MEpedia talk:How to contribute

Sortable tables
I'm still new to this, but what is the syntax for creating a sortable table (eg can click arrows or something at the top of each column and it will sort by date or alphabetical order)?


 * See instructions here and here --Samsara (talk) 05:56, 30 June 2016 (PDT)

Images don't show
I tried adding an image to my page but it simply won't show, and I noticed this is the same for images throughout the wiki, except for very tiny files. What gives? By the way, why is there no help forum? Guido den Broeder (talk) 13:20, 18 October 2017 (PDT)
 * We now have a help forum here: MEpedia:Editor help desk!
 * Ask away!
 * Pyrrhus (talk) 22:58, 29 March 2019 (EDT)

Add topic button not working
Just saying. The software doesn't seem to have been configured correctly. Guido den Broeder (talk) 13:25, 18 October 2017 (PDT)
 * The Add Topic tab can take some getting used to. I was initially confused too.  As far as I know, it is only to be used on Talk pages.  Click the “Add topic” tab BEFORE you start typing anything in the editor window. Hope this helps.
 * Pyrrhus (talk) 22:58, 29 March 2019 (EDT)

Email address not functional?
The “mepedia@meaction.net” address mentioned in this page does not appear to be functional.

Emailing it produces a bizarre google groups error message.

Tagging page editors for discussion: User:JenB User:Ollie User:Bill User:Canele User:Notjusttired

Pyrrhus (talk) 20:17, 15 February 2019 (EST)
 * Meanwhile I'm sorry, Pyrrhus, I don't know anything about the email address, but thank you for the head's up that it's not working. I was going to try as well. I think at the moment there may just be limited person-hours available. So it goes! We'll work on what we can for now. Canele (talk) 01:35, 16 February 2019 (EST)
 * This didn't work when I signed up either. I'm not sure but it might be something to do with the email address itself. I think someone with access to MEpedia's email admin needs to take a look. I couldn't get the autoconfirm email sent to me when creating a new account so that might be connected to it?
 * Njt
 * notjusttired (talk) 10:40, 16 February 2019 (EST)
 * Doesn't answer about the email, but for what it's worth, User:Notjusttired, you are autoconfirmed--you can have a look here: Special:UserRights/Notjusttired. I'm not sure of the exact parameters being used for this wiki (I didn't pay attention when I started my account), but on other MediaWiki sites, users become autoconfirmed a certain number of days and/or edits after they create their account. Canele (talk) 13:24, 16 February 2019 (EST)
 * Thanks guys! Very helpful. I didn't get any autoconfirm either.
 * Pyrrhus (talk) 15:58, 16 February 2019 (EST)
 * Update: It’s now fixed!!!
 * Pyrrhus (talk) 12:14, 29 March 2019 (EDT)

Communication Guidance
New contributors don’t receive any guidance on how to effectively communicate with other editors.

I suggest adding a section “How to Discuss With Other Contributors”. This section should cover when and how to discuss something on the “Discussion” page for a topic, how to engage other contributors in said discussion, when to use a User’s talk page, and how to contact an administrator for mepedia for admin issues.

As a new user, I know nothing of these things and I have no one to ask.

Pyrrhus (talk) 20:36, 15 February 2019 (EST)
 * Pyrrhus, that's a really good idea. I have started such a page at MEpedia:Discussion, but it's pretty bare bones. You're right it should include how to ping folks if you're not leaving a message on a User's talk page. I'm also going to go ahead and boldly create MEpedia:Editor help desk as a centralized place to ask questions. Given editor availability can really vary, it seems to me it might be, well, helpful to have a place to go to pose a question to whomever might be around. But if others have a different idea or even a different name and want redirect or delete this, I won't be offended. Figure I'll just give it a shot rather than leave it to someone else.
 * Eventually this should be incorporated into How to contribute, yes... Canele (talk) 21:41, 15 February 2019 (EST)
 * Thanks User:Canele! If you get the answers to all my questions down on MEpedia:Discussion, I'll try to make it pretty.
 * For what it's worth, my preference would be to have this info in the Contribute page rather than on a separate page, but I like your idea of a MEpedia:Editor help desk page, if we can only figure out how to get it onto everyone's watchlist!
 * Thanks again.
 * Pyrrhus (talk) 22:38, 15 February 2019 (EST)
 * Definitely agree, Pyrrhus, we should have a summary here of guidance about interacting with others here. I started the MEpedia:Discussion page thinking of the guidance that many users--whether readers or editors--may have energy limits and when any page gets too long, it will de facto be inaccessible. So I was thinking ideally we'd include a concise summary here and link out to the MEpedia:Discussion page for more elaboration.
 * For the help desk: I've gone ahead and added a request that folks add it to their watchlists. I think for now, most active editors look through recent changes and will see it, but I do hope linking to it from other places will help guide people there, with both questions and answers.
 * As to answering your questions: I don't know that I have all the answers! Do you want to make some up? So far, if I couldn't find an answer in existing guidance, I just make one up and trust that if someone else comes along and thinks it should go differently, they'll say so and then we can...discuss. Grin. Editor/admin availability really does vary so I think, don't hold back in writing the first draft if you have ideas. Canele (talk) 01:04, 16 February 2019 (EST)
 * I've found this annoying too. There's also very little in the Help: name space. It would be helpful to have things more connected / linked and include communication within that. NJT notjusttired (talk) 08:05, 17 February 2019 (EST)
 * I will be updating this page soon to make it more easily accessible to new users. I will stress ways for new users to communicate when they have questions, including the MEpedia:Discussion page and the Editor help desk.
 * Pyrrhus (talk) 22:58, 29 March 2019 (EDT)

Imposing Standards for Namespaces
Yeah--a recurring question I've had is whether we shouldn't try to impose some structure on what is presented in mainspace, what in project space (i.e. with the MEpedia prefix), help space, etc. I realize it's a big task and not a necessarily top priority all things considered--but on the other hand, the longer we wait, the tougher it will be to ever do so. As of right now there are 2500 pages. It will only get more challenging from here, as far as fixing all the links affected if we move a lot of pages. But I do think that kind of straightening up culd make a big difference as far as legitimizing the project. I could work on it (mainly my instinct is to move pages that are about editing MEpedia from mainspace into project space), but I'm reluctant to do so unilaterally. Thoughts, anyone? Canele (talk) 17:50, 16 February 2019 (EST)
 * And I didn't even know there were different namespaces! I'll add a brief sentence to the Contribute page just to alert new users to this fact.
 * Pyrrhus (talk) 20:07, 16 February 2019 (EST)
 * To Pyrrhus - any page name with a : in it indicates a page in a namespace, so we are writing in the Talk namespace on Talk:How to contribute at the moment (all discussion tabs links to Talk namespace pages).
 * Content about ME should be in the main namespace or Portal namespace, eg Portal:Heart - the portal ones are linked to from Contents. I don't do anything on Portal except occasionally fixing links or filling in content to link to other pages. Most of the other namespaces don't have many changes to content, eg MEpedia:Scientific standards from the MEpedia namespace won't change much. I think categories are counted as a name space eg  . I'm still learning to be honest.
 * Some built-in links like the Help in the visual editor go to the Help namespace pages eg Help:IMAGE. There are also Template pages like Template:stub which you add to a page with curly brackets eg or using the visual editor with Insert, Template - I'm sure you will have used some of these. To search pages in a namespace type the namespace then a colon.
 * notjusttired (talk) 08:42, 17 February 2019 (EST)
 * Identifying pages to be moved would be the first step. I would find it very helpful to have some kind of contents page or index for Help, MEpedia especially. Is it possible to automate this? Maybe with categorytree?
 * notjusttired (talk) 08:42, 17 February 2019 (EST)
 * Oh, a category (and eventually subcats) is such a good idea. Any ideas for names? Would "MEpedia policies and guidelines" cover it? "Editing MEpedia" might be better (a list of suggested tasks is neither policy nor guideline, for instance) but that doesn't fit the typical syntax for a category... Other ideas welcome! I'll chew on it as well. Canele (talk) 17:19, 17 February 2019 (EST)
 * Many of the pages relating to the MEpedia project itself have now been moved into the MEpedia: namespace. Many of them have also been added to the “MEpedia guidelines” category.  I have proposed renaming the “MEpedia guidelines” category to “MEpedia documentation”, since that better reflects the current usage of that category. I don’t know what remains to be done with the Help: namespace. Hope this helps.
 * Pyrrhus (talk) 22:58, 29 March 2019 (EDT)
 * I find myself wondering whether we might not wish to combine the Help namespace and the MEpedia namespace, mainly to save anyone from recreating the same material in the other place. Any reason not to do this, are there any Help pages that are not essentially about the project? If combined, I tend to think Help should be moved to MEpedia rather than the other way around, since all Help is about the project but not everything about the project is per se about "Help". Canele (talk) 23:32, 29 March 2019 (EDT)

Template problems
How do you prevent the /doc subpages of templates showing up in the Visual Editor when you browse template names? E.g. many quote templates but the /doc pages for them are also appearing. Obviously don't want to delete the TemplateData since that is what decides which fields to show and has the usage instructions. notjusttired (talk) 08:42, 17 February 2019 (EST)

Break into two pages?
This 'Contribute' page has gotten rather long. It is possible that a new contributor may be overwhelmed by such a long page. Perhaps we should break this page up into two pages: a "How to contribute" page and a "Getting started tutorial" page. The "How to contribute" page would explain the different ways someone can contribute to MEpedia, without going into any technical details. The "Getting started tutorial" page would explain the technical basics that a new contributor would need to know to get off the ground, as well as any technical suggestions on how to contribute. So, a reader of the MEpedia main page would click on "Contribute", which would take them to the "How to contribute" page to stimulate their enthusiasm, and then they would click on "Tutorial" to learn the technical basics of getting started. The "How to contribute" page would have a link to the tutorial page at the top and bottom of the page, so the reader can skip the "How to contribute" page if they just want to get straight to the tutorial. Thoughts? Pyrrhus (talk) 23:21, 25 February 2019 (EST)
 * Love it, especially with the links at top and bottom. My only request would be to put the tutorial in project space (MEpedia:Getting started or MEpedia:Quickstart or other similar), to try to advance the general organizing principle of keeping straight what's encyclopedic material versus what's material on how to work on the encyclopedia.
 * Thanks so much for proposing, I also had been wondering how we could reorganize to make it less daunting. Canele (talk) 23:40, 25 February 2019 (EST)
 * Thanks for the feedback. Certainly makes sense that the tutorial be in project space.
 * Pyrrhus (talk) 17:14, 26 February 2019 (EST)
 * As discussed, the page has been broken into two pages in order to make the new user documentation more "concise, yet comprehensive". Hopefully, this will make things easier for those with cognitive difficulties.
 * Pyrrhus (talk) 23:33, 7 April 2019 (EDT)

Rename to MEpedia:How to contribute
Any objection if this page "How to contribute" is renamed to "MEpedia:How to contribute"? Since this page is about the MEpedia project itself, it really should belong in the MEpedia namespace. ("MEpedia:") Pyrrhus (talk) 20:38, 18 March 2019 (EDT)
 * +1. There'd been previous discussion of first categorizing all the pages that would need to be moved, but, given we stalled out, I think the best is just to make the improvements we can without adding extra hurdles. (Also moving pages is not the end of the world; we can move them back if there's eventual community consensus.) Canele (talk) 19:06, 19 March 2019 (EDT)
 * Done!
 * Pyrrhus (talk) 22:58, 29 March 2019 (EDT)