# Help:Editing

Related articles

- ArchWiki:About
- Help:Cheatsheet
- Help:Style
- Help:Reading
- Help:Template
- ArchWiki:Sandbox

ArchWiki is powered by MediaWiki, a free software wiki package written in PHP, originally designed for use on Wikipedia. This is a short tutorial about editing the ArchWiki. More in-depth help can be found at Help:Contents on MediaWiki and Help:Contents on Wikipedia.

You must be logged-in to edit pages. Visit Special:UserLogin to log in or create an account. To experiment with editing, please use the sandbox. For an overview of wiki markup, see Help:Cheatsheet. For wiki tasks, see ArchWiki:Contributing.

Before editing or creating pages, users are encouraged to familiarize themselves with the general tone, layout, and style of existing articles. An effort should be made to maintain a level of consistency throughout the wiki. See Help:Reading for an overview of common stylistic conventions. See Help:Style for more detail.

## Editing

To begin editing a page, click the edit tab at the top of the page. Alternatively, users may edit a specific section of an article by clicking the edit link to the right of the section heading. The Editing page will be displayed, which consists of the following elements:

- Edit toolbar (optional)
- Edit box
- Edit summary box
- Save page, Show preview, Show changes, and Cancel links

The edit box will contain the wikitext (the editable source code from which the server produces the web page) for the current revision of the page or section. To perform an edit:

1. Modify the wikitext as needed (see #Formatting below for details).
2. Explain the edit in the Summary box (e.g. "fixed typo" or "added info on xyz" (see Help:Edit summary for details)).
   Note: All edits should be accompanied by a descriptive summary. The summary allows administrators and other maintainers to easily identify controversial edits and vandalism.
3. Use the Show preview button to facilitate proofreading and verify formatting before saving.
4. Mark the edit as minor by checking the This is a minor edit box if the edit is superficial and indisputable.
5. Save changes by clicking Save page. If unsatisfied, click Cancel instead (or repeat the process until satisfied).

Note:

- If you are not going to use an external editor like vim, you may want to consider using wikEd, which adds syntax highlighting, regex search and replace and other nice features to the standard MediaWiki editor. The greasemonkey script works flawlessly with the ArchWiki.
- Articles should not be signed because they are shared works; one editor should not be singled out above others.

### Reverting edits

If a page was edited incorrectly, the following procedures describe how to revert an article to a previous version. To revert a single edit:

1. Click the history tab at the top of the page to be modified (beside the edit tab). A list of revisions is displayed.
2. Click the undo link to the right of the offending edit. An edit preview is displayed, showing the current revision on the left and the text to be saved on the right.
3. If satisfied, click the Save page button at the bottom of the page.

The wiki page should now be back in its original state.

Occasionally, it is necessary to revert several edits at once. To revert an article to a previous version:

1. Click the history tab at the top of the page to be modified (beside the edit tab). A list of revisions is displayed.
2. View the desired revision (i.e. the last good version) by clicking on the appropriate timestamp. That revision is displayed.
3. If satisfied, click the edit tab at the top of the page. A warning is displayed: You are editing an out-of-date revision of this page. Simply click the Save page button to revert to this version.

Note: Avoid combining an undo and an edit! Revert the edit first, then make additional changes; do not edit the revision preview.

## Creating pages

Before creating a new page, please consider the following:

1. Is your topic relevant to Arch Linux? Irrelevant or unhelpful articles will be deleted.
2. Is your topic of interest to others? Consider not only what you wish to write about, but also what others may wish to read. Personal notes belong on your user page.
3. Is your topic worthy of a new page? Search the wiki for similar articles. If they exist, consider improving or adding a section to an existing article instead.
4. Will your contribution be significant? Avoid creating stubs unless planning to expand them shortly thereafter.

Creating a new page requires selection of a descriptive title and an appropriate category.

Please read Help:Article naming guidelines and Help:Style#Title for article naming advice. Do not include "Arch Linux" or variations in page titles. This is the Arch Linux wiki; it is assumed that articles will be related to Arch Linux (e.g., "Installing Openbox"; not "Installing Openbox in Arch Linux").

Visit the Table of contents to help choose an appropriate category. Articles may belong to multiple categories.

To add a new page to some category (say "My new page" to "Some category") you need to:

1. Create a page with your new title by browsing to https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/My_new_page (remember to replace "My_new_page" with the intended title!)
2. Add `[[Category:Some category]]` to the top of your page

Note: Do not create uncategorized pages! All pages must belong to at least one category. If you cannot find a suitable category, consider creating a new one.

## Formatting

Text formatting is accomplished with wiki markup whenever possible; learning HTML is not necessary. Various templates are also available for common formatting tasks; see Help:Template for information about templates. The Help:Cheatsheet summarizes the most common formatting options.

### Headings and subheadings

Headings and subheadings are an easy way to improve the organization of an article. If you can see distinct topics being discussed, you can break up an article by inserting a heading for each section. See Help:Style#Section headings and Help:Effective use of headers for style information.

Headings must start from second level, and can be created like this:

    == Second-level heading ==

    === Third-level heading ===

    ==== Fourth-level heading ====

    ===== Fifth-level heading =====

    ====== Sixth-level heading ======

Note: First-level headings are not allowed, their formatting is reserved for the article title.

If an article has at least four headings, a table of contents (TOC) will be automatically generated. If this is not desired, place `__NOTOC__` in the article. Try creating some headings in the Sandbox and see the effect on the TOC.

### Line breaks

An empty line is used to start a new paragraph while single line breaks have no effect in regular paragraphs.

The HTML `<br>` tag can be used to manually insert line breaks, but should be avoided. A manual break may be justified with other formatting elements, such as lists.

wikitext | rendering
--- | ---
    This sentence
    is broken into
    three lines.
| This sentence is broken into three lines.
    This is paragraph number one.

    This is paragraph number two.
| This is paragraph number one. This is paragraph number two.
    * This point <br> spans multiple lines
    * This point
    ends the list
| This point spans multiple lines This point ends the list

See Help:Style/White space for information on proper use of whitespace characters.

### Bold and italics

Bold and italics are added by surrounding a word or phrase with two, three or five apostrophes (`'`):

wikitext | rendering
--- | ---
`''italics''` | italics
`'''bold'''` | bold
`'''''bold and italics'''''` | bold and italics

### Strike-out

Use strike-out text to show that the text no longer applies or has relevance.

wikitext | rendering
--- | ---
    <s>Strike-out text</s>
| Strike-out text

### Indenting

To indent text, place a colon (`:`) at the beginning of a line. The more colons you put, the further indented the text will be. A newline marks the end of the indented paragraph.

wikitext | rendering
--- | ---
    This is not indented at all.
    :This is indented slightly.
    ::This is indented more.
| This is not indented at all. This is indented slightly. This is indented more.

Note: Use indentation only when strictly necessary to obtain the desired layout. In talk pages, use it to indent replies (see Help:Discussion).

### Lists

Remember that wiki syntax does not support multi-line list items; every newline character ends the list item definition. To start a new line inside a list item, use the `<br>` tag. To enter a multi-line code block inside a list item, use Template:bc and escape the content using `<nowiki>` tags. See also Help:Style/White space and Help:Template.

#### Bullet points

Bullet points have no apparent order of items.

To insert a bullet, use an asterisk (`*`). Multiple `*`s will increase the level of indentation.

wikitext | rendering
--- | ---
    * First item
    * Second item
    ** Sub-item
    * Third item
| First item Second item Sub-item Third item

#### Numbered lists

Numbered lists introduce numbering and thus order the list items. You should generally use unordered lists as long as the order in which items appear is not the primary concern.

To create numbered lists, use the number sign or hash symbol (`#`). Multiple `#`s will increase the level of indentation.

wikitext | rendering
--- | ---
    # First item
    # Second item
    ## Sub-item
    # Third item
| First item Second item Sub-item Third item
    # First item
    # Second item
    #* Sub-item
    # Third item
| First item Second item Sub-item Third item

#### Definition lists

Definition lists are defined with a leading semicolon (`;`) and a colon (`:`) following the term.

wikitext | rendering
--- | ---
    Definition lists:
    ; Keyboard: Input device with buttons or keys
    ; Mouse: Pointing device for two-dimensional input
    or
    ; Keyboard
    : Input device with buttons or keys
    ; Mouse
    : Pointing device for two-dimensional input
| Definition lists: Keyboard Input device with buttons or keys Mouse Pointing device for two-dimensional input or Keyboard Input device with buttons or keys Mouse Pointing device for two-dimensional input
    Use additional colons if a definition has multiple definitions:
    ; Term
    : First definition
    : Second definition
| Use additional colons if a definition has multiple definitions: Term First definition Second definition

Definition lists must not be simply used for formatting, see W3's examples.

### Code

To add code to the wiki, use one of the code formatting templates. Alternatively, simply start each line with a single whitespace character, for example:

     $ echo Hello World

See also Help:Style#Code formatting.

### Tables

Used effectively, tables can help organize and summarize swaths of data. For advanced table syntax and formatting, see Help:Table.

wikitext | rendering
--- | ---
    {| class="wikitable"
    |+ Tabular data
    ! Distro !! Color
    |-
    | Arch || Blue
    |-
    | Gentoo || Purple
    |-
    | Ubuntu || Orange
    |}
Tabular data
Distro | Color
--- | ---
Arch | Blue
Gentoo | Purple
Ubuntu | Orange
    {| class="wikitable"
    ! Filesystem !! Size !! Used !! Avail !! Use% !! Mounted on
    |-
    | rootfs || 922G || 463G || 413G || 53% || /
    |-
    | /dev || 1.9G || 0 || 1.9G || 0% || /dev
    |}
Filesystem | Size | Used | Avail | Use% | Mounted on
--- | --- | --- | --- | --- | ---
rootfs | 922G | 463G | 413G | 53% | /
/dev | 1.9G | 0 | 1.9G | 0% | /dev

## Links

Links are essential to help readers navigate the site. In general, editors should ensure that every article contains outgoing links to other articles (avoid dead-end pages) and is referenced by incoming links from other articles (the what links here special page can be used to display incoming links).

### Internal links

You can extensively cross-reference wiki pages using internal links. You can add links to existing titles, and also to titles you think ought to exist in future.

To make a link to another page on the same wiki, just put the title in double square brackets.

For example, if you want to make a link to, say, the pacman article, use:

    [[pacman]]

If you want to use words other than the article title as the text of the link, you can add an alternative name after the pipe "|" divider (`Shift` + `\` on English-layout and similar keyboards).

For example:

    The [[ArchWiki:About|ArchWiki]] is the primary documentation source for Arch Linux.

...is rendered as:

  The ArchWiki is the primary documentation source for Arch Linux.

When you want to use the plural of an article title (or add any other suffix) for your link, you can add the extra letters directly outside the double square brackets.

For example:

    makepkg is used in conjunction with [[PKGBUILD]]s.

...is rendered as:

  makepkg is used in conjunction with PKGBUILDs.

#### Links to sections of a document

To create a link to a section of a document, simply add a `#` followed by the section's heading.

For example:

    [[Help:Editing#Links to sections of a document]]

...is rendered as:

  Help:Editing#Links to sections of a document

Tip: If linking to a section within the same page, the page name can be omitted (e.g. `[[#Links to sections of a document]]`). Do not needlessly reformat same-page section links to hide the anchor symbol (e.g. `[[#Links to sections of a document|Links to sections of a document]]`).

### Interlanguage links

See Help:i18n#Interlanguage links

### Interwiki links

So-called interwiki links can be used to easily link to articles in other external Wikis, like Wikipedia for example. The syntax for for this link type is the wiki name followed by a colon and the article you want to link to enclosed in double square brackets.

If you want to link to the Wikipedia:Arch Linux article you can use the following:

    [[Wikipedia:Arch Linux]]

Or you can create a piped link with an alternate link label to the Arch Linux Wikipedia article:

    [[Wikipedia:Arch Linux|Arch Linux Wikipedia article]]

Note: Using a piped link with an alternative link label should be reserved for abbreviating longer URLs.

See: Wikipedia:Interwiki links

The list of all interwiki links working on ArchWiki can be viewed here.

### External links

If you want to link to an external site, just type the full URL for the page you want to link to.

    http://www.google.com/

It is often more useful to make the link display something other than the URL, so use one square bracket at each end, with the alternative title after the address separated by a space (not a pipe). So if you want the link to appear as Google search engine, just type:

    [http://www.google.com/ Google search engine]

Note: If linking to another ArchWiki or Wikipedia page, use #Internal links or #Interwiki links rather than external links! That is, if your link starts with https://wiki.archlinux.org/ use an internal link; if your link starts with http://en.wikipedia.org/ use an interwiki link!

## Redirects

To redirect automatically from one page to another, add `#REDIRECT` and an internal link to the page to be redirected to at the beginning of a page.

For example, you could redirect from "Cats" to "Cat":

    #REDIRECT [[Cat]]

Thus, anyone typing either version in the search box will automatically go to "Cat".

Note that redirects are resolved internally by the server and will not make it any slower to open an article.

When redirecting an existing page A to page B, for example after merging the content of A into B, check if A has a talk page: if B does not have a talk page, move A's talk page there; otherwise merge A's talk page to B's. Then check if A's talk page is linked from some other page and fix any of those links so that they point to B's talk page. Finally, mark A's talk page for deletion.

## Wiki variables, magic words, and templates

MediaWiki recognizes certain special strings within an article that alter standard behavior. For example, adding the word `__NOTOC__` anywhere in an article will prevent generation of a table of contents. Similarly, the word `__TOC__` can be used to alter the default position of the table of contents. See Help:Magic words for details.

Templates and variables are predefined portions of wikitext that can be inserted into an article to aid in formatting content.

Variables are defined by the system and can be used to display information about the current page, wiki, or date. For example, use `{{SITENAME}}` to display the wiki's site name (which, on this wiki, is: ArchWiki). To set an alternate title header for the current page, another wiki variable can be used: `{{DISPLAYTITLE:New Title}}` (only capitalization changes are permitted).

Templates, on the other hand, are user-defined. The content of any page can be included in another page by adding `{{Namespace:Page Name}}` to an article, but this is rarely used with pages outside the Template namespace. (If the namespace is omitted, Template is assumed.) For example, Template:Note, which can be included in an article with the following wikitext:

    {{Note|This is a note.}}

...is rendered as:

Note: This is a note.

See Help:Template for more information.

## Discussion pages

Discussion or "talk" pages are for communicating with other ArchWiki users.

To discuss any page, go to that page and then click the "discussion" tab at the top of the page. Add a new comment at the end of the page or reply below an existing comment. Use indenting to format your discussion. Standard practice is to indent your reply one more level deep than the person to whom you are replying. Further, you should insert your comment beneath the one to which you are replying, but below others who are doing the same.

Sign comments by typing `~~~~` to insert your username and a timestamp. Avoid editing another user's comments.

Experiment by editing the talk page of the Sandbox.

### User talk pages

Note the difference between a user page, and a user talk page. Everyone may have a user talk page on which other people can leave public messages. If one does not exist for a particular user, you may create it so that you can leave a comment. If someone has left you a message on yours, you will see a note saying "You have new messages" with a link to your own user talk page: in this case you are supposed to reply on your own talk page beneath the original message with appropriate indentation. Please avoid replying to a discussion on a different talk page, for example the one of the user who contacted you, since such a style of communication creates disconnects with the flow of information regarding the subject at hand.

Do not edit a user's own page without permission (i.e. [[User:Name]]); these serve as personal user spaces. The "user talk page" is the correct place for communicating (other than sending private email if the address is published).

Category:

- Help