Help Desk
From Eureka
If you have a question about EUREKA, or you find yourself having trouble with some technical aspect of the wiki lifestyle, ask it on this page!
How do I create new entries and categories?
- How do I create new entries? I'm sort of clueless about creating new pages, though I seem to recall doing it in Wikipedia. --John Baez 11:18, 13 August 2007 (EDT)
- You create a new page by trying to access one which doesn't yet exist. This can be done in multiple ways. First, you can type the page title into the search box on the left-hand sidebar. You can also edit a page to include a wikilink to an as-yet-nonexistent new article, such as The weather in London, The death of Archimedes or Statement of Principles. Click the "redlink", type some text and save the new page. Blake Stacey 11:36, 13 August 2007 (EDT)
- How do I create new categories? --John Baez 09:53, 13 August 2007 (EDT)
- I haven't got the hang of these 'categories' yet either, excuse the pun, but some helpful information can be found at the Mediawiki help page. --Brucebartlett 10:23, 13 August 2007 (EDT)
- The simplest way to get a category started is to create a page which will belong to it, or edit an existing page which you want to include in the new category. At the bottom of the page, add a line of text like the following:
[[Category:Publishers]]
- The page will then be included in the "Publishers" category. If you want to link to a category, use a colon, in the following manner:
[[:Category:Mathematics journals]]
- For example, the text
See [[:Category:Mathematics journals]] for the journals currently listed in our wiki.
- will appear as "See Category:Mathematics journals for the journals currently listed in our wiki." You can change the text appearing in the link using a vertical pipe. Changing the previous example to read
See [[:Category:Mathematics journals|this list]] for the journals currently listed in our wiki.
- produces the text "See this list for the journals currently listed in our wiki." See this help page for additional information. Blake Stacey 11:32, 13 August 2007 (EDT)
- Pages can be in multiple categories, so the Journal of Eccentric Hairstyles can be listed in Category:Mathematics journals and also Category:Journals edited by A. Einstein. We'll have to experiment to see what system works best. Blake Stacey 12:33, 13 August 2007 (EDT)
How can I make the main page look nicer?
I would like to edit the main page to make the section now called 'News' more prominent. Your average Joe is going to find this more titillating than the rest, so I want to highlight it. But, I'm not good at this particular sort of formatting. Could you try to reshuffle things a bit, Blake? John Baez 13:12, 13 August 2007 (EDT)
- Addendum: You're welcome to make changes to the front page — I just tried to throw some content together which was moderately informative and not completely awful-looking. As for migrating to a new server (at UCR or elsewhere), the simplest way would be to get the infrastructure in place — install PHP, MySQL and MediaWiki — perform a database dump of this site, and then import the database on the new machine. It's not a terribly difficult process. Blake Stacey 11:52, 13 August 2007 (EDT)
- I've swapped the "journal information" and "news" blocks, so that "news" is now on top. Now, to see if I get any other "brilliant" ideas. . . .Blake Stacey 13:28, 13 August 2007 (EDT)
Why does the search box behave weirdly with capitals?
Why is it that when I type "sparc" or "numdam" into the search box, I'm taken straight to the SPARC or NUMDAM pages, but when I type "arxiv" into the search box, I get 'there is no page titled ":arxiv"' (only followed later by a link to the ArXiv page)? I'm thinking that this is a capitalization issue. And I don't think search should be caps-sensitive.
- OK, that last question (re capitalization) was from me. I was thinking that the software would automatically add my username and timestamp, but apparently not. How do I make that happen? Tom Leinster, 16 Aug 2007.
- Hi Tom. Click on that graphical icon that looks like a signature above the edit box to make a signature. As for the capitalization... mmmm. Don't know, a bit nasty. Clicking on "Search" is more useful than clicking on "Go". --Brucebartlett 19:59, 15 August 2007 (EDT)
- The short answer is "MediaWiki is weird about capitalization". Search is case sensitive, though smart enough to try capitalizing the first letter and all letters, but not random ones in the middle. When words like the arXiv have capitals in the middle of the word, you should set up a redirect for any other reasonable thing. Try searching for arXiv now.
- Hi Tom. Click on that graphical icon that looks like a signature above the edit box to make a signature. As for the capitalization... mmmm. Don't know, a bit nasty. Clicking on "Search" is more useful than clicking on "Go". --Brucebartlett 19:59, 15 August 2007 (EDT)
- Incidentally, you can also get the signature by typing ~~~~. This will turn into a date stamp when you post. --Ben Webster 21:00, 15 August 2007 (EDT)
- Thanks, Bruce and Ben. Both problems solved. --Tleinster 04:02, 16 August 2007 (EDT)
Replacing Screwed-Up Pages
What's the right procedure to replace screwed-up pages? I'm thinking, for example, of ATG Algebr. Geom. Topol., which seems to be a typo for 'AGT Algebr. Geom. Topol.', which in turn seems to be a long-winded name for 'AGT' or 'Alg. Geom. Top.'. I can create a new page, but I don't know how to kill off the old one, or whether I even should. --John Baez 09:22, 14 August 2007 (EDT)
- On the top of the page is a little tab labeled "move". Click it, type the new page title and punch "Move page". This will move the page, leaving a "redirect" behind so that any links which happen to point to the old location won't be broken. Blake Stacey 12:46, 14 August 2007 (EDT)
Uploading files
How do we upload files? The help pages I and II seem to look slightly different to this wiki.
- Oops. I forgot to enable file uploading in the MediaWiki configuration. It should work now; use the "Upload file" link in the toolbox (bottom of the left-hand sidebar). Blake Stacey 13:07, 14 August 2007 (EDT)
How do I get my editing changes to show up with a link to the section -> under Recent changes?
I've noticed that some wiki contributors arrange for a very nice link -> to the section they were working on to show up under Recent Changes. How can I do this? --Brucebartlett 07:23, 16 August 2007 (EDT)
- Bruce, do you mean like the thing that appears in "Recent changes" for our exchange of 14:13 and 14:16 today on "full names of journals"? My guess is that appears when you choose to edit a particular section. E.g. to do this editing now, I clicked on the "edit" icon to the right of the title "How do I get my editing changes...", rather than the edit icon at the top of the page. If my theory is correct, the little -> thing will appear in the Recent changes list for this edit... --Tleinster 10:04, 17 August 2007 (EDT)
- Thanks Tom! --Brucebartlett 10:16, 17 August 2007 (EDT)
Bug in Mediawiki use of span tags?
Dear technical geniuses. There appears to be a small bug with the way mediawiki interprets <span> tags. I think the following code
<span title="hoverbox"> Display text </span>
should produce text with a hover box over it. But it produces a weird thing:
Display text
What is that? For some reason, adding <b> tags makes it work. So
<span title="hoverbox"> <b> Display text </b> </span>
produces the correct behaviour
Display text
--Brucebartlett 10:17, 17 August 2007 (EDT)
Links to Categories
Is there a way to do an inline link to a category? When I try [[Category:AMS Journal Price Survey charts]] then the link appears as a footnote. What I wanted was to be able to say something like "For more on this, see the Journal Price Survey charts" only with using internal links rather than external ones.
Andrew Stacey 04:14, 4 October 2007 (EDT)
- Hi Andrew, you should add the colon in front to get links to categories, i.e. [[:Category:AMS Journal Price Survey charts]] gives Category:AMS Journal Price Survey charts. --Brucebartlett 05:01, 4 October 2007 (EDT)
