KhmerConnection:Editing basics

Editing basics

This page takes you from having an account to saving your first correct edit. It assumes you have never edited a wiki before. If you have edited Wikipedia, everything here will feel familiar, and you can skip to Infoboxes.

Read KhmerConnection:How to Contribute for what belongs in an article, and this page for how to put it there.

Nothing you do here is permanent

Every version of every page is saved forever. Anything you change can be put back with two clicks, by you or by anyone else. Nobody can delete the site by clicking the wrong thing.

This matters more than any instruction below. The usual reason people never make a first edit is fear of breaking something, and there is nothing here to break. If you are unsure, save it anyway. A steward would much rather fix a small mistake than never receive the correction.

You also have your own practice page. Click Sandbox at the top of the screen once you are logged in. Nothing there appears in the directory, and you can write anything you like in it.

Step 1: Get an account

Go to Special:RequestAccount.

Fill in the form. Your username is your real first and last name joined together with capital letters and no spaces, like VibolHou. Write a sentence about why you would like to contribute. You will be asked a simple question about Cambodia or this site to show you are not a machine.

A confirmation email arrives. Click the link in it. A steward then reviews your request, usually within a day, and emails your password once approved.

Until then you can read everything but will see View source where Edit would be.

Step 2: Log in and find a page

Click Log in at the top right.

To find something, type in the search box at the top. You can also browse by category from the main page, or use the links in the sidebar on the left.

Throughout this guide the example is a real page: Udom Khmer Restaurant, a restaurant in Cambodia Town. Open it and follow along, or use any page you know something about.

Step 3: Make your first edit

At the top of the page there are tabs: Read, Edit, Edit source, View history.

1. Click Edit. The page opens in the visual editor, which works like a word processor. What you see is close to what readers will see.
2. Click into the text and change something. Fix a spelling, add a sentence, correct an address.
3. Click Save changes at the top right. A box appears.
4. In the Summary: box, write a few words saying what you changed, such as corrected opening hours. Other people read these to understand the page's history.
5. Click Save changes again.

That is the whole cycle. Everything else on this page is a variation of it.

Edit and Edit source are two ways of changing the same page. Edit is the visual editor and is the easier one. Edit source shows the underlying markup, which is useful for some tasks described below. Either is fine, and you can switch at any time.

If a page is long, each section has its own edit link beside its heading. Use it. Editing one section is easier to check and harder to get wrong than editing the whole page.

Step 4: Check your work before saving

In Edit source, two buttons sit next to Save changes:

• Show preview displays the page as readers will see it, without saving. Use this every time.
• Show changes displays exactly what you altered, with old text and new text side by side.

Preview catches most mistakes, particularly a missing bracket that breaks a link or an infobox.

Step 5: Read the history and undo a mistake

Click View history at the top of any page to see every edit ever made to it, newest first.

Click a date to see the page as it looked then. Click prev beside an entry to see what that edit changed: removed text appears on the left in yellow, added text on the right in blue. This side-by-side view is called a diff.

To reverse an edit, including your own, open the diff and click undo, then Save changes. The edit is reversed and the reversal is itself recorded, so nothing is hidden and nothing is lost.

Step 6: Infoboxes

The grey box at the top right of most pages is an infobox. It holds the facts that the site can search and sort: the type of organization, the city, the year, the website. Editing it correctly is the most valuable thing a contributor can do here, because those values drive the browse pages.

In the visual editor, click the infobox once. A dialog opens showing each field with a plain-language label such as Operating status and Last verified, along with a short description of what belongs there. Change a value, click the dialog's apply button, then Save changes.

In Edit source, the same infobox looks like this:

{{Organization
| name = Udom Khmer Restaurant
| type = Cultural business
| business_type = restaurant
| city = Long Beach
| state = California
| country = United States
| status = active
| address = 1223 E Anaheim St, Long Beach, CA 90813
| founded = 1984
}}

Each line is one field: a name, an equals sign, a value. To change the address, change the text after address = and leave every other line alone. To add a field that is not there, add a new line in the same shape. To remove a value, delete the text after the equals sign; the row disappears from the page automatically.

Three rules for infoboxes:

• Leave a field blank if you do not know it. Blank is correct. A guess is not, and neither is a placeholder like "unknown" or "n/a".
• Do not change review_status, reviewed_on, reviewed_by or page_level. Stewards use these to track what still needs checking.
• Use the standard wording. The field dictionary lists the accepted values, such as Religious organization for a temple and United States rather than USA. The visual editor shows the accepted values in each field's description.

Step 7: Add a source

Every fact should be traceable to somewhere a reader can check. On this site a source is an ordinary link, not a footnote.

Write the sentence, then put the link in brackets at the end, and list the source again at the bottom of the page under a Sources heading.

Before:

The restaurant opened in 1984.

After:

The restaurant opened in 1984. ([https://www.example.com/article Long Beach Post])

And at the bottom of the page:

== Sources ==

* https://www.example.com/article

In the visual editor, select the text you want to link and use the link tool, then choose the external link option and paste the address.

Footnote markup also works on this site, but plain links are the house style and what almost every page uses. Please match the page you are editing.

Step 8: Add a section

Sections keep pages readable and consistent. KhmerConnection:Page starters lists the standard sections for each kind of page: an organization uses History, Programs and services, Contact and participation and Sources.

In the visual editor, start a new line, then choose Heading from the paragraph style menu. In Edit source, a heading is written with two equals signs on each side:

== History ==

Only add a section when you have something to put in it. An empty heading is worse than no heading.

Step 9: Link to another page

Links between pages are what turn a list of entries into something you can explore.

In the visual editor, select the words and use the link tool. In Edit source, put the exact page title in double square brackets:

[[Cambodia Town Film Festival]]

To show different words than the title, put the title first and your wording after a vertical bar:

[[Cambodia Town Film Festival|the festival]]

A blue link goes to a page that exists. A red link points to a page that does not exist yet. A red link is not an error. It is a note that something is missing, and clicking it starts that page.

Before creating a page, search for the subject first. Khmer names are written several ways in English, so the entry you want may already exist under a different spelling.

Step 10: Create a new page

1. Search for the subject, and search again using other spellings you can think of.
2. If nothing exists, type the title into the search box and click the red link offering to create it.
3. Go to KhmerConnection:Page starters, copy the outline that matches the kind of subject, and paste it in using Edit source.
4. Fill in what you know. Delete the parts you cannot fill.
5. Add at least one source.
6. Click Show preview, then Save changes.

A page with a name, one accurate paragraph and one source is a genuine contribution. Pages grow over time and nobody expects a complete entry on the first save.

Step 11: Write in Khmer script

Fields named Khmer name or Khmer title hold the name in Khmer script.

If your device has no Khmer keyboard, use the CharInsert bar below the editing box in Edit source to click the characters in. You can also switch input languages using the language selector at the top of the screen.

Only enter Khmer script when you have seen the name written that way by the organization itself or in a reliable source. Do not transliterate it yourself and do not put a romanised spelling in this field. Leaving it blank is correct and normal. Romanised alternative spellings belong in the Other names field.

Step 12: Fix a warning

If a red warning appears after you save, saying a value is not in the list of allowed values, it means a field holds wording the site does not recognise, such as Temple where it expects Religious organization.

Open the field dictionary, find the accepted wording, edit the field and save again. The warning clears. It affects nothing else and there is no hurry.

Step 13: Ask when you are unsure

Every page has a Discussion tab for questions about that page. Click Add topic, write your question and click to reply. You will be notified when someone answers, and a bell icon at the top of the screen shows your notifications.

Use the discussion page when you are unsure whether something belongs, when two sources disagree, or when you would rather ask before changing something. Asking is always welcome and is never a bother.

For anything else, use the contact form.

A short version

1. Click Edit.
2. Change one thing.
3. Write a short summary of what you changed.
4. Click Save changes.

If it goes wrong, open View history and click undo.

Where to go next

• KhmerConnection:How to Contribute — what belongs in an article
• KhmerConnection:Page starters — outlines for each kind of page
• KhmerConnection:Field dictionary — the accepted wording for field values
• KhmerConnection:Scope — what this site covers