Help:Editing

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Emulation General Wiki is a wiki, meaning anyone can edit nearly any page and improve articles immediately. You do not need to register to do this, and anyone who has edited is known as editor. Small edits add up, and every editor can be proud to have made Emulation General Wiki better for all.

Editing articles

Content style and policies

An encyclopedic style with a formal tone is important: straightforward, just-the-facts, instead of essay-like, argumentative, or opinionated. The goal of a wiki article is to create a comprehensive and neutrally written summary of existing mainstream knowledge about a topic. Emulation General Wiki does not publish original research. An encyclopedia is, by its nature, a wikipedia:tertiary source that provides a survey of information already published in the wider world. Ideally, all information should be cited and verifiable by reliable sources.

Edit screen(s)

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/grammar corrections, fixing a formatting problem, etc. A minor edit is a version that the editor believes requires no review and could never be the subject of a dispute. Marking a change as minor does not mean that the edit is unimportant.

The "minor edit" option is one of several options available only to registered users. Editors are never required to use this button. When in doubt, consider your work to be a normal edit.

Major edits

All editors are encouraged to be bold when improving articles, but there are several things that a user can do to ensure that potentially disruptive 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, the {{in use}} 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 help all to ensure that major edits are well received by the Emulation General Wiki 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 preceding recommendations have become best practice. If you do it your own way, the likelihood of your edits being re-edited may be higher.

When making particularly large or complex changes, you may want to copy the article to your sandbox, so you can make changes without being interrupted by other editors. It is also a good idea to publish changes frequently, so that a browser crash or electrical failure will not result in you losing all of your work.

Adding references

Generally, sources are added directly after the facts they support at the end of the sentence and after any punctuation. Emulation General Wiki permits editors to use any citation system that allows the reader to understand where the information came from and strongly encourages the use of inline citations to do so. Common methods of placing inline citations include footnotes, shortened footnotes and parenthetical references.

Inline citations are most commonly placed by inserting a reference between <ref> ... </ref> tags, directly in the text of an article. The reference is a footnote, appearing as an inline link (e.g. ^[1][2]) to a particular item in a collated, numbered list of footnotes, found wherever a {{reflist}} template or <references /> tag is present, usually in a section titled "References" or "Notes". If you are creating a new page or adding references to a page that didn't previously have any, don't forget to add a references section with this display markup.

Adding images, sounds, and videos

A file that is already hosted on Emulation General Wiki can be inserted with the basic code [[File:FILENAME|thumb|DESCRIPTION]]. (Image: can be substituted for File: with no change in effect; the choice between the two is purely a matter of editorial preference.) Using thumb generates a thumbnail of an image (the most common placement option), which is typically sized differently from the original image. The Wikimedia Commons' File Upload Wizard and Wikipedia's File Upload Wizard will guide you through the process of submitting media. There are various file formats available.

Talk pages

Every article on Emulation General Wiki has a talk page, reached by clicking the "Talk" tab just above the title (for example, Talk:Alexander the Great). There, editors can discuss improvements to the content of an article. If you ever make a change that gets reverted by another editor, discuss the change on the talk page! The BOLD, revert, discuss cycle is a popular method of reaching consensus. It is very important that you conduct yourself with civility and assume good faith on the part of others. Edit warring (repeatedly overriding or reimplementing contributions) is highly discouraged.

Most other types of pages on Emulation General Wiki also have associated talk pages, including the User page each editor is assigned once they sign up. When other editors need to contact you, they will usually do this by leaving a message on your talk page. When someone has left you a message that way, you will see a notice the next time you log in or view a page on Wikipedia.

Sign your contributions to a Talk page by using four tildes (~~~~), which produces your username and a time/date stamp.

Protected pages and source code

Some pages are protected from editing. These pages have a "View source" tab instead of an "Edit" tab. You can still edit these pages indirectly by submitting an edit request—an editor with the permission to edit the protected page will respond to it.

To submit an edit request, click on the protected page's "View source" tab and then the "Submit an edit request" link at the bottom right.