Help:How it works

Congratulations! You may have recently started up your own ebook here, or at least are considering it. Welcome to the team!

This article aims to demonstrate how the site works in practice, so that you and your writers know what you're getting into.

Generalities
The first step is to fill in those red links. This is probably best done by a project's developer. When you first open a chapter page for editing, it's best to create a bare-bones structure in as much detail as you feel comfortable with. This is to let your prospective authors know what sort of thing you're looking for.

Use headers to denote divisions in the text. Headers are started on a new line, and are surrounded by equals-signs. The fewer equals, the more important a header is.

For example:

= Header 1 =

== Header 2 ==

=== Header 3 ===

Becomes: = Header 1 =

Header 3
Note that each header has an [edit] link to the right side of the page. If possible, these should always be used rather than the edit tab at the top of a page. With a very large page, multiple authors may be working on different parts simultaneously, so editing individual sections rather than the whole page keeps the work distinct and keeps authors from interfering with each others' work.

Collaboration
Collaboration is both this particular Wiki's greatest strength and its greatest weakness. With this format, anyone can edit any page. Amateur (or professional!) authors are free to write sections for any book they like, or edit the content for spelling, grammar, punctuation, or consistency. Theoretically, knowledge which one author lacks can be accounted for by another author. Together, the community is greater than the sum of its parts.

On the other hand, the Wiki is open to vandalism and poor writing. Since anyone can edit, these faults are usually corrected in short order, but the risk remains. Additionally, some authors may not like the idea of their text being declared open content under the GFDL, free for anyone to alter. Or fans may not like the idea of a book being developed "out in the open," so they can't be surprised by the final content. These problems are a little more esoteric, and have no easy solutions.

Writing
Writing is fairly straightforward. All text is displayed exactly as-is, although certain Wiki-specific formatting rules apply for italicizing, bolding, so forth. These are explained on the central Wikia's Tutorial.

To create a sidebar, enclose the section in the following tags:

BEGIN SIDEBAR

This is your sidebar text, generally no more than 300 words.

END SIDEBAR

This is your sidebar text, generally no more than 300 words.

This parallels the professional usage of [BEGIN SIDEBAR] and [END SIDEBAR]. Your text will appear on the right-hand side, as shown.

For ease of reading, all sidebars appear as blue.

Drafts
The stage an individual page is in should be denoted at the top of the page using our status templates. Simply include Draft1, Draft2, Draft3 or DraftFinal at the top, and a message will automatically be added.

A first draft (Draft1) is in its starting stages. Large sections have yet to be done, and the developer may not have had a good look at it all yet.

A second draft (Draft2) is technically complete, and may or may not meet the target wordcount. The developer can re-arrange sections and alter text to better fit his vision of the project. Redline notes (see below) can and should be provided for authors so that they can get an idea of the developer's vision, as well.

A third draft (Draft3) is a further refinement of the second draft process. Any requested changes have been made, new sections may have been written (or rewritten), and the developer goes over it again. Any further changes required will continue to be counted as a third draft.

A final draft is, for all intents and purposes, the final product. Minor changes can still be made for spelling, grammar and punctuation, but by and large, it's considered complete. Changes should not be made lightly at this point.

All Draft boilerplate messages appear in yellow, as follows: