Help:Editing

In addition to reading and browsing, you may wish to edit the various articles found on the site. The wiki allows all registered users to edit the vast majority of the wiki's content. This is a basic guide to the fundamentals of editing.

Basics

To edit an article, you can either click the "Edit" button to the right of the article's title. It is also possible to edit an individual section of an article. To do this, click the "edit" or "edit source" buttons next to the heading of the section you would like to modify. Only the content found in that specific section will show up in the editor.

In either editor, you have the option to show a preview of the page before saving it to ensure the content is as desired. Once you are done, click the "Save page" button.

Editing summaries

Edit summaries give a brief explanation of what was changed and are visible alongside the edit in the Recent Changes. Before you save a page, you will be prompted to type an edit summary. Please be clear and straightforward in your explanation so others can get a quick idea of what changed. While it is possible to save without an edit summary, it is strongly advised that you include one, especially if you are undoing another edit. This allows effective communication between multiple editors.

Minor edits

Before you save a page, you have the option to mark your edit as a "Minor edit". Minor edits are edits that do not much change the content of an article, but rather fix a small mistake or detail. Examples of minor edits include rearranging text, fixing a coding or formatting error, or correcting a spelling or grammar mistake.

Edits should not be marked as minor if they add or remove content from the article. Even something like adding a bullet point of trivia would be considered a major edit as the content of the article is new and worth revisiting.

Knowing when to label a minor edit is important because some users prefer to hide them from their view of the Recent Changes. You do not want your edit to potentially go unnoticed if it is of significant value to the article's quality.

Null edits

If the wikitext is not changed no edit will be recorded and the edit summary is discarded.

A dummy edit is a change in wikitext that has no effect on the rendered page. This allows an edit summary, and is useful for correcting a previous edit summary, or an accidental marking of a previous edit as "minor" - as well as forcing the page to update its cache.