articles to the wiki, while others might build on what someone else has already written, or just add a little piece that was missing, or correct spelling or grammar. Contributors can stick to the subjects they know a lot about, or just what they're interested in, or just help organize the overall set of articles. It's up to each contributor to decide what kind of involvement they want to have.
The single best example of a wiki in action is Wikipedia, which already covers significantly more subjects than any other encyclopedia.
The Modern Vespa Wiki
The goal of the Modern Vespa Wiki is to accumulate an encyclopedic knowledge of modern Vespa scooters. We want to eventually know every possible detail about them, from A to Z. This is primarily a technical endeavor, but there are lots of semi-technical and non-technical subjects that are fair game. We'd really like to have a resource to point to for all the commonly-asked questions in the forum, so we don't have to answer them over and over and over again.
For the Modern Vespa Wiki, we're doing things a little differently. Modern Vespa is primarily a discussion forum, and we've had to create our own custom wiki software in order to integrate the wiki into the forum. We've also deviated from the usual wiki rules a little bit to tailor things to a forum audience instead of a wiki audience.
First and foremost, all wiki articles are written in BBCode, the same markup language that you use when you post a message to the forum. This makes it easy to move content from the discussion area to a wiki article without as much reformatting.
We've also made it so that every wiki article has a dedicated discussion thread attached to it. Discussion of what should go in any given wiki article happens in the discussion thread, and the article presents a polished and coherent presentation of whatever information is appropriate for the topic. We've made it easy to flip back and forth between the discussion and the article to make it easy to follow along.
There are a few more restrictions on who can edit an article as well. Just as we don't allow anonymous posting in the forum, we're not going to allow anonymous editing of the wiki. You must be registered in order to make an edit, and you must have at least 100 posts.
For the Modern Vespa Wiki, we're doing things a little differently. Modern Vespa is primarily a discussion forum, and we've had to create our own custom wiki software in order to integrate the wiki into the forum. We've also deviated from the usual wiki rules a little bit to tailor things to a forum audience instead of a wiki audience.
First and foremost, all wiki articles are written in BBCode, the same markup language that you use when you post a message to the forum. This makes it easy to move content from the discussion area to a wiki article without as much reformatting.
We've also made it so that every wiki article has a dedicated discussion thread attached to it. Discussion of what should go in any given wiki article happens in the discussion thread, and the article presents a polished and coherent presentation of whatever information is appropriate for the topic. We've made it easy to flip back and forth between the discussion and the article to make it easy to follow along.
There are a few more restrictions on who can edit an article as well. Just as we don't allow anonymous posting in the forum, we're not going to allow anonymous editing of the wiki. You must be registered in order to make an edit, and you must have at least 100 posts.
Navigation
Navigating the wiki is much like navigating any other web page. In any given article, there will be links to other articles. The wiki has a main page which can be considered the "top" of the hierarchy of articles. Every other article should be reachable through a series of links that start at the main page.
There's also a sidebar which will give you a shortcut to the main page, and also some special pages. From the sidebar, you can see a list of all articles, articles that have recently been edited, articles that have recently been added, articles you have edited, articles you have added, and a quick link back to the discussion area for the wiki.
At the bottom of every wiki page, there are a series of buttons for specialized actions, like editing the current article, or seeing past revisions of the article. These buttons will change depending on what page you're on, as not every button makes sense on every page. We'll talk about the buttons individually in the sections that follow.
There's also a sidebar which will give you a shortcut to the main page, and also some special pages. From the sidebar, you can see a list of all articles, articles that have recently been edited, articles that have recently been added, articles you have edited, articles you have added, and a quick link back to the discussion area for the wiki.
At the bottom of every wiki page, there are a series of buttons for specialized actions, like editing the current article, or seeing past revisions of the article. These buttons will change depending on what page you're on, as not every button makes sense on every page. We'll talk about the buttons individually in the sections that follow.
Editing
All Modern Vespa members with at least 100 posts can edit any article in the wiki. This is the "many hands make light work" principle. We want everyone to be able to contribute to any article, even if it's only a miniscule contribution such as a correction to spelling. With enough edits, an article will eventually mature to the point where it is a useful resource to all.
How To Do It
To edit an article, just hit the edit page button at the bottom of the article. You'll be brought to a screen that very closely resembles the one you use to make a post to the forum, except it will have the entire text of the article already in it.
All the usual BBCode tags that you're familar will work, plus a few new ones. You can make text bold or italic, or embed pictures, just as you would with a discussion post.
When you're done editing, enter a short summary of what you did in the Summary field at the bottom. This will help us sort out what's happening with a particular article. You can preview your changes if you like, or just hit the Submit button. Your changes will be entered in the database and everyone viewing the article will now see your version of it, until someone else comes along and adds to it.
All the usual BBCode tags that you're familar will work, plus a few new ones. You can make text bold or italic, or embed pictures, just as you would with a discussion post.
When you're done editing, enter a short summary of what you did in the Summary field at the bottom. This will help us sort out what's happening with a particular article. You can preview your changes if you like, or just hit the Submit button. Your changes will be entered in the database and everyone viewing the article will now see your version of it, until someone else comes along and adds to it.
Linking
Linking is an important part of organizing a wiki. Every article should be linked from some other article.
How To Do It
To make a link from one article to another article, you must first know the article slug, which you can think of somewhat like a filename. You can see the article slug for any given article by looking at the web address, like so:
Once you know the slug, you can insert it as a tag into any article, like so:
http://www.modernvespa.com/forum/wiki-gts-250
In the example above, the part in bold, "wiki-gts-250", is the article slug. Every article has one, and each one is different.Once you know the slug, you can insert it as a tag into any article, like so:
[wiki-gts-250]
The above BBCode, when inserted in an article, will become a link to the article, using the full name of the article as the link text. Like so: Once you submit your changes to the article, you're done. The link is complete.How To Do It, Expert Version
Sometimes, having the link turn into the full name of the article is undesirable. You might want to link using some other text, such as:
I think the GTS is the finest scooter Vespa has ever made.
To make a link using some text other than the article title, you use a link similar to the way you would link to external websites, but with less extraneous stuff. The BBCode for the link above looks like this:[url=wiki-gts-250]GTS[/url]
The opening URL tag indicates what article you want to link to, and the text between the URL tags indicates what text should appear with the link. The final URL tag (called the "closing tag", indicated by the /) indicates the end of the text.If you feel there's a need for a new article on a particular topic (which is very likely at this point) then we strongly encourage you to create one, even if it's just a placeholder for future content. You can contribute as much or as little to a new article as you like to the new article, from a statement on what you think should be in the article all the way up to a full-blown dissertation on the subject. It's up to you. If you only provide a brief statement about what you think should be in the article, chances are someone will come along later, agree with your idea, and fill out some content. This is the way wiki articles grow and evolve.
How To Do It
Go to any wiki article, scroll to the bottom, and click new page. You'll be taken to the familiar posting screen where you can type the content of the article. Hit Preview to see what your new article looks like, or hit Submit to post it. That's it -- you've just created an article, which will show up in the list of all articles.
Ideally, you'll also edit another article somewhere in the wiki to link to your new article, depending on how the new article should be organized. If you're not sure, go to the discussion thread for your new article and post a message asking for organization suggestion.
Ideally, you'll also edit another article somewhere in the wiki to link to your new article, depending on how the new article should be organized. If you're not sure, go to the discussion thread for your new article and post a message asking for organization suggestion.
Pictures
As stated in the "Editing" section above you can add pictures to an article. Pictures are very important in some articles to help make a procedure or the location of a particular part clear. It is important that any pictures used in wiki articles be located on MV servers. This is to be sure that in the event of a broken link or the deletion of a picture on an "outside" server that a crucial picture is not lost.
Since you cannot add attachments while creating or editing a wiki article you will need to upload your pictures to another area then use image tags to link to them and insert them into the appropriate area of the article.
Since you cannot add attachments while creating or editing a wiki article you will need to upload your pictures to another area then use image tags to link to them and insert them into the appropriate area of the article.
Adding Pictures To A New or Existing Article
Go to the discussion page for the new article and upload any pictures you want to use.
Get the image's url, open the article for editing and paste the url into the appropriate area of the article surrounded by image tags like so:
Get the image's url, open the article for editing and paste the url into the appropriate area of the article surrounded by image tags like so:
[img]http://modernvespa.com/pix/uploads/i_hnkvv2w_l_139.jpg[/img]
You can also add image urls from any other area of MV using the same procedure and format.
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