Contributing
The wiki architecture is designed to make viewing and contributing content as easy as possible. Just take a look at all the things you can do and how easy it is!
Creating an account
Because spam bots are very aggressive, you must create an account for ropewiki.com and verify your email before you are allowed to edit. We would eliminate this requirement if we could, but it is not currently feasible. Fortunately, account creation should be pretty easy and you only have to do it once! Create a new account
Our email verification can occasionally stop working -- if this happens, you will not receive an email to verify your account when you first create your account. If you find yourself in this situation even after checking your spam folder for the verification email, just send User:Bjp an email and your account can be verified manually. IMPORTANT: Google users should check Spam folder on www.gmail.com, because of how Google detects spam, verification messages tend to be detected as Spam.
We also recommend to create a User page for your account, so other users can know who you are and how to contact you. If you are an organization or commercial company (yes, commercial companies can contribute beta, too), you may mention what services you provide. You can create/edit your user page at [[User:]]. Feel free to include links to your Facebook page but be careful with email addresses to avoid spam (see examples User:Bjp, User:lucach).
Contributing content
Wiki basics
Most contributions use Wiki code -- you'll see this type of code whenever you click Edit on a page. Wiki code is designed to be easy to use, but you don't need to learn what it is to use it -- just use the formatting buttons above the editing text box to apply formatting to your content. The toolbar will allow you format text in Bold, Italic, Bulleted List and to insert pictures and drawings, links and more without having to remember how to use Wikicode.
If you want to do something fancy, just find a page that already has something similar and then click Edit to see what wiki code it used to make that happen.
The Quick Reference Guide has more details of how text formatting works in Wiki pages and how to embed images and links. The Manual of Style contains guidelines on how to apply styles, but don't be afraid to add content now and edit later!
Creating new pages
Some types of information have special formats, so you should use the appropriate tools when creating pages with this type of information. To add this type of information, first verify that there is not already a page for information you want to add (use the search box on the top right and click the 'Search' button, DO NOT just press 'ENTER'). You can also use the following links:
- Create new location (a Canyon, a Cave or other Point Of Interest)
- Create a new region (a Country, a State, a District, a Mountain range or other area)
- New incident report
- New Knot
Make sure to click Save when finished!
Editing existing pages
- Login (there is a link in the upper right on any page in this wiki)
- Go to the page you want to edit
- Click on the Edit tab in the cluster of controls in the upper right
- Improve or add content by changing the text in the box
- Enter a small summary of your changes and click Save page
Adding a cover picture
Each location has a specific cover picture (like CDs and DVDs) that illustrates the location. If no cover picture exists you will see the text 'Click here to upload a picture', click on that line to upload a new picture. To change an existing cover picture click on the picture and then click on the link 'Upload a new version of this file'.
Adding pictures to a page
The page Adding pictures explains an easy way to add pictures to a page using the {{pic}} template. The page Adding picture files explains a more difficult way, using the [[File:]] directive.
Adding a PDF file to a page
The page Adding PDF files explains how to add PDFs to a page. You can also see examples in the Quick Reference Guide.
Adding a KML map
The page Map Creation explains how to create and upload KML files. The page Guidelines explains what colors and names to use. It is important to try to stick with the guidelines so that when all maps are displayed together they are easier to understand (for example when using the 'Show KML maps' checkbox in a region map, which will display the combined KML maps of all the locations of that region).
Adding a star rating
You may rate a location you have visited to let people know how good or bad that location is. You can go to that location's page (for instance, Little Santa Anita Canyon) and click on the row of stars under the cover picture. You must be logged in to rate locations. To see the StarRank for a location just click on the rating. People will be able to see you rating and what other locations you have rated.
Adding a condition report
To let people know when you visited a specific location and what conditions you found, just go to that location's page (for instance, Little Santa Anita Canyon) and click on the "Report conditions" button. You must be logged in to see this button. To see past condition reports, just click on the date displayed next to Conditions in the box at the upper right (near the "Report conditions" button). If there is no date, that means no condition reports have been created. People will be able to see your condition reports and what other locations you reported.
Adding a reference picture
Reference pictures are used in the Waterflow analysis, which is relevant only for water related locations such as water canyons or river caves. To add a reference picture click on the 'Waterflow analysis' link under the banner picture and then click on the 'New Reference Picture' button. To edit a reference picture click on the date link for that that picture.
Adding a video
YouTube videos can be embedded in a page with {{#ev:youtube|1UVWTy2KFXY}}, but replace 1UVWTy2KFXYn with the ID of your video (it's the thing with v=XXXX in the address bar when viewing your video). Vimeo videos can be embedded with {{#ev:vimeo|31640024}} -- again, replace 31640024 with the ID of your video.
Example pages
These pages are fairly complete and may serve as examples for how to add additional content:
Pages that need improvement
Pages that have little or no content but are known to be useful may be found in the list of stubs. Also, many location pages contain only very basic information and links to other beta sites; these can be substantially improved.
Other tasks
Signing your name
On Talk pages, it is often useful to sign your message. To do so, just add four tildes (~) in a row at the end of the message.
Managing contributions
The Managing contributions page explains how to monitor changes other people may do to your contributions, get notifications by email and how to solve vandalism.
Renaming a location
Because RopeWiki has a number of features that identify canyons (and caves, etc) by their names, renaming a canyon (or cave, etc) is not quite as simple as renaming its page. The simplest way to rename a canyon is to post in the RopeWiki Facebook group; say something like "Rename request: <old canyon name> to <new canyon name>. Explanation: <link to canyon Discussion page>" Before posting, add a note in the canyon's Discussion page (see the Page/Discussion tabs near the upper left of the page) explaining why the rename is appropriate, as a record to others regarding what was done. Include a link to that discussion page when posting to the Facebook group.
If you would like to rename a canyon yourself, perform the following steps:
- Type the current name of the canyon in the Search box in the top right corner and click 'Search' (Do not just press 'Enter')
- Once the pages show up, click on the the 'Everything' button
- You will have now a list of files and pages that need to be renamed or their content needs to be updated or both
- Once you think you are done, try searching again in case you missed any reference
Background
The reason renaming a canyon takes all this work is that lots of resources are linked to that canyon using its name. Just changing the canyon page name doesn't change the canyon name in all those other things. For instance, a canyon named Canyon1 knows that its banner picture should be named Canyon1 Banner.jpg. So, when someone renames Canyon1 to Canyon2, Canyon2 is expecting its banner picture to be Canyon2 Banner.jpg. But, Canyon2 Banner.jpg doesn't exist. The solution there is to also rename Canyon1 Banner.jpg to Canyon2 Banner.jpg. But there are lots of things like this -- for instance, votes are just small pages that mention the canyon by name. When just the Canyon1 page is renamed, a Vote page is left that references Canyon1 (which no longer exists). Likewise, condition reports are just small pages that mention the canyon by name. Also Lists and the KML. The canyon's name has to be changed in all these places. It's possible to do manually (see above), but as you can guess, it will take a lot of renaming.
Adding a new location with the same name as an existing location
Two locations cannot share the same page name, so adding a new location with the same name as an existing location requires a few extra steps. For example, if there were an existing location named Pine Canyon in Arizona and you wanted to create a page for Pine Canyon in the San Gabriels, you would follow these steps:
- Create the new page
- Pick a name that is unique by adding parenthetical clarification at the end of the name -- for instance, "Eaton Canyon (Upper)" or in this case, "Pine Canyon (San Gabriels)"
- Pick a new name for the existing page
- Use the same parenthetical clarification method -- in this case, "Pine Canyon (Arizona)"
- If multiple clarifications are needed, separate them by commas -- for instance, "Pine Canyon (Upper, San Gabriels)"
- Rename the existing page (see above for details on how to do this)
- Create a disambiguation page
- Since the page "Pine Canyon" no longer exists, some links from other pages might be broken. To fix this, we will add a disambiguation page for Pine Canyon listing all the different Pine Canyons on the wiki
- Add a parenthetical "disambiguation" to the end of the basic name and type it in the search box in the upper right -- in this case, "Pine Canyon (disambiguation)"
- Click Go
- At the top of the results, there will be a red link to create this page on the wiki -- click that link
- Fill in that page with a list of all the different variations of that location that exist on this wiki using code similar to that found for Pine Canyon (disambiguation)
- Save the page
- Create a redirect to the disambiguation page
- We still don't have a page named "Pine Canyon" -- we will create one that automatically redirects to the disambiguation page
- Type the basic name in the search box in the upper right and click Go -- in this case "Pine Canyon"
- At the top of the results, there will be a red link to create this page on the wiki -- click that link
- Enter this wiki code in the page and save it (where XXX is the base name of the location):
#REDIRECT [[XXX Canyon (disambiguation)]]
Renaming a Region
For renaming, the difficulty arises because data is linked by page name (see above). This is a big problem with Canyons, but only a small problem with Regions. Note that the actual content of Region will say, e.g., "|Parent region=Western Desert" for Dinosaur National Monument. So, when we rename "Western Desert" to "Western Slope", the parent region of Dinosaur National Monument will be invalid (there's no Region named "Western Desert" any more). We need to fix this problem when renaming. So, to rename "Western Desert" to "Western Slope", first we need to find all the Regions which name "Western Desert" as their parent region. We can do this by going to Special pages and finding Semantic search. This page allows us to search according to structured (semantic) data in pages. Semantic search claims it has an "easy-to-use" query language. I'm sure this claim is a bit amusing to most people so I'll just tell you that the search query you want is this:
[[Located in region::Western Desert]]
This should give you a list of, e.g., 10 pages -- some are other Regions and some are Canyons. After renaming "Western Desert", each of these pages must be edited to change "Western Desert" to "Western Slope" (see below).
Now, the actual rename! Go to the page you want to rename and find the Move link near the upper right:
In the rename page, make sure "Leave a redirect behind" is checked, as well as "Move associated talk page", and make sure to provide a good reason for the rename -- this will be important if anyone disagrees with the rename later.
Click Move page and that completes the rename itself. But, now the (e.g.) 10 pages we identified earlier are broken -- we need to go to each of them and change "Western Desert" to "Western Slope". Remember to "View source" rather than "View form" to make it easier to perform this change correctly.
