Help:Editing
From WITTIE
Wikibooks is a wiki, which means that anyone can easily edit any unprotected page and save those changes immediately to that page. After your first edit you are a Wikibooks editor! To request a change to a protected page, you may add your suggestion to the talk page.
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Introduction
Editing a WiTTIE page is not very hard. Simply click on the "edit" tab at the top of a WiTTIE page (or on a section-edit link). This will bring you to a new page with a text box containing the editable text of the original page. You should write a short edit summary in the small field below the edit-box. You may use shorthand to describe your changes, and when you have finished, press the Show preview button to see how your changes will look. You can also see the difference between the page with your edits and the previous version of the page by pressing the Show changes button. If you're satisfied with what you see, be bold and press the Save page button. Your changes will immediately be visible to other WiTTIE users. You can also click on the Discussion tab to see the corresponding talk page, which contains comments about the page from other WiTTIE users. Click on the "+" tab to add a new section, or edit the page in the same way as an article page. You should remember to sign your contributions. This is done by adding four tildes after your post, like this: ~~~~. The MediaWiki software keeps track of which user makes each change.
Minor edits
When editing a page on this site, a logged-in user can mark an edit as being "minor". Minor edits generally mean spelling corrections, formatting and minor rearrangement of text. It is possible to hide minor edits when viewing recent changes (see the link on the sidebar). Marking a significant change as a minor edit is considered bad Wikiquette, especially when it involves the deletion of some text. If you accidentally mark an edit as minor, you should edit the page once more, mark it major (or, rather, ensure that the check-box for "This is a minor edit" is not checked), and, explain in the edit summary, that the previous change was a major one.
Page protection
In a few cases, where an administrator has protected a page, the link labeled "Edit this page" is replaced by the text "View source" (or equivalents in the language of the project). In that case the page cannot be edited. Protection of an image page includes protection of the image itself.
Edit conflicts
If someone else makes an edit while you are making yours, the result is an edit conflict. Many conflicts can be automatically resolved by the Wiki. If it can't be resolved, however, you will need to resolve it yourself. The Wiki gives you two text boxes, where the top one is the other person's edit and the bottom one is your edit. Merge your edits into the top edit box, which is the only one that will be saved.
Reverting
This history tab at the top of each wiki page holds links to each version of that page, including the author of each edit. This history function is useful for reverting to previous versions and comparing versions to see change over time.
Error messages
If you get an error message upon saving a page, you can't tell whether the actual save has failed or just the confirmation. You can go back and save again, and the second save will have no effect, or you can check "My contributions" to see whether the edit went through.
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