How To Edit The GURPS Wiki

Introduction

Hello, and welcome to the mysteries of wiki editing! This article is intended for both those new to editing, and those who have worked on wikis before, as both the Wikidot.com wiki system in general and this wiki in particular have their own unique twists.

First, remember this: The "edit" button is your friend. It can be found at the bottom at every page, and allows you to alter an existing page. And equally important, it allows you to look at the code of other pages - so if you see a particular cool way of displaying something on another wiki page (whether on this wiki or another Wikidot.com wiki), click on "edit" to figure out how it works - and to steal it, if necessary.

Secondly, Wikidot.com has ample documentation on how to use wiki code. The links to the documentation can always be found right below the edit window, but I will link to them again, just in case: The Wiki Text Quick Reference and The Code Snippets Collection.

If you are just starting out, you don't really need any in-depth knowledge of how to edit wikis - in each of the main sections, there are detailed step-by-step instructions and ready-made templates which largely automate the process and only require you to enter the relevant numbers and text. But here are some further details which might be useful later on:

Linking

Normally you don't need to add links to your entries. But sometimes you want to create a link to another, related entry somewhere in the wiki, or perhaps to an external website (for example, one that hosts the campaign setting for which you have created the entry). There are two types of links you can create with the wiki code:

Internal Links

Internal Links lead to another page in the same wiki. To create them, you must enter the title of the target page in triple square brackets. For example:

[[[Monsters]]]

yields this:

Monsters

However, sometimes you want to make the link appear with another text than the title of the target page. In that case, you first have to write the title of the page, then a "|" separator, and then the text you wish to display. For example:

[[[Monsters | The Monster Section]]]

yields

The Monster Section

Simple, right? However, with this wiki things are a bit more complicated, for the different sections are divided into so-called namespaces which need to be added in front of the title of the target page with a ":". For instance, the NPCs section has the namespace "npc", so to get to the NPC named "Keith St. Michel", you have to use the code:

[[[npc:Keith St. Michel]]]

to get this link:

Keith St. Michel

This is annoying, so why do we do this? Well, imagine an entry with the title "Oni". Does this refer to a monster, a racial template, a supervillain NPC or a Japanese spaceship? If the wiki grows large enough, all four could co-exist - and the namespace system keeps them tidily separated. Plus, it is possible to give the pages in different namespaces custom appearances (if anyone gets around to writing appropriate CSS code…).

The canonical list of namespaces is currently as follows:

Section	Namespace
Character Templates	ct:
Magic	mag:
Magical Styles	ms:
Martial Arts Styles	mas:
Monsters	m:
NPCs	npc:
Racial Templates	rt:
Spaceships	ss:
Spells	sp:
Traps	tr:
Dungeons & Dragons	dnd:
Dark Sun	ds:

As the wiki expands, future namespaces will be added as needed. These should be, at best, two- or three-letter abbreviations (for example "ts:" for Transhuman Space or "iw:" for Infinite Worlds).

External Links

In contrast to this, external links are easy to understand. Just put first the target URL and then the text you want to display, within single square brackets. Thus,

[http://arcana.wikidot.com/ Arcana Wiki]

gives us this link:

Arcana Wiki

Tags

Tags are a very useful way of organizing the wiki. Some tags are mandatory for specific entries (this is explained in the relevant sections), but you can add more tags by clicking on the "tags" button at the bottom of each page. So, what can you do with them?

Well, imagine you want to write up a variety of entries for a specific setting - for instance, the setting of GURPS Banestorm. But these entries include monsters, NPCs, character templates and so forth, so how can you find them all in one go? By giving them all the "banestorm" tag. Now you can simply click on the tag (either on the bottom of one of the entries or on the tag cloud in the navigation bar), and you will get a list with all entries tagged in this way, no matter where on the site they are located.

And if you want to create a new project page for the setting, you can insert modules which list some or all of the entries on that page, in addition to your regular text. Explaining how would take up to much time here - but see the documentation for the ListPages module for some pointers. I am sure you will be able to develop your own ideas quickly…

Other Relevant Formatting Bits

Bold Text

Put **double asterisks** around text to make it bold.

Italic Text

Put //double backslashes// around text to make it italic.

Bullet Point Lists

* Put a single asterisk at the start of a line to make it a bullet point.
 * Add an empty space in front of the asterisk to make it a higher-order bullet point.
  * Repeat at nauseam.

• Put a single asterisk at the start of a line to make it a bullet point.
  • Add an empty space in front of the asterisk to make it a higher-order bullet point.
    • Repeat at nauseam.