Portal:FLOSS4Science/Guidelines for Editors

General Editing HowTo

When editing a page, note the Editing Help link just below the edit box.

Courses etc. - on using MediaWiki-based learning environments such as WikiEducator and WikiVersity.

Adding to the Front/Main Page

• First log in.
• Follow the example of the current content of the box you wish to edit:
  • keep the size of images and the amount of text about the same,
  • use the same convention for naming and hierarchy, and
  • ensure links that should not change are retained (e.g. "more"/ "previous", links to categories, etc.).
• Check that the full article you are about to replace is listed (and linked to) in the "more" page which keeps track of previous entries - e.g. more (Featured Software), or more (Featured Learning Resources), or more (previous news items), or more more (FLOSS4Science Projects), etc.

• • If not, add a link to the full article in the appropriate "more" page.
• If you need to upload a new image:
  • first scale and crop the image to an appropriate size using your own graphics program,
  • save it as PNG or JPEG,
  • upload the image (click on the "upload file" link on the left), and
  • link to the image as described here.
• Click on the "Edit" link of the relevant box.
  • Insert your new text (typically a catchy title and short 1- or 2- sentence introduction. Keep the "more" link pointing to a list of previous entries in the box.
    • Link the catchy title text you just added to your full article. Name it according to the pattern of the previous one that you are replacing (i.e. keep the same hierarchical relationship if there is one)
      • For example, to add an entry about some featured software called "Octave" (catchy title), create a link to it as follows: [[Portal:FLOSS4Science/software/octave |Octave]].
• Assign one or more categories to your article.
  • For example, if it is a News Item add the following to the end of your article: [[Category:News (FLOSS)]]
  • if it concerns physics, add [[Category:Physics (FLOSS)]]
  • etc. - in this way, the article you created will show up when users browse Categories etc.
    • Here is a list of categories
• Save the page.
• Add a link to this page in the "more" page - click on "more" and edit the page to include a link to the new page you have created.
  • For the example above, you would add the following to the beginning of the list of previously featured case studies:

    * [[Portal:FLOSS4Science/software/octave|Octave]]

• The "Topics" block should not require editing. To make your page findable under "Topics", assign it a category. There is more on Categories in this Editor's Guide (below).

Adding Learning Resources

Learning resources need not be "under" the portal - no hierarchy required - though it can be useful if navigation up a hierarchy is useful. See notes on this below.

Level at which to pitch learning resources

• The learners will most likely be students at universities wanting to use FLOSS in their science courses, but there may be other categories of users. If so, it would be useful to develop a set of Categories to make it easier to find learning resources for these types of users.
• Most of the learning resources are closely related to specific fields of study, and learning about that field, rather than specifically learning about the software.

Structuring Learning Resources

• An idea from Leigh Blackall.

Categories and Status

• For each learning resource, add a category according to the curriculum, and/or a new category.
  • Browse existing Categories under FLOSS.
  • List of Categories
• For each learning resource include a template indicating its status. We still need to create templates such as:

 e.g. {{stub}} ... {{l10n needed}} ... {{ready for use}}

Build Hierarchies

But not usually more than 3 levels deep: top level (almost like a table of contents, an index or category), main content (overview and possibly some detail), in depth topics, etc. To get a hierarchy, use this notation: [[/Name of New Page/]] - the new page becomes a sub-page of the current page and its URL will include the name of the current page.

See WikiEducator tutorial on sub-pages.

N.B. In general, avoid putting learning resources in the "Portal:FLOSS4Science" hierarchy. This hierarchy is for structuring the portal. The learning resources should be in the main namespace.

Tools etc. for developing learning resources

• When editing a page, use the help links below the editing area.

• html2wiki - Convert HTML text to wiki markup

• WikiEducator Tutorials
  • Open Educational Content
  • Wikieducator Tutorials
  • Help Tutorials for creating OERs on WikiEducator

• eXe

To Do

• Update this page to reflect more of the new categories etc.