Help:Contents

Welcome to the Global Anabaptist Wikipedia Help Page

The Global Anabaptist Wikipedia Help Page has numerous resources, guides and models to help you understand how this wikipedia is structured and how to contribute content. Here you can learn about creating and editing articles, stories and sources through a basic description of the editor and a basic description of wiki-code. You can also learn about our categorization system and how the site is laid out.

To understand the basic guidelines and non-technical policies surrounding Anabaptistwiki and to get a general overview of the site, please visit our About Anabaptistwiki page.

If this help page or the Mediawiki help page doesn't provide you with the appropriate information, a quick google search will likely answer your questions.

New Users to the Wiki

Welcome to the Global Anabaptist Wikipedia! We are grateful that you have taken the time to visit our site and engage with the global Anabaptist community. Since you are on the help page you probably have some amount of interest in contributing content or in helping the site. Every time someone edits or writes one article, story or source, it helps global interaction immensely so we thank you once again for contributing your time and energy.

Some places to get started on your journey through the Global Anabaptist Wikipedia:

To find an article, story or source, you can type what you are looking for in the search bar on the left hand side of the screen to see if we have an article, story or source written on the subject.
If you are feeling a bit more adventurous or want to go exploring through Anabaptist culture, you can go to the Main Page and start browsing by country or Anabaptist family tree members.
Yet another way to start navigating your way through the site is to visit the sources page or stories page. On these pages you will be able to work your way down through a category tree to find what you are looking for.

Creating an Article

Looking to create an article for the Global Anabaptist Wikipedia? Great, but first there are a few steps you must take before you start creating your masterpiece.

Does your proposed article have any connection to the Anabaptist community? If it does not have any sort of connection or if the connection is weak, you might want to take a different approach to the subject that would recognize a stronger connection.
Is your article going to be a factual account of a congregation, event, person etc.? Articles on Anabaptistwiki present information that can be validated by other sources and aren't opinionated in nature. If you are looking to write an opinionated article, you should look into writing a story which span the entire spectrum of opinion.
Does your article already exist on the Anabaptistwiki? Do find out, do a quick search for your proposed article in the search bar. If your article does not show up in the list of results then you are ready to continue. If it turns out your article is already created, you have a lot of your work already cut out for you. Simply read through the article and add any additional information that hasn't been included already.
Will you be able to link your new article to another higher level page? For example, you want to create an article named "Anytown Mennonite Church." You would be able to link this page to the country's page where it is located, its relevant conference page and maybe some important individual's page who attended that church. In this way, the "Anytown Mennonite Church" article would be connected to three other pages and would be found easily by people using the site. If you cannot find a place to link your article, whether it be another article or a category, your article will be orphaned and nobody will be able to access it except through the search bar.

If you are good on all the above accounts then the next step is creating your article. To create an article here is what you must do:

Create your new article page. There are two ways to do this.
- One way is to go to a page that you are eventually going to link your article to. You then are going to go into edit mode and add a link to your (as of yet nonexistent) article in an appropriate area on the page. Remember that whatever you type in the link will be the title of your article so watch out for spelling mistakes and capitalization. Save the page and get out of edit mode. The link to your nonexistent article should be red. Clicking on this red link will bring you to an edit page for your new article.
- The second way of creating an article is to type the name of your article in the search bar and click "Go." Remember that whatever you type in the search bar will be the title of your article so watch out for spelling mistakes and capitalization. Hitting "Go" should bring you to the search results page. Near the top of the page you should see the following "There is no page titled "Your Article Name". You can create this page." Clicking on "create this page" will bring you to a screen where you can write your article.
Load the appropriate boilerplate. A boilerplate is a pre-formatted template for you to use, which takes some of the work out of formatting and allows the site to be more consistent. Simply choose the appropriate boilerplate name under the "Select Boilerplate" option and click load.
Edit your page. To edit your page you simply add text to the editor window. If you are a bit more competent with Wikicode, you can experiment with tables, images etc. For help on editing, see the editing section further down on this page or visit the Mediawiki how to edit page and formatting page.
Add your new article to the appropriate categories (if applicable). WARNING: Do some previous searching before you select categories for your article. See which categories articles similar to yours have been placed in and then choose appropriate categories for your article. We have added a feature on Anabaptistwiki that allows you to easily select categories for your article. Underneath the editor pane is a "Category Selection" pane. You can either choose appropriate categories from the list of popular categories below or type existing categories in the input box.
Save your page. When you are done editing, formatting and selecting categories, click the "Save Page" button at the bottom of the page. Your article has now been created and people can start reading it!
Link your article to other articles. Think about what other articles would be related to your article. If these articles have been created already, add a link to your article somewhere appropriate on that page. The more links there are to your article, the easier it will be for people who are looking for your article to find it.

Creating a Story

Creating a story is much like creating an article although there are a slightly relaxed set of rules.

Unlike articles, stories are not strictly factual pieces. Stories can be any event in your life that you feel should be shared with the Anabaptist community. These could include faith journeys, founding of congregations, overseas service, etc.
When writing a story, you aren't required to cite anything and your narrative may be opinionated. This is your story so it should embody your voice.
Be sure to give credit to yourself for writing the story. Sign your name at the end of the page.
Stories cannot be edited by other users so your story is protected from tampering. Once your story is written, Anabaptistwiki administrators will come through and protect your page from editing. If this hasn't happened in awhile, maybe because the administrators are busy, feel free to send an email to one of them politely suggesting to protect your story. Remember these people are volunteers.

Creating a story is much the same as creating an article. Simply follow the "Create an article" procedure as outlined above, however, when it comes to designating categories, be sure to include your story in the correct country source category. For instance, if you are from Canada or your article is centered around Canada, link your story to the "Canada Sources" page. Remember, if your story could be linked to multiple countries, link them all. The more links a story has, the more likely it will be read.

For more information visit the about stories page.

Uploading a Source

For categories make sure to include date and location but add anything else relevant

For more information visit the about sources page.

Editing

For help learning how to edit and format text in the Global Anabaptist Wiki, check out the MetaWiki help guide. Especially note the how to edit page. The MediaWiki help guide also offers helpful information, especially the formatting page.