Help:Editing

Related articles
ArchWiki:Bots
Help:Discussion
Help:Template
This is a tutorial about editing the
ArchWiki
.
Note
Before editing or creating pages, users are encouraged to familiarize themselves with the general tone, layout, and style of existing articles.
An effort should be made to maintain a level of consistency throughout the wiki. See
ArchWiki:Contributing
,
Help:Reading
and
Help:Style
for an overview of the common conventions.
To experiment with editing, please use the
sandbox
. For an overview of wiki markup, see
Help:Cheatsheet
.
ArchWiki is powered by
MediaWiki
, a free software
wiki
package written in
PHP
, originally designed for use on
Wikipedia
. More in-depth help can be found at
Help:Contents
on MediaWiki and
Help:Contents
on Wikipedia.
Creating an account
Before registering, make yourself familiar with our
Code of conduct
. To be able to edit ArchWiki articles, you must
create an ArchWiki account
and confirm the e-mail address used for registration. Answering the captcha question requires an up-to-date Arch Linux environment: non-Arch users are very welcome to contribute to the wiki, and in order to answer the question they can for example boot into a live Arch system with the
latest installation image
, use
pacman-static
AUR
(precompiled binaries are available) or simply use a container image utilizing tools such as
Docker
.
Once you have an account, log in from
Special:UserLogin
.
Note
Single sign-on
via
accounts.archlinux.org
is not yet implemented. See
archlinux/infrastructure#38
.
Editing
To begin editing a page, click the
Edit source
tab at the top of the page. Alternatively, users may edit a specific section of an article by clicking the
edit source
link to the right of  the section heading. The
Editing Page name
or
Editing Page name (section)
page will be displayed, which consists of the following elements:
Edit toolbar (optional)
Edit box
Edit summary box
Save changes
or
Save page
,
Show preview
,
Show changes
, and
Cancel
links
The edit box will contain the
wikitext
(the editable source code from which the server produces the web page) for the current revision of the page or section. To perform an edit:
Modify the wikitext as needed (see
#Formatting
below for details).
Explain the edit in the
Summary
box (e.g. "fixed typo" or "added info on xyz").
Note
All edits should be accompanied by a descriptive summary to facilitate reviewing from other users. See
ArchWiki:Contributing#The 3 fundamental rules
for more information.
Use the
Show preview
button to facilitate proofreading and verify formatting before saving.
Mark the edit as
minor
by checking the
This is a minor edit
box if the edit is superficial and indisputable.
Save changes by clicking
Save changes
. If unsatisfied, click
Cancel
instead (or repeat the process until satisfied).
Note
Articles should
not
be signed because they are
shared
works; one editor should not be singled out above others.
Reverting edits
If a page was edited incorrectly, the following procedures describe how to revert an article to a previous version. To revert a single edit:
Click the
View history
tab at the top of the page to be modified (beside the
Edit source
tab). A list of revisions is displayed.
Click the
undo
link to the right of the unwanted edit. An edit preview is displayed, showing the current revision on the left and the text to be saved on the right.
Write the reason why you are undoing this edit to the edit summary field.
If satisfied, click the
Save changes
button at the bottom of the page.
The wiki page should now be back in its original state.
Occasionally, it is necessary to revert several last edits at once. To revert an article to a previous version:
Click the
View history
tab at the top of the page to be modified (beside the
Edit source
tab). A list of revisions is displayed.
View the desired revision (i.e. the last
good
version) by clicking on the appropriate timestamp. That revision is displayed.
Click the
Edit source
tab at the top of the page. A warning
"You are editing an out-of-date revision of this page"
will be displayed.
Write the revision timestamp (displayed at the top of page) and a reason why you are reverting page state to the edit summary field.
If satisfied, simply click the
Save changes
button to revert to this version.
Note
Avoid combining an undo and an edit. Revert the edit first, then make additional changes; do not edit the revision preview.
Consider using an especially detailed and verbose edit summary when performing an undo to prevent lengthy discussions.
Creating pages
Before creating a new page, please consider the following:
Is your topic relevant to Arch Linux? Irrelevant or unhelpful articles will be deleted.
Is your topic of interest to others? Consider not only what you wish to write about, but also what others may wish to read. Personal notes belong on your
user
page.
Is your topic worthy of a new page? Search the wiki for similar articles. If they exist, consider improving or adding a section to an existing article instead.
Will your contribution be significant? Avoid creating stubs unless planning to expand them shortly thereafter.
Creating a new page requires selection of a descriptive
title
and an appropriate
category
.
Please read
Help:Article naming guidelines
and
Help:Style#Title
for article naming advice. Do not include "Arch Linux" or variations in page titles. This is the Arch Linux wiki; it is assumed that articles will be related to Arch Linux (e.g., "Installing Openbox"; not "Installing Openbox in Arch Linux").
Visit the
Table of contents
to help choose an appropriate category. Articles may belong to multiple categories, as long as one category is not already the parent of the other (see
Help:Style#Categories
).
To add a new page to some category (say "My new page" to "Some category") you need to:
Create a page with your new title by browsing to
https://wiki.archlinux.org/title/My_new_page
(remember to replace "My_new_page" with the intended title!)
Add
[[Category:Some category]]
to the
top
of your page
Note
Do not create uncategorized pages. All pages must belong to at least one category. If you cannot find a suitable category, consider creating a new one.
At this stage the new article is still considered an
orphan
. To complete the job, take a little extra time to
link
to the new article from others: this will improve its visibility and encourage more users to contribute to it. Likely candidates are articles about related software, more generic overview pages, or even simple lists such as
List of applications
.
In some cases it may make sense to instead create a
subpage
, i.e. a child of another page: subpage titles are separated from the superpage title with "/" symbols (slash). This is often useful to prepare drafts under one's own User page, for example
https://wiki.archlinux.org/title/User:Myself/My_new_subpage
.
Formatting
Text formatting is accomplished with wiki markup whenever possible; learning HTML is not necessary. Various templates are also available for common formatting tasks; see
Help:Template
for information about templates. The
Help:Cheatsheet
summarizes the most common formatting options.
Headings and subheadings
Headings and subheadings are an easy way to improve the organization of an article. If you can see distinct topics being discussed, you can break up an article by inserting a heading for each section. See
Help:Style#Section headings
and
Help:Effective use of headers
for style information.
Headings must start from second level, and can be created like this:
== Second-level heading ==

=== Third-level heading ===

==== Fourth-level heading ====

===== Fifth-level heading =====

====== Sixth-level heading ======
Note
First-level headings are not allowed, their formatting is reserved for the article title.
If an article has at least four headings, a table of contents (TOC) will be automatically generated. If this is not desired, place
__NOTOC__
in the article. Try creating some headings in the
Sandbox
and see the effect on the TOC.
Line breaks
An empty line is used to start a new paragraph while single line breaks have no effect in regular paragraphs.
The HTML
<br>
tag can be used to manually insert line breaks, but should be avoided. A manual break may be justified with other formatting elements, such as lists.
wikitext
rendering
This sentence
is broken into
three lines.
This sentence
is broken into
three lines.
This is paragraph number one.

This is paragraph number two.
This is paragraph number one.
This is paragraph number two.
* This point <br> spans multiple lines
* This point
ends the list
This point
spans multiple lines
This point
ends the list
See
Help:Style/White space
for information on proper use of whitespace characters.
Bold and italics
Bold
and
italics
are added by surrounding a word or phrase with two, three or five apostrophes (
'
):
wikitext
rendering
''italics''
italics
'''bold'''
bold
'''''bold and italics'''''
bold and italics
Strike-out
Use strike-out text to show that the text no longer applies or has relevance.
wikitext
rendering

Strike-out text

Strike-out text
Lists
Remember that wiki syntax does not support multi-line list items; every newline character ends the list item definition. To start a new line inside a list item, use the
<br>
tag. To enter a multi-line code block inside a list item, use
Template:bc
and escape the content using
<nowiki>
tags. See also
Help:Style/White space
and
Help:Template
.
Bullet points
Bullet points have no apparent order of items.
To insert a bullet, use an asterisk (
*
). Multiple
*
s will increase the level of indentation.
wikitext
rendering
* First item
* Second item
** Sub-item
* Third item
First item
Second item
Sub-item
Third item
Numbered lists
Numbered lists introduce numbering and thus order the list items. You should generally use unordered lists as long as the order in which items appear is not the primary concern.
To create numbered lists, use the number sign or hash symbol (
#
). Multiple
#
s will increase the level of indentation.
wikitext
rendering
# First item
# Second item
## Sub-item
# Third item
First item
Second item
Sub-item
Third item
# First item
# Second item
#* Sub-item
# Third item
First item
Second item
Sub-item
Third item
Definition lists
Definition
—a.k.a.
description
—lists are defined with a leading semicolon (
;
) and a colon (
:
) following the term.
wikitext
rendering
Definition lists:

; Keyboard: Input device with buttons or keys
; Mouse: Pointing device for two-dimensional input

or

; Keyboard
: Input device with buttons or keys
; Mouse
: Pointing device for two-dimensional input
Definition lists:
Keyboard
Input device with buttons or keys
Mouse
Pointing device for two-dimensional input
or
Keyboard
Input device with buttons or keys
Mouse
Pointing device for two-dimensional input
Use additional colons if a term has multiple definitions:

; Term
: First definition
: Second definition
Use additional colons if a term has multiple definitions:
Term
First definition
Second definition
Note
Definition lists
must not
be simply used for formatting. See
Wikipedia:Help:Wikitext#Description lists
and
Description lists Accessibility
.
Code block in list items
An example with code block in lists:
wikitext
rendering
# First item
# Second item: {{bc|<nowiki>
code1
code2
code3
</nowiki>}}
# Third item
First item
Second item:
code1
code2
code3
Third item
Indenting
To indent text, place a colon (
:
) at the beginning of a line, a space after
:
is
optional
. The more colons you put, the further indented the text will be. A newline marks the end of the indented paragraph.
wikitext
rendering
This is not indented at all.
: This is indented slightly.
:: This is indented more.
This is not indented at all.
This is indented slightly.
This is indented more.
Note
Use indentation only when strictly necessary to obtain the desired layout.
In talk pages, use it to indent replies (see
Help:Discussion
).
Code
To add code to the wiki, use one of the
code formatting templates
. Alternatively, simply start each line with a single whitespace character, for example:
$ echo Hello World
See also
Help:Style#Code formatting
.
Tables
Tip
See
Mediawiki Tables Generator
to automatically generate tables.
Used effectively, tables can help organize and summarize swaths of data. For advanced table syntax and formatting, see
Wikipedia:Help:Table
.
wikitext
rendering
{| class="wikitable"
|+ Tabular data
! Distro !! Color
|-
| Arch || Blue
|-
| Gentoo || Purple
|-
| Ubuntu || Orange
|}
Tabular data
Distro
Color
Arch
Blue
Gentoo
Purple
Ubuntu
Orange
{| class="wikitable"
! Filesystem !! Size !! Used !! Avail !! Use% !! Mounted on
|-
| rootfs || 922G || 463G || 413G || 53% || /
|-
| /dev || 1.9G || 0 || 1.9G || 0% || /dev
|}
Filesystem
Size
Used
Avail
Use%
Mounted on
rootfs
922G
463G
413G
53%
/
/dev
1.9G
0
1.9G
0%
/dev
Links
Links are essential to help readers navigate the site. In general, editors should ensure that every article contains
outgoing
links to other articles (avoid
dead-end pages
) and is referenced by
incoming
links from other articles (the
what links here
special page can be used to display incoming links). See also
Help:Style/Formatting and punctuation#First instances
.
Internal links
You can extensively cross-reference existing wiki pages using internal links. To make a link to another page on the same wiki, just put the title in double square brackets.
For example, if you want to make a link to, say, the
pacman
article, use:
[[pacman]]
Note
If the target page does not exist, the result will be a
red link
, which should be avoided as per
Help:Style#Hypertext metaphor
.
If you want to use words other than the article title as the text of the link, you can use a label after the pipe symbol ("|") to provide an alternative text.
For example:
The [[ArchWiki:About|ArchWiki]] is the primary documentation source for Arch Linux.
...is rendered as:
The
ArchWiki
is the primary documentation source for Arch Linux.
Tip
The pipe symbol ("|"), a.k.a. vertical bar symbol, can be composed with
Shift+\
on English keyboard layout and similar.
When you want to use the plural of an article title (or add any other suffix) for your link, you can add the extra letters directly outside the double square brackets.
For example:
makepkg is used in conjunction with [[PKGBUILD]]s.
...is rendered as:
makepkg is used in conjunction with
PKGBUILDs
.
Section links
To create a link to a section of a document, simply add a
#
followed by the section's heading.
For example:
[[Help:Editing#Section links]]
...is rendered as:
Help:Editing#Section links
Tip
If linking to a section within the same page, the page name can be omitted (e.g.
[[#Section links]]
).
Pipe trick
In some cases, it is possible to use the
pipe trick
to save writing the label of wiki links. The most important cases usable on ArchWiki are:
In article titles, it allows to hide the language suffix. For example,
[[Main page (Česky)|]]
is turned into
Main page
.
In links to different namespace or wiki, the pipe trick hides the prefix. For example,
[[ArchWiki:About|]]
is turned into
About
and
[[wikipedia:Help:Pipe trick|]]
is turned into
Help:Pipe trick
.
When the page is saved, the pipe trick will automatically generate the label for the link and change the wikitext accordingly.
Interlanguage links
See
Help:i18n#Interlanguage links
Interwiki links
So-called
interwiki links
can be used to easily link to articles in other external Wikis, like Wikipedia for example. The syntax for this link type is the wiki name followed by a colon and the article you want to link to enclosed in double square brackets.
If you want to create a link to the
Wikipedia:Arch Linux
article you can use the following:
[[Wikipedia:Arch Linux]]
Or you can create a piped link with a link label to the
Arch Linux Wikipedia article
:
[[Wikipedia:Arch Linux|Arch Linux Wikipedia article]]
Note
Using a piped link with a label should be reserved for abbreviating longer URLs.
See
mw:Help:Links#Interwiki links
.
The list of all interwiki links available on ArchWiki can be viewed
at
Special:Interwiki
and
via the API
.
Tip
By default, all interwiki links to pages in Wikipedia are considered as links to English pages. If you want to create a link to a page in another language, you may add a language prefix to the page name. For example, to create a link to a Russian page, prefix its name with
ru
:
[[Wikipedia:ru:Arch Linux]]
results in
Wikipedia:ru:Arch Linux
.
Note that it depends on the
interwiki configuration
for the target wiki, so it does not work on every wiki. It works for Wikipedia though.
External links
If you want to link to an external site, just type the full URL for the page you want to link to.
https://archlinux.org/
It is often more useful to give the link an alternative label rather than displaying the URL. Unlike
#Internal links
, external links with a label use single square brackets and the target URL and the label are separated by a
space
(
not
a pipe). For example, to have the link appear as
Arch Linux
, just type:
[https://archlinux.org/ Arch Linux]
It is also possible to generate an auto-numbered label by simply enclosing the URL with single brackets. This is often preferred to phrases like "see
here
". To produce a phrase "see
[1]
", where the number will vary depending on the order of the link on the page, just type:
see [https://archlinux.org/]
Note
When linking to other ArchWiki pages (i.e. the links start with
https://wiki.archlinux.org/
) use
#Internal links
. When linking to Wikipedia pages (i.e. the links start with
https://en.wikipedia.org/
) use
#Interwiki links
.
When linking to issues on
gitlab.archlinux.org
, use
Template:Issue
instead.
When linking to packages or package groups,
use the appropriate template
instead. See
Help:Style#Package management instructions
.
Redirects
To
redirect
(forward users) automatically from one page to another, add
#REDIRECT
and an internal link to the page to be redirected to
at the beginning of a page
. For example, you could redirect "Penguins" to "Penguin" with:
#REDIRECT [[Penguin]]
Thus, anyone typing either version in the search box will automatically go to "Penguin".
Redirects also allow keeping track of the reason why links are made, for example grouping them in WhatLinksHere pages, and let quickly update link fragments in case of section renames. As a downside redirects do not show the ultimate link target in the browser.
Before creating a redirect, you can perform a search to check existing compatible ones. For example,
Xorg
.
See also:
Help:Style#Redirect pages
— for when and why to redirect a page,
Help:Procedures#Deal with talk pages after redirecting a page to another
.
Note
Redirects should not point to other sites.
Redirects do not work for
category pages
.
Redirects are resolved internally by the server and will not make it any slower to open an article.
Redirecting an existing page to another can create
double redirects
: see
Help:Procedures#Fix double redirects
for fixing them.
Wiki variables, magic words, and templates
MediaWiki recognizes certain special strings within an article that alter standard behavior. For example, adding the word
__NOTOC__
anywhere in an article will prevent generation of a table of contents. Similarly, the word
__TOC__
can be used to alter the default position of the table of contents. See
Help:Magic words
for details.
Templates and variables are predefined portions of wikitext that can be inserted into an article to aid in formatting content.
Variables
are defined by the system and can be used to display information about the current page, wiki, or date. For example, use
{{SITENAME}}
to display the wiki's site name (here it displayed as "ArchWiki"). To set an alternate title header for the current page, another wiki variable can be used:
{{DISPLAYTITLE:New Title}}
. (But it is very restricted: you are only allowed to change first letter to lowercase and replace spaces with underscores — normalized title string must match with real page name, otherwise it will not work; use
{{Lowercase title}}
template to display first letter of title in lower case).
Templates, on the other hand, are user-defined. The content of
any
page can be included in another page by adding
{{Namespace:Page Name}}
to an article, but this is rarely used with pages outside the
Template
namespace. (If the namespace is omitted,
Template
is assumed.) For example,
Template:Note
, which can be included in an article with the following wikitext:
{{Note|This is a note.}}
...is rendered as:
Note
This is a note.
See
Help:Template
for more information and a
list
of available templates such as
Template:Tip
or
Template:Warning
.