Everybody's edits improve the wiki!
If you've arrived here, you may have been browsing the wiki for a while, DCU Wiki is a collaborative encyclopedia where fans like you edit to build the best source of DCU information possible, it's great that you want to take the leap and start helping out too. This tutorial aims to help you become a great editor!
How to get started?
- Create an account and verify your email, this will not only allow you to start editing, but it also allows you to remove annoying Fandom ads
- Join our Discord Server to ask questions more easily, within the #wiki-editing channel, you can ask any kind of question about editing, don't hesitate to contact the Wiki Staff, we are here to help
- Remember that this is just a tutorial for newcomers and not an extensive manual. If you have questions about specific policies, you can visit Policies
- Visiting the Layout and the Manual of Style will help you have a better understanding of how we work here
- It is good practice to create a Sandbox Page, there, you are creating a personal page in which you can do all the tests you want, you can even copy the content of a page and paste it there for such purposes
Getting Started
Editing may seem overwhelming at first, but there is nothing to worry about, many of us have learned to edit by editing, by trial and error
You may have a great knowledge with the DCU, but the amount of information is very large, and nothing is wrong! No one knows absolutely every detail of the DCU, and as the franchise grows bigger, this becomes more common, so don’t be afraid to add information that may be missing in the wiki, it’s a common practice among editors sometimes to focus on what they know best, and there’s nothing wrong with it, even fixing grammatical errors can be incredibly helpful.
A great way to start, is by reviewing the wiki tasks, any contribution is appreciated
- Expand all stubs: 0 remaining.
- Cleanup articles: 0 to be expanded and 0 to be rewritten.
- Add images to all articles needing images: 0 remaining.
- Find places to use unused images, or tag them for deletion if they are not needed.
Per if you have been browsing for some time, you see that many pages follow a similar structure format, this formatting is detailed in Layout
Learning Source Editing
One of the most complicated things when starting could be editing with the Source Mode, also called WikiText, especially if you are not familiar with it. It's important to know it, the Visual Editor can often generate errors and therefore, and the wiki doesn't promote its use, this section teaches you the basics when editing the code of a page
Texts can be bold or italicized
Writing this:
'''Clark Kent'''
Results in the following bold text:
Clark Kent
To make text italic you write the following
''Clark Kent''
Which produces the following
Clark Kent
The heading order is explained in Layout. A main heading is composed of 2 equals on each side of the title, to create a subheading, one identical one is added on each side, as follows.
==Biography== ===War=== ====Event====
Links helps to navigate the wiki better, links are very easy to create, the following example:
[[Superman]]
Generates the following:
To show in the link another text of the title of the page to which it leads, which is known as a "pipe link", you do the following:
[[Superman|Clark Kent]]
It produces the following result:
Clark Kent
Categories are added to the bottom of the page, and are subject to the Layout order, depending on their type, for example:
[[Category:Items]]
The classic format for creating a reference is the following, replacing the placeholders with the corresponding information:
<ref name=”Title”>[Ref-Link Ref-Name]</ref>
If you need to cite something more than once, once the reference is placed, you must add the following
<ref name=”Title”/>
To add a reference to a movie or TV series, you can find its format in the Manual of Style
References will appear in the "References" section, the Layout explains where this should be added. This section is created as follows
==References==
{{Reflist}}
In this category you will find all the templates used in the wiki, for each one, you have a Usage section that you can copy and paste into your page, to then customize it accordingly, for example, let's copy the Location template
{{Location
|image =
|continent =
|location =
|capital =
|interest =
|flag =
|coat =
|seal =
|notable =
|population =
|affiliation =
|movie =
|tv =
|game =
|comic =
|book =
}}
to see this:
- Uploading an Image
Images are an important part of the wiki that help make it visually appealing to the reader. There are few guidelines for uploading an image.
The upload form allows you to upload an image from your computer as well as change the destination name, i.e. the name of the file on the wiki.
We don't require strict formatting, but it's obviously more appropriate to give images a name like “Superman in the sky,” rather than “download” or a bunch of numbers.
When uploading screenshots, the DCU Wiki recommends using screenshot repository websites like Cap-That to download an HD image more easily.
- Positioning an Image
Once the page is uploaded, it's logically necessary to upload it to the wiki. To upload it as a gallery, generally in the gallery section, or on a gallery page itself, it is added as follows
<gallery> Creature Commandos.jpg </gallery>
Results in this
To add an image inside a page in a traditional form, such as in the “Biography” sections, this format is followed
[[File:Name.jpg/png|thumb|location|size|caption]]
- “File:Name.jpg/png”: Refers to the full name of the file, which always starts with “File:” and ends with the file format: png, jpg, etc.
- “thumb”: Must be added directly after the file name and will make the image a thumbnail with a caption.
- Location: Indicates the side of the page on which the image will be displayed, adding "right" or "left", if nothing is written, it will be placed on the right by default
- Size: The size of the image as a numeric value with "px", for example "250px", which is the regular and correct size to use on wiki pages
- Caption: A direct quote that is displayed below the wiki
Example, adding this:
[[File:Creature Commandos.jpg|thumb|left|250px|This is an example]]
Results in this:
This is an example
Renaming
It may happen that you have created an article with an incorrect name and need to rename it, which is a function of the Wiki Staff, so in that case don't hesitate to ask for that change. If that is not the case and you want to propose renaming a page, you must follow the Naming Policy, adding the {{Rename}} template on the page and justifying the change on the Talk page.
Writing a Page
Each editor can have their own personal writing style, so it's important to try to a common formal tone. The main goal when writing something in an article is to be detailed, understandable, and consistent with the writing of other pages, with this we refer to:
- Find, replace and avoid repetitive writing structures, such as “Eventually”, “At some point”, etc.
- Avoid passive voice and speculative or uncertain writing, for example, "possibly", "supposedly", "was known", "is unknown"
- In-universe pages like in the biography section should be written in simple past, so avoid using "would" in verbs.
- Articles must be written in American English, so British English should be avoided.
Making Mistakes
If you make a mistake when editing, you have nothing to worry about, no one is perfect, and trial and error is part of learning, within the 3 dots of the Edit button, you find the History, and you can always “Undo” those revisions. We recommend you create a personal Sandbox, in which you can do all the trial edits you want, from the source editor you can also click the “Show Preview” button to view your changes before publishing them.