Wiki Editing Policy

This article helps you to contribute effectively to the Documentation part of the wiki. We strongly encourage you to announce new pages or major changes to the mailing list dev@documentation.openoffice.org.

Prerequisites for Editing

You must be registered and logged in before you can edit the Wiki. Registration is easily done.

1. Click on Log in / create account in the upper right corner of the screen and enter the required bits.
   We recommend using the same username as on the OpenOffice.org website.
2. Subsequently you have to validate your email address.

For further logins you use the same entry point, enter Username and Password, and click the Log in button.

Next step could be to tell the Community about yourself. There is definitely no harm and it is a good way of getting comfortable with the Wiki.

1. When you are logged in, your username shows at the top of the page, in red, until you create your user page. Click on your username to do that.
2. On your page, add some sections as given below, as it is your profile on the OpenOffice Wiki;
   • About yourself
   • OpenOffice and you
   • Your contributions
   • Work in progress
   • Any future plans?
   • Reference (optional)
   • Contact

So, this is somewhat a template, for creating a profile. You may or may not need to follow this template, you may have sections of your choice. This is done to make a profile in a uniform way for all the new users.

Adding Comments

Important comments should be announced on the mailing list dev@documentation.openoffice.org to be sure that they get noticed.

To add a comment to a page

1. Click the Discussion tab on the top of the page.
   • If you are starting a new topic click on the + sign to the right of the edit tab at the top, fill in the subject line and write your comment in the main text box.
   • If you want to add a comment to an existing discussion leave it after the existing comments and indent it by putting one or more colons (:) at the beginning of each paragraph.
2. Sign your username with four tildes (~~~~). You can do this automatically with the signature with timestamp button ( ) on the toolbar.
3. Click Save Page.

To learn more about comments see the Mediawiki help about talk pages

Structure of the Documentation Section of the Wiki

The Documentation section is only part of the large OpenOffice.org Wiki. The doc.oo.o project tries to present the information in this section in a way that it is easily accessible and has a structure that allows straightforward navigation for both users and contributors.

All documentation pages are subpages of the main Documentation page. A further substructure presents sections as subpages containing further subpages. Think of it as a hierarchical representation, just like a file system. Every subpage is automatically linked back to the main page.

The current wiki page tree looks like this:

wiki.services.openoffice.org/wiki/Documentation
   |
   +---Dashboard
   +---Administration Guide
   +---FAQ
   +---How Tos
   +---OOoAuthors User Manual
   +---OOo3 User Guides
   +---Tutorials
   +---Samples, Templates and Clipart
   +---Setup Guide
   +---BASIC Guide
   +---Building Guide
   +---DevGuide
   +---Reference

Subpage	Description
Documentation/Dashboard	High-level tracking of documentation sub-projects and content deliverables
Documentation/Administration Guide	Guide that describes how to administer an OpenOffice.org network installation
Documentation/FAQ	Collection of FAQs.
Documentation/How Tos	Link collection of How Tos
Documentation/OOoAuthors User Manual	Collection of OpenOffice.org 2.x User Guides from OOoAuthors
Documentation/OOo3 User Guides	Collection of OpenOffice.org 3 User Guides from OOoAuthors
Documentation/Tutorials	Tutorial collections from different contributors
Documentation/Samples, Templates and Clipart	Sub-project page in order to provide usable templates for business and personal use (draft)
Documentation/Setup Guide	Sub-project page in order to provide a guide through the setup process of OpenOffice.org (in progress)
Documentation/BASIC Guide	Guide that provides an introduction to programming with OpenOffice.org BASIC
Documentation/Building Guide	Guide that describes how to build the Apache OpenOffice software yourself, from source.
Documentation/DevGuide	Guide that describes how to program with OpenOffice.org using the component technology UNO (Universal Network Objects) with OpenOffice.org.
Documentation/Reference	Collection of reference material. References on this page should show up under Reference Lists at the Documentation main page.

Creating new Pages

Before creating a page make sure that there is not already an existing page with a similar topic.

• If the new page can be a subpage of an existing page simply go to the existing page and create a link to the new page. After saving the page with the link you can click the link and start writing on your new page.

• If you want to create a really new page for the Documentation project, you can use the wiki's URL for creating a new page. You should observe the wiki page tree when you create a new page in this way. The URL to a wiki page is then something like this:
  http://wiki.services.openoffice.org/wiki/documentation/Page Name

For more information about new pages see the Mediawiki help about new pages

Using Categories

The Categories that are assigned to a page are usually listed at the bottom of the page. Click on a Category, and you will view a topic page with all the pages that have been classified in that Category. This way, a Category tag in a page gives you the opportunity to look up related contents. The bigger the page the more Category tags might be inserted

To add a Category tag to a page

1. Click Special pages in the toolbox on the left side.
2. Click Categories in the Special pages link list.
3. Choose a Category name that makes sense, and apply it by adding at the end of the page.

Do not create duplicate Categories for the same topic. Each Category must be unique. Otherwise it will be difficult to use the Categories for searching the wiki.

Look at MediaWiki Help:Categories if you want to know more about Wiki Categories.

A simple example of how to use Categories in Wiki books:

1. Create a Category named after the current chapter.
2. Add the new Category tag to all pages of that chapter
3. Add the Category tag for the book to the newly created Category page.

The reader can then view the book Category. The book Category shows all the chapters in the book. If the reader clicks on a chapter Category, they can see all of the pages in that chapter (in alphabetical order).

Do not add a category and its subcategory to the same wiki page. For more information see the MediaWiki Help:Category section on Category considerations.

You can use Templates to add a common category to a large group of pages, but it is not recommended. It may appear to save time, but "adding or deleting a category tag in the template does not add or delete the listings on the category page of pages that use the template, until some edit is made in the page that uses the template." For more information, see the MediaWiki Help:Category section on Using templates to populate categories.

Templates

Look at the Templates help if you are unfamiliar with mediawiki templates.