FND-Wiki editing

Wiki editing

(Wiki editing, namespaces; user page setup; copyright, a Course Journal stub page, and an insights! stub page)

 

Abstract:

This should be the first learning unit you work with, since your Course Journal will be kept on a Wiki, as well as all other deliverables. This unit includes an introduction to authoring Wikitext and the structure of Wikis, in particular how different pages live in separate "Namespaces". The unit also covers the standard markup conventions - "Wikitext markup" - the same conventions that are used on Wikipedia - as well as some extensions that are specific to our Course- and Student Wiki. We also discuss page categories that help keep a Wiki organized, licensing under a Creative Commons Attribution license, and how to add licenses and other page components through template codes.

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Objectives: Provide an introduction to Wiki principles and Wikitext markup. Create first pages on your own on the Student Wiki. Learn about copyright, why we use Creative Commons licenses for the Student Wiki and how to place a license tag.

Outcomes: You are competent with basic Wiki markup and the extensions on this Wiki. You can create pages and add them to categories while taking care to create them into your own user space. You have created your own user page on the Student Wiki and added contents. You have created page stubs for a Course Journal and an insights! page.

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Deliverables:

Specified as "Tasks": There are no general deliverables for this unit; specific deliverables are described in the "Task" sections.

 

 

 

Evaluation

Evaluation: NA

This unit is not evaluated for course marks.

Contents

Collaboration is a common theme for modern lab work and a Wiki is a great way to share and seamlessly update information in groups - or just for yourself. Probably the most sophisticated Wiki software is MediaWiki, a set of PHP scripts that is under continuous development by the Wikimedia foundation; it is the same software that runs Wikipedia. This is open source, free software that is easy to install, is well documented and requires very little resources other than a machine that runs a MySQL database server and an Apache Webserver. Numerous extensions exist (and extensions are not hard to write); they enhance the already rich functionality. But let's start with small steps. You will receive a user account on the Student Wiki, and I have configured that Wiki so that

• only logged in users can view the pages; but ...
• all logged in users can create and edit (most) pages.

This means you could edit pages that don't "belong" to you. Respect the "House Rules" and don't edit others' things without permission, even if you can think of a particularly witty comment or hilarious prank. If you want to comment on a page: every page has an associated "Discussion" page that you can freely edit. Remember to "sign your name" to discussion entries.

 

Task:

• Access the Student Wiki;
• log in and navigate to your user page. (Your user page is linked to your name that appears at the top of every Wikipage once you are logged in.) Create / edit the page, try out and experiment with the Wikitext syntax that this unit covers as you read about the different elements.
• Work through the contents below.

Wikitext User Page Template

Expand for template code.

Copy the whole block of text, paste it into your "User" page on the Student Wiki and study it. You can make changes and click Show preview to see what they look like. When you are satisfied, click Save changes.

<!-- HTML comments will not be rendered by the wiki. -->

__NOTOC__
<div style="overflow: hidden">
[[File:<MY PICTURE FILE NAME AND EXTENSION>|250px|right|<ALT TEXT>]]

'''<MY USER NAME (王一大)>'''

<MY POSt OR MAJORS>

:E: [mailto:<MY EMAIL>@mail.utoronto.ca <MY EMAIL>@utoronto.ca]
</div>

----
;About ...
: Really just anything you would hope others could relate to. An interesting paper you read recently. Your professor's funny habits. Your pet. The awesome, magnificent monstera you grew. What you could use some help with in this course. Or in your life. Your favourite artwork. What you are going to do after class. Or after graduating ...

----

{{Vspace}}

==Course Things==
* [[User:<MY USER NAME>/Journal|Course Journal]]
* [[User:<MY USER NAME>/insights!|insights!]]

{{Vspace}}

==To Do==
* Laundry!
* Dishes! SRSLY
* ...

{{Vspace}}

==Resources==
* [http://steipe.biochemistry.utoronto.ca/bio/img/ABC-units_map.svg Map]
* [http://steipe.biochemistry.utoronto.ca/bio Syllabus]
* [https://q.utoronto.ca/courses/234479 BCH441 on Quercus]



{{Vspace}}

----

{{Smallvspace}}

[[Category:BCH441_2021]]

{{CC-BY}}

<!-- [END] -->

 

The "User space" and its "subpages"

The User: namespace on the Student Wiki is especially important.

Namespaces allow us to partition a Wiki into logical sections. The most important sections are the Main: space - for general pages, and the User:-space, for pages that are associated with specific users, like you, yourself. This is important when we need to create similar but unique pages, for assignments and such.

For example, every student will create a journal page, but page titles on the Wiki must be unique. Thus there can be only one [[Journal]] page on the Wiki. The obvious solution is to keep your "own" pages in the User: namespace, and create them as subpages of everyone's User page. The page name of your user page is [[User:<your-login-name>]]; subpages are created with a backslash, and therefore your Course Journal page should be [[User:<your-login-name>/Journal]].

Please do not create pages in the "Main space" of the Student Wiki! (I will delete such pages.) Do not omit the User:<your-login-name>/ part of the page name.

 

Copyright

Over the last decades, the paradigm under which we create value in science has profoundly changed. Years ago we placed numerous restrictions on the use of our insights, tried to keep control data, and thought in terms of intellectual property. Today, we think about mindshare. We strive to make our work maximally useful to others, and to document how we are creating this utility. This does not mean that we are simply putting everything into the public domain: certainly, people should use our ideas, but we must receive credit - acknowledgement is the currency for grant- and scholarship applications and such, which enables our future work. The right tool for this is copyright.

Everything we write and create automatically falls under our copyright, there is no special copyright tag required. To have our material reused, we can either relinquish our copyright or grant a license to reuse. Material that is created in coursework will ideally be useful elsewhere, but it is only useful if its use is permitted and regulated.

Wikis are tools for collaboration, and Wikipedia generally applies a site-wise license to all material. In our work we take a similar approach, but we apply licenses more specifically. All material submitted for credit, including code, documentation, essays, manuals, images, lab journal entries, insights! pages etc. must be licensed with an appropriate open-source license. This is a strict requirement for the course. For code this is the MIT software license, for everything else this is the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License. The MIT license for code guarantees that there are no restrictions on re-use other than fair and visible attribution of the authors' work. The CC license guarantees proper attribution of authorship but allows free use otherwise. Together, these licenses allow the material to be used, refactored, updated and republished and thus (hopefully) give it a fertile future life.

In order to keep copyright and licenses consistent throughout the site, we use a template tag - simply insert it at the bottom of a page:

Entering the template code ...
{{CC-BY}}
creates the copyright message ...

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This copyrighted material is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License. Follow the link to learn more.

 

Task:

• Practice basic editing syntax by putting contents on your User Page:
  • enter your name,
  • your major(s), specialist program, year of study - or a link to your lab and your thesis theme if you are a graduate student;
  • enter your email address. I use this information a lot when I need to contact students, so make sure it is correct and current.
  • Add a category tag to your User page. The Wikitext is [[Category:BCH441_2020]]. PLace this at the bottom of the page. All pages with this tag are accessible via the link in the sidebar.
  • Add a copyright template to the bottom of your user page by putting a {{CC-BY}} tag on its bottom.

Feel free to look at my User Page (or others') for code examples: clicking on the edit link of any page will show you the source text. How do you find my User Page? Good question ...

• Create a subpage to your User Page; call it "Journal". Note: the link MUST be in your "User space". If you don't add the prefix User:yourname/... before your page name, the new page will end up in the main "namespace". I'll then have to delete it. That's not good. Make sure you know what you are doing, for example by looking at the code on my User Page, asking someone who knows, or asking on the mailing list.
• Put some placeholder text on your journal page, you will fill it in when you work through the Journal unit.
• Similarly, create an "insights!" page on a subpage to your User Page and add some placeholder text. That will be expanded when you work through the insights! unit.
• Play around some more. Feel free to ask how to go about achieving a particular effect that you may have seen elsewhere.

Self-evaluation

You should be familiar with the following:

• How to Login to the Student Wiki and access your user page;
• viewing a page's history;
• basic text formatting and Wiki markup;
• "signing" your name;
• creating internal and external links;
• creating section headers on a page on multiple levels;
• reverting a changed page to an earlier version;
• creating a new page (as a subpage of an existing page);
• the concept of namespaces - especially the default ("main") and User: namespace;
• the concept of categories and how to add a page to a category;
• copyright on the Student Wiki, and how to insert a license note.

Notes

 

About ...
 
Author:

Boris Steipe <boris.steipe@utoronto.ca>

Created:

2017-08-05

Modified:

2020-09-08

Version:

1.2

Version history:

• 1.2 Maintenance updates
• 1.1 Changed software license from GNU-GPL to MIT
• 1.0 Completed outcomes/objectives. Added copyright. First live version.
• 0.2 First contents imported from Help:editing. Added tasks.
• 0.1 First stub