Using and editing the Freecycle wiki

Here's how you can help build this wiki.

Log In

To edit pages, you have to log in. There's a link towards the top right, and you can log in using your My Freecycle id and password.

Currently only group Moderators and Lead-Moderators can make edits.

What needs doing?

You can find work that needs doing in two ways:

• Find pages which don't exist.
• Browsing.

Missing Pages

• Wikis have clickable links, to take you from one article to another.
• If the article doesn't exist, the link will appear in red.
• You can get a list of articles which don't exist....how?
• Then just click on one, and start editing.

Browsing

• Just wander around the wiki, clicking on links, searching, and so on.
• When you find something that's wrong, fix it - click on the Edit link.
• Similarly, if something's missing, add it in.

If you think an article should exist, create a link to it - that way it will show up when people look for work to do.

How do I use the editor?

When you click on Edit, you'll see the wikitext, which uses special characters to format the text. This is a bit cryptic to use, though you'll soon get the hang of it. The toolkit at the top of the page is helpful for most formatting situations. Click on Advanced to access list tools.

Here are some basic commands:

• Headings are designated with equal signs on each side of the heading. The more equal signs, the smaller the text.

 = Title =  looks like  Title  

 
 == Title ==  looks like  Title  

 
 === Title ===  looks like  Title  


 ==== Title ====  looks like  Title  

• <br> inserts a line break
  
• Typing * before a line inserts a bullet point before a list item. If you prefer, you can type your list, highlight it and press the bullet list icon in the Advanced toolbar.
• Typing # before each line in a list produces a numbered list. If you prefer, you can type your list, highlight it and press the numbered list icon in the Advanced toolbar. Numbered lists only work correctly if you don't have extra line breaks.
• Three apostrophes on each side are used to ''' Bold ''' text. You can also use the B icon in the toolbar.
• Two apostrophes on each side are used to '' italicize '' text. You can also use the I icon in the toolbar.

For more information on wikitext, here's a good cheatsheet of basic wikitext codes.

Click below for additional information on:

• Adding a link
• Inserting a screenshot

Click the Preview tab to check your work. When you're done, click the Publish button to save your changes. Don't worry -- your edits won't be public until they're reviewed.

HTML

HTML code is what is written between the symbols < > . This is used for special formatting situations that wikitext can't handle. You probably won't need these, but here's a good HTML cheatsheet just in case.

Creating a new page

There are two ways to create a new wiki page.

1. Create a link to an page that doesn't exist yet. This will create a red link, and if you click the red link it will take you to the edit page for the new article. Simply type your text, click save and the new page will be created.
2. In your browser, type in https://wiki.freecycle.org/Newpagename to create a page called Newpagename. This brings up an error message: "There is currently no text in this page. You can search for this page title in other pages, search the related logs, or edit this page." The page is now ready to be edited.

What's the 'house style'?

A few things to bear in mind:

• Please don't use lots of capitals.
• Use bold text rarely, for emphasis.
• Use italics for terminology, or names of buttons/menu items.
• Use red text very rarely, for warnings about very important things.

Remember that this wiki is for members, who may not have strong IT skills, and may not have English as a first language.

• Use simple language.
• Keep sentences short. If they're long, people won't read them.
• Keep articles short. If they're more than a couple of screens, people won't read them. Often articles get cluttered because there's one specific, relatively unimportant, point which takes a long time to explain. Create another article instead, and link to it.
• Use screenshots. Although it's a bit of a pain capturing them and uploading them to the wiki, they're massively more useful than words. See here for how to capture them.

Keep a clear structure:

• Use lots of links, from one article to another. Think about where someone needs to go next, and add links to help them.
• Use bullets and section headings to provide clear, visible structure.
• Don't be afraid to change the structure of a page. If people just add text and sections to a page, it becomes too long; think about whether it needs splitting, editing or rewriting.

Helpful hints

• The | character is located above the \ key, just under the Backspace key on a typical keyboard.
• Try to avoid editing section headings or page headings. If there's a link somewhere else in the Wiki to that heading, even the slightest change will break the link.
• Remember that the default setting in the wiki is that all pages are visible to the public unless permissions are set to restrict the page to specific users.
• When you're looking at the wiki and see an example of formatting you might like to emulate, click the Edit tab and copy the wikitext to a text document so you can refer to it later.

Are my edits reviewed?

Yes. The wiki shows the approved versions of changes.  A separate team of Reviewers will verify your edits and approve them to make them visible to others.