User:Gwenasaurus/sandbox/Guidance for Scribes

This is an evolving guide about how to make contributions to the wiki and what to work on.

The goal of Habitica's Scribes is to create and maintain an accurate, up-to-date, complete, and easy-to-use guide for players of Habitica. Join the Scribes in the Wizards of the Wiki guild to ask questions, discuss editing and learn new things.

How to Start
You can begin contributing to the Habitica Wiki by signing up for a Wikia account. Your username does not have to be the same as your Habitica username in order for you to earn credit for your work when requesting a contributor tier. Be sure to sign in to Wikia every time you edit so you can get credit for your edits and so that we can recognize your contributions.

After signing up, if you feel like testing the waters of the Habitica Wiki community and the Wikia editor, feel free to fill out your profile page with some information about yourself, and create a Blog Post about how you use your Habits and Dailies. Let us get to know you!

If you are new to wikis, you may want to read the tutorial and view the list of help pages for guidance.

If you need help editing, read Help:Editing or the tutorial.

What to Write
Writing for the wiki isn't just about creating brand new pages; it's also about managing the quality of what currently exists.

Starting scribes with little to no previous Wikia creating or editing experience may want to begin by helping clean up existing articles. All of the Wiki Scribes are volunteer writers of various writing and national backgrounds who make changes at multiple points during the day; we will never quite be rid of typos and grammatical errors, so fixing the little things (even missing periods) has value. Consider making minor edits as a way to learn how to navigate the site and use the editor instead of trying to jump in immediately by making large additions to pages or creating full articles.

Habitica is an ever-evolving product; new features are added regularly, and some updates supersede previous facts about features. Scribes are encouraged to make changes to related pages as they find them. In addition to the Wizards of the Wiki guild mentioned above, where suggestions for editing ideas are often posted, you can consult the following to learn about and keep track of updates to Habitica:
 * Bailey announcements
 * GitHub Releases page
 * Habitica Blog
 * Habitica Tumblr

As you become more comfortable with editing the wiki, check out Beyond the Classic Editor:Advanced Wiki Editing for instructions on making more advanced edits.

Before making major changes, use each article's talk page to discuss article contents, resolve any conflicts, and talk about anything specific to the article. Respect is key. Remember to sign edits to talk pages. For more general discussions, use the Wizards of the Wiki guild.

Reviewing and (when appropriate) editing or deleting speculative content helps to keep the wiki accurate.

You can find a list of useful templates at Category:Templates, some of which are documented on Habitica Wiki:Templates.

New wiki editors may want to exercise caution before making the following types of edits:
 * Edits to existing pages in The Keep. Since pages in The Keep are often personal pages (e.g., pages dedicated to a party, guides about how a particular player likes to use Habitica), most pages in the Keep do not need to be edited, even to add clarity/links or fix problems like formatting issues (exceptions include violations of the Community Guidelines). If a page in The Keep is not one person’s or party’s personal page and seems to be worth editing, please ask about it in the Wizards of the Wiki guild.
 * Edits to pages with the Under Construction banner. Wiki editors may already be actively working on these pages, so additional edits, however minor, may disrupt their workflow. If you are interested in working on one of these pages, take a look at the history of the page (accessible via the Edit button’s dropdown menu, via the My Tools menu on the Wikia toolbar, or by appending  to the end of the page’s URL). If there are recent edits, get in touch with the editor(s) responsible expressing your interest in helping with the page. If there are no recent edits, take a look at the Talk page for any notes on what needs to be done and feel free to ask about how to proceed in the Wizards of the Wiki guild.
 * Links to wiki pages that do not currently exist. Note that the Habitica Wiki avoids using broken links. Additionally, for the most part, the links listed at Special:WantedPages do not need to be edited (nor those pages created) as they are generally from old wall messages/blog posts.

Subscribing to Changes
If you want to follow changes to this wiki, or look out for new users and edits, use Special:RecentChanges or Special:WikiActivity. This is also a great way to learn about what changes occur regularly on the wiki.

Newbie Wiki Tips

 * Using the source editor (rather than the visual or classic editor) is recommended, as it is more powerful, allows for more precise editing, and enables you to view helpful comments that may have been left by other editors.
 * You can make it your default editor via the "Preferred editor" dropdown in the editing tab of your Wikia preferences. If the source editor is not your default editor, you can still access it by clicking the dropdown arrow on a page's "Edit" button.
 * Note that the source editor uses the wikitext markup language.
 * Badges help determine contributor tiers for scribes. One way of earning badges is by editing the wiki for a certain amount of consecutive days. The following are tips related to maintaining your editing streaks:
 * When you first create a wiki account, set your timezone immediately in your Preferences. Changing the timezone can reset your editing streak.
 * Wiki editing streaks are counted as edits per UTC day. To ensure you keep your streak, set a Daily to edit the wiki after midnight.
 * While points from wiki badges are used as a rough guideline to determine eligibility for contributor tiers, they are not as important as the quality of your contributions to the wiki. Things that earn you badges but don't improve the wiki, such as pointless comments on old blog posts, will not help you earn a contributor tier.

Avoiding Spoilers
When looking for new information to add to the main namespace, stick to features that are already implemented, visible, and accessible to all players on Habitica. Information about planned or upcoming features available on GitHub and the various Trello boards may contain spoilers that the staff wish to keep as surprises for players. This is particularly important for world events, particularly those with multiple event-based reveals like the battles with world bosses.

For spoilers of already implemented content, such as resolution text for boss or collection quests, you can use the templates for spoilers: Template:Spoiler start and Template:Spoiler end. The spoiler warning template, Template:Spoiler, should be used on any pages where most or all content consists of spoilers.

Edit Summaries
When making edits, write a short summary of the changes that have been made in the 'Edit Summary' box before publishing. Depending on the edit, a few words may suffice, but major edits may need longer summaries or the inclusion of rationales. Providing these summaries allows other scribes to quickly get a sense of what has changed. It is also extremely helpful when filling out contributor tier applications, as these summaries are shown as part of the edit histories on user profiles in the 'Contributions' tab. In addition, it makes finding specific changes in a series of edits much easier.

If you have trouble remembering to fill out the edit summary, you can (if you have an account) set your user preferences to remind you if you forget to leave one. In the "Editing" section of your preferences, check the box reading "Prompt me if I leave a blank edit summary" (the third checkbox under "Editing experience") and save the change. This will remind you to fill in your edit summary if you leave it blank on any page (except your own user page) on any Wikia wiki. If your edit summary is blank and you click "Publish" you will be given a reminder reading "Reminder: You have not provided an edit summary. If you click Publish again, your edit will be published without one". You then have the option to type an edit summary as recommended or just save your edit without one.

Renaming Pages
On rare occasions, pages may need to be renamed. When pages are renamed, Wikia will automatically create a redirect page that will take old links to the new site. However, links on the wiki will not be updated automatically. The wiki will still function, but users will be alerted to the fact that the link is old with a message below the page title, "Redirected from [old page name]". To eliminate this message and maintain the sense of professionalism that the wiki strives for, you can use the special page WhatLinksHere to find those out of date links that renaming has created, and fix them. Simply type the old page title into the appropriate box, and they will be displayed.

Deleting
If there are occasions for pages to be renamed, there will also be occasions for pages to be deleted. Only wiki admins can delete pages. If you think a page should be deleted, enter the classic editor and open the source tab. At the top of the page, add the following code with your reason for suggesting deletion:

Keep in mind that at this time, redirect pages are a permanent fixture for the wiki. The wiki is here to provide information to the users in a way that's convenient for them to use. Broken external links, whether from an outside site, the Habitica forums, or a page that a user bookmarked, make it less convenient for the readers to use the wiki. Therefore, redirect pages are kept in place so that these links will not give a "404 Page Not Found" error. This ensures that wiki users have a better experience when trying to locate information, and increases the wiki's efficiency in providing consistent, up-to-date information. Remember, our goal is to create and maintain an accurate, up-to-date and easy-to-use guide for players of Habitica, so if there is a redirect page that you firmly feel needs to be deleted, at the top of the page add the deletion code with the reason that the page should be deleted. From there, the wiki admins will discuss the reason and make a decision, and the page will either be deleted, or the deletion code can be removed.

Creating a User Sandbox
A Sandbox is a page that can be used to practice editing, to learn the formatting, and to put together drafts without necessarily publishing it to the main page. If you are someone who learns by doing, having a sandbox where you can try out code, formatting, and design can be very useful. Below are the steps to create your sandbox.

1. '''Go to your user page. '''You can do this by clicking on your user icon at the top right of any wiki page. You may have to click twice if the first click opens up the menu.

2. Add /Sandbox to the end of your URL. Click on the URL box in your browser, deselect the text, and type in /Sandbox at the very end of. Go to this page.

3. Since you have not yet created your sandbox, you will have the option to do so here. Right next to the page title, click the Create button.

4. If it opens up in the visual editor, select the option to open the source editor. You can find this option by clicking on the drop-down menu next to the Cancel and Publish buttons, and selecting Source Editor.

5. Paste the following code into the text box:

6. Below this pasted text, you can begin to practice editing. One idea to begin with is to add a table of contents and links to useful templates and code that you often need to look up.

7. Whenever you are finished editing in the source editor, click Apply Changes on the bottom right of the frame.

8. Click on Publish to save your page.

9. To find your Sandbox easily, add a link to it on your profile page. You can do so by pasting the following code into the source editor of your user page (found by clicking on your user icon, selecting Edit Profile under the Profile tab, and selecting the Source Editor option), replacing "Username" with your own username: My Sandbox 10. Voila! You now have a Sandbox of your own! Experiment with it as you please!

Toolbar
If you have a wiki account, you can utilize the toolbar that is at the bottom of your screen to use shortcuts and other tools to do various functions. You can find more info on the toolbar here.

For a list of available toolbar tools, see this page.



Disabling Ads
If you have a Wiki account and wish to disable ads, you may go to your preference page, scroll down to the ads setting, select "Don't Show all Ads" and then save your preferences.

Purging Pages
Sometimes pages may be behaving oddly like not showing changes. If this is happening try adding ?action=purge to the end of the URL and going to that address. This causes the page to be reloaded and fixes many problems.

Contributor Tier Process
Please read The Keep:The Knights Chambers to understand the process for requesting a contributor tier and the kinds of wiki changes that are preferred. When you are ready, you can start your application through that page.