Meta:Guidelines

This is a sample page for the tsgdoc Wiki and can be used as reference for creating new pages. Note that this introduction is conventionally placed above the Table Of Contents (TOC), so visitors can immediately see what this page is about, instead of having to scroll passed the TOC.

For more general wiki conventions and formatting help , visit the MediaWiki Formatting Guide.

Categories

Always try to group and categorize your information in a logical and user-friendly way. Prevent redundancies: only create subcategories if there are more of them at the same level (levels are indicated by number of = signs before and after the header), otherwise just collapse to the parent.

Visitors typically use one of two methods to find the information they need: Hunting and Gathering. There is probably a more official set of terms for these methods, but let's role with this analogy for now.

Hunting

The "Hunter" will look for specific information on a page based on specific keywords. Make your headers sufficiently descriptive, so the user can jump directly to the required information using the Table Of Contents.

Gathering

The "Gatherer" doesn't know exactly what to look for, and will browse the entire page before figuring out what information they need based on the context it is presented in. You can guide these visitors in a helpful way by sorting your content in order of specificity; from general or most used information at the top, to specific or least used information (e.g. software code) at the bottom.

You can add many levels of subheaders as you like, but after level 3 they become quite hard to distinguish and will clutter the TOC. If a subject requires many sub-subcategories, consider giving the subcategory its own page. Alternatively, if the sub-subcategories are only small in content, you could make non-TOC headers with simple bold text.

Images

File:Foto 1small.jpg

Right-floating image thumbnail with description.

To optimize screen space, images should be placed in a floating window, aligned to the right side of the screen. Larger images can be automatically resized to thumbnails, by specifying the thumbnail width. 200px is the preferred thumbnail size. Adding a description underneath the image is appreciated. For more image formatting guidelines, visit the MediaWiki Images Guide.

Inline Images

Images that are used, for instance, as part of a step-by-step tutorial can be placed inline, with larger size to make them more readable.

Inline Image

You can prevent text that is placed after the image from flowing next to the image by placing an HTML break behind it.

Tables

For tables, use the Wikitable markup. It is more readable and easy on the eye than the default one. There are multiple ways to create rows and columns, some used in the example below, but for more information, consult the MediaWiki Table Formatting Guide.

By default, table columns will scale to fit the contents of the cell, but this usually results in a messy-looking table. Set fixed column-widths to keep the table nice and tight.

For binary entries (e.g. Yes/No), a background color can be used to make it easier to recognize.

	Item 1	Item 2	Item 3
Category
Colors	Yes	No	Wildcard
CSS Code	#9F9	#F99	#FFB

Code

If you want to add code, the syntax might interfere with the Mediawiki syntax. To prevent this from happening, place your code in one of the following preferred ways:

Fixed format text for short, single-line code.

 1Long code, spans entire width of the page
 2
 3If your code is longer than, say, 50 lines, you can add a style attribute to introduce a scrollbar, as sampled here. For a 50-line cutoff, use style="height:50em; overflow:auto;".
 4Note that this method will cause the print version of the page to cut off the code at the line limit mark and not print the rest of the code.
 5I might fix that, but if it's really crucial to have an entire page full of code, you should probably give it a separate page.
 6
 7<!-- start slipsum code -->
 8
 9Normally, both your asses would be dead as fucking fried chicken, 
10but you happen to pull this shit while I'm in a transitional period so I don't wanna kill you, I wanna help you.
11But I can't give you this case, it don't belong to me. 
12Besides, I've already been through too much shit this morning over this case to hand it over to your dumb ass.
13
14You think water moves fast? You should see ice. 
15It moves like it has a mind. Like it knows it killed the world once and got a taste for murder. 
16After the avalanche, it took us a week to climb out. 
17Now, I don't know exactly when we turned on each other, but I know that seven of us survived the slide... and only five made it out. 
18Now we took an oath, that I'm breaking now. 
19We said we'd say it was the snow that killed the other two, but it wasn't. 
20Nature is lethal but it doesn't hold a candle to man.
21
22http://slipsum.com

You could also use the <code> and nowiki tags, but they are displayed in different ways depending on the content, so use with care.

Downloads

Any information that you want to present as a download link should be placed under this header. This includes manuals, drivers, software installs, etc. Sub-categorize where needed. Download links are presented as list items and are descriptive. This means you don't waste space by pasting the entire url or writing something like "Click here to download the documentation". Examples:

• Uploaded file with version control
• Directly downloadable file

Conventionally, download links are found on the bottom of a Wiki page, but considering the frequency at which they are accessed from this particular Wiki, they can be placed earlier as well.