User:AtteSmythe/Cleanup/How to edit

Many of the technical bits you'll need to know are on the YPPedia:Style guide page. For a new editor, it can be a bit overwhelming, so here's a quick primer of wikicode and YPPedia practices.

YPPedia Practices
Make heavy use of the "Show preview" button! It will give you the page exactly as it will show up regularly, unlike the forums, where the preview and real pages are different. You'll still get an edit box at the bottom to make further changes, after which you can preview again. The real benefit is that once you hit "Save page," it signals to other editors that you're done working on the page for now. They may come in to fix things up for you&mdash;if you're still working on the page, you may get an edit conflict and have to reconcile the differences.

Captialisation and spelling default to in-game usage. Although I am atteSmythe, the game forces first-letter captialisation with no midcaps, so my pirate's page is Attesmythe. There are special cases where this cannot be done ("a random crew," for example), but these are rare and noted in the article.

Pages must have real, verifiable, clean content. That means a good attempt at spelling and grammar (though others can fix it for you, especially if it's close), and that pirate, crew, and flag pages are not the place for in-character fiction.

When creating links, only the first instance of a term should be linked. So, for the captain of a crew, link the crew's name the first time it's in the article, but not any time after that. The title of the article should appear in the first or second sentence of the article's summary, and should be bolded only for this first instance.

You can find out more about keeping your edits consistent with YPPedia style at the YPPedia:Style guide, but for now, here's how to get started.

Simple formatting
Simple text formatting is done with single quotes ( ' ) Bold italics are not pleasing, and should rarely, if ever, be used. In general, use your words to convey emphasis, and reserve formatting for things like names of ships (the sloop Saucy Halibut).

Links
Links are done with square brackets ( [ ] )
 * An internal link to the Main Page is written Main Page
 * A renamed internal link to YPPedia:Style guide that we want to look like Style guide is written Style guide
 * note the | (pipe) in the link. Everything right of the pipe is what's used as the link text.
 * An external link like this uses a single set of square brackets instead of doubles: like this
 * Note that external links don't use a pipe, but rather separate the link text from the location by a space

Lists, like the above, are done by starting a line with an asterisk (*). Indented items use two or more asterisks. To make a number list, use the pound sign (#) instead.

Headers
Headers use equal signs, just like simple formatting uses single quotes. The wiki will use your headers to automatically generate a table of contents. The main title bar way up at the top of a page is header 1, so pages' headers should typically start with header 2.

Header 2== ==

Header 3=== ===

Header 4==== ====

Header 5===== =====

And so on.

Discussing a Page
Every page has a talk page. If you have a question, want to leave a note about what you're doing, or want to vote on a page-specific issue, click the tab at the top of the article that says "discuss this page."
 * Discussion tends to be hierarchical - when replying to someone, you'll want to indent your paragraph one step further than the message to which you are replying, like this paragraph is. To do that, put a colon at the front of your paragraph. If you need a paragraph break, remember to put a colon at the beginning of the new paragraph, after your carriage return.


 * To reply to a message after someone else already has, leave an extra space between your messages, to make it clear that they are separate. You'll also want to sign your notes. There's a button at the top of the edit box that looks like a signature that will do this for you, or you can type --~ to sign, like this: --AtteSmythe 10:52, 13 June 2006 (PDT)