Help:Editing

Guide to editing on Bahai.works

Editing basics

Press the notepad and pencil icon at the top of any page to open the editing form. You can also use the keyboard shortcut Alt+Shift+E. An account is not required, but if you do not have an account your IP address will be visible in the page history. After editing press the blue "Save changes" button at the bottom of the page.

You don't need to understand all the in's and out's of editing to begin, much of it can be learned as you go. Here are some tips:

Formatting:

You type	Your result
'''Bold text'''	Bold text
''Italic text''	Italic text
# Item in a series # The next item	1. Item in a series 2. The next item

Paragraphs: Paragraph breaks operate a little differently then in traditional word processing editors. If you press the return key one time the text will be on a new line in the edit window, but after the page is saved you will not see a new paragraph. To create a new paragraph, press the return key twice, this will create a blank line in between your two paragraphs. Do not indent the beginning of a new paragraph.

Understanding templates

If you see text enclosed in curly brackets {{}} these are templates that are used to present information consistently across a large number of pages. Do not remove or modify the contents of a template without understanding what the template's purpose is. The words immediately after the opening brackets are the name of the template. For example this is the page template {{page|1}} and it is located at Template:Page. On the template description page you will find documentation and usage examples.

Template examples

OCR: At the top of a page that needs to be proofread you will see a notice about computer generated text. That message is produced by the {{ocr}} template. If you finish proofreading a page you can delete this template.

Page: {{page|1|file=Baha'i_News_430.pdf|page=1}}. This is a typical example of the page template. This template displays the page number on the left side of the page outside the margin, and a thumbnail of the page image on the right side of the page, outside of the margin. This template should usually not be modified.

Sic: When we faced the problem of how to handle obvious spelling errors in the original publications and whether to correct them or preserve them in our proofread copies, we chose both. This is accomplished through the sic template, the usage is {{sic|error|correction}}. To use this template simply replace "error" with the spelling mistake, and "correction" with the corrected spelling. Users will then have the choice between seeing a version of the text that preserves these errors, or a corrected version.

PS: This template is used to communicate how many times a page has been proofread. It is added to the top of the page after proofreading has been completed. Eg: {{ps|1}}, the page has been proofread 1 time. The OCR and PS templates are used to categorize pages based on their proofreading status. Note that after you save the page, the text will read Proofread once and link automatically to the discussion page. The intention is that you will sign your name on the discussion page and state that proofreading has been completed. Follow the link and then type # Proofreading complete ~~~~. You can automatically insert this phrase into a page by looking for a matching button below the "Save changes" button (see below).

Header: Ideally every page will have a header template at the top that lists at least the title of the page. If you are editing a page and want to add the header template, place this content at the very top of the page:

{{header
 | title      = 
 | section    = 
 | previous   = 
 | next       = 
 | notes      = 
}}

Mark a page as proofread

After proofreading is complete you can put {{ps|1}} in the notes section of the header template. You can also delete {{ocr}} from the top of the page, and note that proofreading has been completed on the discussion page.