Marspedia Tutorials

Marspedia Tutorials

TOC

Tutorial Introduction

What is Marspedia?

Marspedia is an encyclopedia that summarizes topical knowledge about Mars and references where greater detail can be obtained. Marspedia is focused on providing the best source of information about past, present, and future exploration and settlement of Mars, including all of the tools, techniques and technologies that will be needed to do so. This is the goal of The Mars Society and that is why The Mars Society sponsors and manages Marspedia.

This emphasis and focus on the future is what energizes the volunteers of The Mars Society and Marspedia. We hope that you will want to make Marspedia the best source of information on all topics related to exploring and settling the Red Planet.

Are there any requirements to become a member of the Marspedia Team. Other than some comfort in using a browser and text editor on your favorite computer, phone or touchpad and willingness to bring your enthusiasm, there are no formal requirements. We do ask that if you want to contribute to the Marspedia Project, you should continue this series of tutorials to learn how.

Marspedia is a wiki based website.

What is a wiki? Ref: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wiki A wiki is a knowledge base website on which users collaboratively modify and structure content directly from a web browser. In a typical wiki, text is written using a simplified wikitext markup language and often edited with the help of a rich-text editor - the VisualEditor in Marspedia and MediaWiki.

MediaWiki is a free and open-source wiki engine. It was developed for use on Wikipedia in 2002, and given the name "MediaWiki" in 2003. It remains in use on Wikipedia and almost all other Wikimedia websites. Its development has been coordinated by the Wikimedia Foundation.

Do you have some content to share on Marspedia?

If you are interested in preparing or have already prepared a paper with text, tables and graphics, and you want to add an article to Marspedia, ask yourself these questions: Does it fit in a category included in Marspedia? Go to https://marspedia.org/Marspedia:New_Category_Hierarchy to examine the hierarchical list of Categories covered in Marspedia. You will want to tag your article with 1-3 of those categories after you add it to Marspedia. In the tutorials that follow we’ll show you how. Are you willing to summarize a long (greater than 3-5 pages) paper into a Marspedia article and reference the full paper stored elsewhere on internet? Why do we ask this question? Because Marspedia is an encyclopedia - not a book, journal, or archive for complete chapters or papers. Are you interested in reviewing and improving the Marspedia content submitted by others

If you have answered yes to one or more of these questions, then continue with this series of tutorials.

Tutorial A - Getting an Account and Learning about the MediaWiki VirtualEditor (for Marspedia editing)

The best way to add your content to Marspedia or to help us review contributions is to become a member of the Marspedia Project and request an account. Here’s how…

If you haven’t done so already, link to Marspedia and request an account by clicking Guest. Actions are denoted by red circles or boxes in the accompanying figures.

FIG 1 Open Marspedia as Guest

When you select Guest you’ll see a drop-down menu that lets you select Request Account or Log in. Click Request Account if you don’t have one already. You will receive an email notification within a few days that the account is ready for “Log in.”

FIG 2 Login at Guest drop-down menu

Creating a User page

Before you start the Tutorial, we suggest that you create a User page in Marspedia. You are encouraged to set up your User page with a short ID and bio (or anonymous if you choose), list your computer skills/experience, and MarsSociety experience. This will help the Editorial team in seeking members with experience for a particular future project.

You can also use this page as scratch pad to try out editing tools and techniques, and you can always delete scratch space after each session. We’ll show you how.

To get started, Click Help from left menu. In the box that appears, notice the help links in the Editing category, and read the help file about “User page.”

Steps to create a User page.

Type User:<YourUserName> into the top right Search Marspedia box.

FIG Marspedia search box graphic

A page will display indicating that you may create this page. Click on create this page Type in your name or other text into the box. Click Save Page.

Your User:<Yourname> page will be saved and can be edited in the future by searching for User:<YourUserName> in the Search Marspedia box.

Taking a quick look at the Visual Editor

Go to https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Help:VisualEditor/User_guide

In preparation for the tutorial that follows, quickly scan the Visual Editor help pages. Notice how similar the menu is to other text editors that you have been using such as MS Word, WordPress, etc. You don’t need to study these pages in depth. The tutorials below will give examples of the editing sequences that you will most commonly use. Note that the wiki help files are on a different wiki website called MediaWiki. You won’t have an account on this site. You’ll simply use the help files and a VisualEditor practice page to try out the editing options in the next Tutorial B.

Tutorial B Getting Started - Editing with the VisualEditor

In Tutorial A, you learned how to create a New page (the User page). In this tutorial you will learn about: Editing a Graphic Editing a Table Inserting a new Table Adding a Cited Reference Adding a text hotlink to an external URL or another wiki page Adding a Cited Reference List at the end of the article Adding a Category to the article

We’ll assume you have completed Tutorial A, so that you have your account ID/password for Marspedia, you have set up a User page which you can use as a scratch pad in the future to try out editing tools, and you have skimmed the User Guide for the Visual Editor.

One of the volunteer activities of the Marspedia Project involves reading newly submitted pages and editing them for improved content, layout, and assigned categories. In this tutorial we’ll take you through examples of editing tools used in that process.

Even if you plan to jump right in and become a contributor of new content for Marspedia, you should follow this tutorial which introduces you to the commonly used editing tools.

Now we’ll use the MediaWiki website to practice some editing. Click this URL https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Help:VisualEditor/User_guide Notice the blue box above the Contents box that looks like this…

FIG Graphic of link to test page in the Visual editor User Guide

Click on Here is a page where you can freely test it. In the popup box Click Start editing. A notice drops down to notify you that you are not logged in. That’s OK. You’ll also see this page notice that you can click to reset the sandbox

FIG Notice that the Test page in not permanent. The Sandbox can be reset

Do so. This will remove any previous changes to the page by others and allow you to edit the original page. Then click Start Editing and close the warning box at the x in the upper right corner. Scroll around this VisualEditor:Test page and you’ll see that there are many examples of graphics, tables, lists, equations and even poetry on which to practice our editing.

Let’s look first at the top menu in this VisualEditor.

FIG Top menu of VisualEditor

This is the tool bar you will use to edit. Note: If you have scrolled a page or more into the text , the bar may disappear off the top of the screen, but you can leave your cursor where you want to make an edit and scroll back to the top menu to click on the appropriate editing tool as explained in the examples below.

Hovering over the icons in the tool bar will display the name of the icon. Clicking the carets to the right of an icon will display additional options to choose. The important editing icons are briefly noted here… The Paragraph icon has options that reformat selected text with specific heading levels. The StyleText A icon restyles the characters as bold, subscript, etc. The Links icon (a chain) will add a wiki or external link to selected text The List-Structure icon will create a list of your selected text The Insert Icon allows you to add Graphics, Tables and Cited References at the cursor The Page Options (“hamburger”) icon is used to set Categories The SwitchEditor (pencil) icon allows you to switch to the SourceEditor, described in Tutorial E. The Publish changes blue button will save the editing changes.

Example: Editing a graphic

Click on the Blue Marble graphic Click Edit Click Change Image. Scroll down in the existing image files and find a new graphic like the Visualeditor Parsoid yellow flower to the right and select it.

FIG VisualEditor Parsoid flower

Click Use this Image Click Apply Changes. The new graphic will display. Click Edit in the image dropdown box Click Advanced. Click Center image Change the Custom size of the image to 300 x 172 px Click Apply changes The image is resized and centered and text is above and below it. Note: you can click and drag the image up or down to move it between other lines of text. Try it.

Now Publish Changes Reenter Edit by clicking Edit in the top menu. You should find your flower graphic where you last left it in the text.

Example: Editing Tables

To edit text in the table in the Fantasy Worlds section, double click a table entry in any row/column box and start editing or deleting text. The selected entry shows with a blue background and you’ll notice two carets (arrow heads) to the left of the selected row and to the top of the selected column. By clicking a caret you will see options to add or delete rows or columns to the table. You can also move (exchange) a particular row or column in the table.Try it.

Notice the box below the selected table entry. It looks like this…

FIG Table Delete|Properties

Click Properties. There are options to make the table collapsible and or sortable, although these options don’t manifest themselves until you Save Change to the page and examine it in browser read only mode without the editor. Try making the table collapsible and sortable, saving the changes, and then publishing the changes to see these actions in your browser.

Example: Inserting a new Table

Let’s create a new Table just above the Fantasy worlds section. Use your cursor and the return key to create a few blank lines for entering a table. and park the cursor there.

Scroll up to the menu bar and select Insert/Table.

Scroll down to see the 4 column by 4 row blank table. By adding text and eliminating extra rows and columns you should be able to develop this table (shown below) in short order.

FIG Author|Book 3 row table

• Remember: If you make an editing mistake, leave the page and open it again to reset the sandbox.

Example: Adding a Cited (numbered) reference

In the World Health section, look at the references denoted by brackets and numbers - [1], [2], etc. on this page. These are cited references.

Suppose you have a wikipedia page on “depression” at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Depression_(mood) that you want to reference after the word “depression” at the end of 2nd sentence in 2nd paragraph. Put the cursor after “depression.” Click Insert/more/Basic reference in the VisualEditor top menu, Paste in the URL in the upper box and Click Insert. Notice that this reference has been added as [2] and the others after it have been renumbered. The cited reference has also been added to the Footnotes list at the end of the article.

Example: Adding a hotlink to an external URL to a word or phrase in the text

In the World Health section, select the entire word “depression” at the end of 2nd sentence in 2nd paragraph Click the Insert (chain) icon Click External site Copy the “depression” URL link from the last example (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Depression_(mood)) to the box. Click Done. Note that the word now has a special icon after it. It looks like this The word is now hotlinked to an external URL, but this reference does not appear in the list of cited references at the bottom of the page.

Example: Adding a hotlink to another wiki page to a word or phrase in the text Select the heading “Gallery” above the photos of the planets near the end of this article. Click the Insert (chain) icon Select MediaWiki Type Gallery into the box Click the “Gallery (redirect to Help:images)“ item

You have now linked the text word Gallery to The Gallery Syntax section of the Help:Images page in MediaWiki.

Click Publish Changes

This hotlinking can be useful in adding links to related articles that might elaborate on a topic or concept in the article that you are editing.

Example: Adding a Cited References List at the end of the article

If you were creating a new article you would have preceded to this point by adding all your cited references as you typed in the text. Now you want to add the complete list of cited references at the bottom and rename the list “References” instead of “Footnotes.”  

Let’s delete the current reference list first

Click somewhere in the list of Footnotes. The selected box of references turns blue.

Then hit delete to remove the reference list.

Select the entire word Footnotes and type in References to replace it in the same font and heading style.

You want the reference list to appear immediately after the word References so leave your cursor after the word “References”.

Scroll up and click Insert/more/References list

The list will appear at the cursor and after References.

Note that the list will be placed where ever the cursor is parked. So be careful. You can always delete the reference list and then move the cursor to where you want the list be be before you again click Insert/…/Reference list.

Example: Adding Categories to the article

Categories are used to label pages related by some common theme. This is useful to readers focusing on particular topics and related pages. Notice that there is a Category assigned to this page on the last line in the article in a gray box. It says

Categories: Pages using PMID magic links

We’re going to add a new category called Practice Pages.

If you are not already in edit mode on this VisualEditor:Test page  link to https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/VisualEditor:Test

Once in the Visual Editor

Click Page Options (hamburger)/Categories

Type in “Practice Pages” in the add category box and then click on “Practice Pages” that shows up in the New category box below your original typing.

Click Apply changes and then Publish changes

FIG Categories - Add Category to this page graphic

Scroll to bottom and you’ll see that Practice Pages has been added to Categories.

Note: You’ll see Practice Pages in red (an indication that it is not officially a category in MediWiki, since it hasn’t been defined yet with its own category page).

Don’t worry about the red type- we’re just playing in the sandbox and it’s time to reset the sandbox for others, since we are going to move to the Marspedia website for the next tutorial. So before you go, click Edit and reset the sandbox.

Tutorial C Serving as a Marspedia Reviewer/Editor or Contributor

In this tutorial you will learn

Accessing Special Pages

The Marspedia Category Hierarchy

Adding Marspedia Categories to articles

Adding a cited reference to a Marspedia article

Examining the Recent changes, Needed Articles, or Special pages

A Marspedia Reviewer/Editor reviews recently submitted articles and provides minor editing for consistency and connection to related articles in Marspedia. A reviewer uses the Recent changes list. A contributor will wish to examine the Needed Articles pages where many needed contributions to Marspedia are listed. Both may wish to examine the Special pages associated with the Marspedia wiki.

Open https://marspedia.org/Home.

Notice the column of blue linkables under the Marspedia logo in the top left corner.

Click on Recent changes or Needed articles or Special Pages to find the relevant pages.

Any or all of these lists may suggest places to start when reviewing or writing articles.

The Marspedia Category Hierarchy

Both Reviewers and Contributors should become familiar with the Marspedia hierarchy of categories. This knowledge may help you decide which pages to review and edit based on your interests/experience or on what topics to contribute your knowledge.

Search for Marspedia:New Category Hierarchy in the Marspedia search box.

Read why Marspedia chose to limit the set of categories to just those in the hierarchy. Examine the outline of the three level category hierarchy and above it note the six top level categories description.These top level categories have links to the Category Tree.

Click one of these top level categories and you will see the next level of subcategories and the number of the sub-subcategories (C)  and the number of pages (P)  associated with the subcategories.  The category tree provides a rapid path to all related articles and helps to identify the need for related contributions.

Adding Categories with VisualEditor and the Marspedia category list.

As a reviewer, you may know more about all that is on Marspedia than a recent contributor may know. For instance you may want to add a link to another related page that expands on a subtopic or clarifies a term in an article you are editing. Some pages recently added to Marspedia may not have categories attached or may have categories that are not in the Marspedia category hierarchy. Perhaps you know there is another category that also fits the article well and you want to add it.

Marspedia has a special Category selection box that limits the choice of categories to only those in the Marspedia Category Hierarchy. Let’s see how this works with the VisualEditor.

Log into Marspedia

Go to your user page by typing User:<yourname> in the search box.

Enter Edit Mode by clicking on Edit in the top menu.

Click the hamburger icon next to the pencil.

Click Categories.

FIG Marspedia Category Hierarchy choices

As shown above a box opens allowing you to select a category to apply to your User page.

Scroll down to Mars Outreach and select it.

Click Apply changes to add this category to your user page.

PLEASE NOTE: Currently the Category Apply Changes operation is not working and stays greyed out as shown in the above graphic. Read Tutorial F for the alternative method of assigning a category to a Marspedia page using the SourceEditor.

Adding a cited (numbered) reference to a Marspedia page

The Marspedia VisualEditor has a slightly different top menu than the one you used on the MediaWiki practice page in Tutorial B. . The Marspedia VisualEditor has a Cite icon  after the Link (chain) icon and you will use this to add cited references. Once you click Cite/Basic you have the same input sequence for a cited reference as described in Tutorial B.

Why are the VisualEditor menus different? Wikis don’t always have the latest version of the these tools. Updates can come along several times a year. It is what it is…

Tutorial D Adding Graphics to a new Marspedia Page

If you plan to contribute new content to Marspedia, you will likely want to add a graphic or a photo to your page to illustrate the text and tables of your article. In this tutorial we’ll examine use of existing graphic content in the wiki net or uploading a new graphic from your computer/device to Marspedia.

Adding a graphic for your page from a wiki website.

Using graphics from a wiki website is like borrowing the graphic. You will embed the graphic in your page, but the graphic will be linked back to the Image file that is stored elsewhere in Marspedia or on another wiki.

All graphics on many wikis are required to be public domain, so it’s a clean way to know you can use a graphic that already appears on another wiki and that its history has already been described by another person. You don’t have to add an attribute or ask permission to use a wiki graphic.

Searching for Graphics in the wiki system.

Suppose that you have read an article in Marspedia (or any other wiki) and you note a graphic that you want to include on your article page. Here’s how.

Go to the page that displays the graphic

Double click the graphic to determine its File:<name> in that wiki.

Copy the URL link that you find on the File: description page.

With your cursor where you want to add the graphic on your page,

Click Insert/Media in the top menu

When the Media Settings box opens Paste the graphic URL into the Search field.

Click the Use this Image tab

That will link the graphic to your page and it will appear at your cursor position.

To manipulate the graphic’s position and size, review how to do that in Tutorial B.

Note that a reader of your article can click the graphic and then the hotlink to display the File: description in the wiki system you copied it from.The reader can then download the file in its originally uploaded form.

Uploading a new graphic

Marspedia allows media under several kinds of licenses to be added, not just public domain graphics, but you should be sure you understand the licensing details and restrictions to its use before you decide to use these graphics from external (non-wiki) sources. Make sure you know the source of the graphic and whether there are any restrictions to its use.

To upload a graphics file from your computer/device