Help:Introduction to editing in the Encyclopedia

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You should start by watching the editing screencast, which covers a lot of the important information in this article quickly:
You should start by watching the editing screencast, which covers a lot of the important information in this article quickly:
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* [http://sabr.org View the screencast]
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* [http://www.screencast.com/t/NDBjNDhiYjkt View the editing screencast]
Please direct any questions you have about editing the Encyclopedia to Peter Garver at the SABR Office ([mailto:pgarver@sabr.org pgarver@sabr.org]) for a quick response.
Please direct any questions you have about editing the Encyclopedia to Peter Garver at the SABR Office ([mailto:pgarver@sabr.org pgarver@sabr.org]) for a quick response.

Revision as of 16:19, 3 December 2009

If you're interested in contributing to the SABR Encyclopedia, this is the place to start. This page will teach you about how editing works and give you a few tips on how to enjoy the process.

You should start by watching the editing screencast, which covers a lot of the important information in this article quickly:

Please direct any questions you have about editing the Encyclopedia to Peter Garver at the SABR Office (pgarver@sabr.org) for a quick response.

Contents

The editing process

Reggie Jackson's page with the edit link highlighted

There are a few steps to making an edit in the encyclopedia, which we'll cover in order here:

  • Opening the editing screen
  • Making the actual edit
  • Saving the edit
  • Edit approval

Opening the editing screen

The first step is opening the editing screen. If you're editing a person's page, you will find the link to edit the main part of the page just to the left of the "infobox" – the green box that contains the name and vital details.

In the first picture on the right, you can see a picture of a player's page (Reggie Jackson), with the edit link circled in red. You can click the image to view any picture larger. Clicking that link will take you to a screen that looks like the second image on the right. This image will let you edit the main part of the page, which includes the short narrative for the player (the brief description at the top of the page) and the full narrative (the main part of the page). It also lets you set the image that appears in the player's infobox – see the article on Adding pictures to articles for more information on that.

Making edits

Editing a player's page

The next step is making the actual edit. If you click on the picture at right to view it full size, you can see the text of Matt Stairs's page. What you may notice about it is that it's all in plain text - no bold, no different fonts, no special markup. All editing in the Encyclopedia works like this. If you want to, you can learn how to create links to other pages, or how to create footnotes, but none of that is required. All you need to do is include sources in parentheses for facts that require a citation, which can see in practice on this page.

There are two places to go for more information on the editing stage:

  • Writing about a person – This article explains the details of how to write a good article about a person, and is a good next stop after you've read this page.
  • How to edit a page – This page has more information on how to create headings, use bold and italic text, link to other pages, and create footnotes, if you're interested in learning more about that.
  • Help:Contents – Once you've made some edits and want to move on to more advanced topics, check here. It has articles on citing sources, creating new articles (for people like executives who don't have pages already), and how to add math formulas to articles on statistics.

Saving the edit

Keep in mind when you're making edits that your work is only saved when you press "Save page" and commit your work. Much like when you're working on a document on your own computer, be sure not to do too much work without saving. It can be very frustrating to lose a good amount of work to a browser crash, and it does happen.

When you're done with your edit, scroll down to the bottom of the screen. You can see that below the box where you type, there is a field called "Edit summary". This should be a brief description of what you've done to the page. It doesn't show up on the page, but will be saved in the page's history. A good summary lets people know what you did when you edited the page.

Below that are three buttons – Save page, Show preview, and Show changes. In most cases, you should just press "Save page" when you're done. "Show preview" allows you to see what your version of the page will look like when it's saved. "Show changes" allows you to compare your version to the old version, which may be helpful if you're making minor changes.

Once you press "Save page", you will be returned to the article with your changes made. If you need to make more changes, just press "edit" again.

Approval

Once you've saved a page, you will see your version of the page. Others, however, will still see the old version. This will continue to be true once the Encyclopedia is public: SABR Members will be able to edit any page, but all edits will be subject to approval.

The approval process is in place in the Encyclopedia to prevent edits that are not helpful to building an Encyclopedia resource: vandalism, personal opinions, rumors, and other unsubstantiated information. It is not designed to be a barrier to participation, and should not be a burden on you as an editor.

Your edits may not be approved immediately in the early stages of the Encyclopedia's development – we on the Encyclopedia team will need to find moderators to approve edits, so we may be lightly staffed at first. Please try to be patient, and know that the process is underway.

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