Editing this wiki

See also: About, Additional Resource Wikis, and Special:AllPages

## You're a part of the wiki!

When you first see a wiki, it doesn't seem like it could possibly work. If anybody can come along and change things, then how can the information be trusted? Doesn't it just get vandalized, or fall into chaos?

Once you start participating, you see that that "weakness" is actually a wiki's greatest strength. Sure, anybody can add anything -- and then everybody else gets to proofread it, and fix mistakes. Information that looks suspicious can be verified. Vandalism is almost always fixed within minutes. It's possible for someone to post errors, or nonsense -- but over time, the best wins out.

If you're reading these words, then you're an editor. If you see a problem on one of the pages, just click that edit button fix it!

## Create a user name

**Log in** and create a user name -- it helps you (and everybody) keep track of your contributions, and it makes it possible to communicate with other contributors.

## History tab

Nothing is ever lost on a wiki! You can see all of the changes that have been made to a page -- and who made them -- by clicking on the "History" tab at the top of any page.

## Link to more detailed information

When you're posting factual information, it's nice for other readers to be able to verify the information that you post. If you find information in a book or on a website, tell us the title or the URL. If it's clumsy to put that information in the article, then add a "References" heading at the bottom of the page.

If you think that information in an article is questionable, you can ask about it on the article's talk page. You can also click the "history" tab on an article, and see who created the page or added that information. You can leave a message on that user's talk page, asking where their information comes from.

## How to upload pictures

Click on "Upload file" on the navigation bar to upload pictures.

Images should not exceed 300 pixels wide for article tidyness and copyright adherence. Images are subject for deletion if they are not used.

## Setting your preferences

There's a lot of useful stuff on your Preferences page.

You can change your display so that links show up without the underlining. You can also change your time zone, and the number of items you see on the Recent Changes page or the Category list.

## Dealing with vandalism

Vandalism isn't much of a problem on a wiki, because everybody has the power to fix it when they see it. If a particular page become subjects to frequent vandalism, reach out to administrators to limit editing of that page to users who are logged in.

## Where to put information about a cool resource

* Articles listing multiple resources are much easier to browse and update than articles containing a profile of only one org. If you don't see an organization you love featured on any articles, we encourage you to find an article where it makes sense to include it or start a new page for that type of resource. Your resource is much more likely to be discovered and updated if it's part of a larger page.

## More information

* Wikia/Fandom has an excellent set of help pages to answer common questions. If you're using the "visual editor" updating articles is as simple as writing an email or making a word document. You can learn some shorthand codes (for instance, using double brackets to quickly link other articles) or just use the bar at the top to do what you want to do. https://community.fandom.com/wiki/Help:Contents
* Look at the formats of other pages to see what's worked well for other editors. If you're having trouble with formatting your article, shoot a message to active users and they can take care of the formatting part (see recent activity and administrators).
* Thank you so much for contributing to Bay Area Community Resources!