Help:Editing FAQ

Template:H:h This page is meant to accompany Help:Editing.

These questions and answers have been culled from some of the talk pages of the various editing-related Help: pages. If you see a useful answer there or anywhere else, please add it here.

Miscellaneous

Q: How do I archive my User Page?

A: Four possibilities are:

move talk page to page like User:a/b (history is now in this archive)
move page contents to such a page (history is still in the regular talk page)
just delete content (it is still in the history, but one can less easily search in that text) -- Patrick 14:32, 24 Jun 2005 (UTC)
Use a link to an earlier version of the page in its history. It does not require creating "sub pages" for archives. You can see an example at wikibooks:Talk:Wikijunior_Solar_System/Solar_System.
- Click on the history tab
  - Click on the first version listed there
  - Copy the URL from the address bar. Let's say it is http://meta.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?User_talk:a&oldid=12345
- Edit your talk page.
  - Delete all the stuff you want to remove from the current version of your talk page.
  - Link to the archive version as [http://meta.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?User_talk:a&oldid=12345 Sept 2005 archive]
  - Save the new version of your page.

Q: Can I put preformatted text inside a numbered list?

A: Not Quite. It used to be possible until version 1.5.7. As of 5 September 2006, this is no longer possible without disrupting the flow of the numbered list.

It used to work by using the <nowiki> and <pre> tags as follows:

one
two

here is a line of preformatted text

and the numbering
would not start over

# one
# two<pre><nowiki>
here is a line
of preformatted text
</nowiki></pre>
# and the numbering
# would not start over

Q: Can I generate a frame-like structure on a Wiki page?

(I have a chart generated dynamically in Bugzilla and I would like to display it within my Wiki page.)

A: ???

"Technically, you can do this with html div's and inline css styles, i.e. use a div with height and width set and overflow set to scroll" --68.170.246.50 01:11, 9 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]

A good suggestion, but that won't work for the originally requested use case. You can't make your DIV pull external content from Bugzilla, like frames do. You can only lay out the wiki page content in a frame-like design. 82.200.65.190 09:37, 16 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]

The last comment was from me, I wasn't logged in. -- Alexey Feldgendler 09:39, 16 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Q: Can I display only so many lines of text?

I want to set up a template that pipes in 'n' lines of text to a page, and then provides a link to the rest of the article. Can I do this?

Not in the current version of MediaWiki, as far as I know. -- Alexey Feldgendler 09:43, 16 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Q: How can I place a note underneath and to the right of an image (but keeping the image by default to the left of the page)?

--168.202.82.178 09:53, 28 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]

A: ??

Tables

Q: Can I make transparent borders and rules on a table?

A: Yes.

That's a tough one because there is no "cellborder" directive for the table style. You can play with the BORDER and RULE attributes of table, but it seems that you cannot rely upon your browser to interpret that stuff the way you want it.

I think the easiest way to write this is using wiki table notation with a different background for the table and for each row.

abc	def	ghi
jkl	mno	pqr

{|style="background:white"
|- style="background:lightgrey;"
| abc || def ||ghi
|- style="background:lightgrey;"
| jkl || mno || pqr
|}

Links

Q: Can I make a link to open in a new page?

see: http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Opening_external_links_in_a_new_window VoskampM 08:38, 10 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Starting a new article

Q: How do I start a new article that has not been mentioned or put into any other articles?

Tell me It is a bit confusing```` Things are not very clearNutan Thakur 11:29, 25 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Type the address of the new article page into your browser, and you will be given the option to start the page. -- ConradParker 01:45, 14 July 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Put the name of the article in the search bar, and click Go. You will be given an option to create the page. Toolkit (talk) 18:03, 13 February 2008 (UTC)[reply]