Help:How to edit

From ChinaTravelGuide

See also ChinaTravelGuide:About, ChinaTravelGuide:Manual of Style, ChinaTravelGuide:Tutorial, Help:Editing, and Help:Starting a new page

ChinaTravelGuide.com is a travel wiki and review site. For the wiki part, this means anyone can easily edit any unprotected page and save those changes immediately to that page. After your first edit, you will be a ChinaTravelGuide editor! For the basic editing syntax, please refer to ChinaTravelGuide:Cheatsheet for a quick start.

Note: You can use the sandbox to experiment with page editing.

1 Introduction
2 Wiki markup
3 Minor edits
4 Major edits
5 More information on editing wiki pages

[edit] Introduction

Editing most ChinaTravelGuide pages is easy. Simply click on the "edit this page" tab at the top of a ChinaTravelGuide page (or on a section-edit link). This will bring you to a new page with a text box containing the editable text of the original page. When you are finished with an edit, you should write a short edit summary in the small field below the edit-box. You may see the difference between the page with your edits and the previous version of the page by pressing the "Show changes" button. If you're satisfied with what you see, be bold and press the "Save page" button. Your changes will immediately be visible to all ChinaTravelGuide users.

You can also click on the "Discussion" tab to see the corresponding talk page, which contains comments about the page from other ChinaTravelGuide users. Click on the "+" tab to add a new section, or edit the page in the same way as an article page.

You should also remember to sign your messages on talk pages and some special-purpose project pages, but you should not sign edits you make to regular articles. In page histories, the MediaWiki software keeps track of which user makes each change.

[edit] Wiki markup

The wiki markup is the syntax system you can use to format a ChinaTravelGuide page; please see Help:Editing for details on it, and Help:Wikitext examples for a longer list of the possibilities of Wikitext.

[edit] Minor edits

A check to the "minor edit" box signifies that only superficial differences exist between the version with your edit and the previous version: typo corrections, formatting and presentational changes, rearranging of text without modifying content, etc. A minor edit is a version that the editor believes requires no review and could never be the subject of a dispute. The "minor edit" option is one of several options available only to registered users.

[edit] Major edits

All editors are encouraged to be bold, but there are several things that a user can do to ensure that major edits are performed smoothly. Before engaging in a major edit, a user should consider discussing proposed changes on the article discussion/talk page. During the edit, if doing so over an extended period of time, the {{inuse}} tag can reduce the likelihood of an edit conflict. Once the edit has been completed, the inclusion of an edit summary will assist in documenting the changes. These steps will all help to ensure that major edits are well received by the ChinaTravelGuide community.

A major edit should be reviewed to confirm that it is consensual to all concerned editors. Therefore, any change that affects the meaning of an article is major (not minor), even if the edit is a single word.

There are no necessary terms to which you have to agree when doing major edits, but the recommendations above have become best practice. If you do it your own way, the likelihood of your edits being reedited may be higher.