Help:Tutorial/Editing
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With the exception of a few protected pages, every page has an "Edit " link which lets you edit the page you are looking at. It is PathfinderWiki's most basic feature and allows you to make corrections and add facts to articles.
If you add information to an article, please provide references, because unreferenced facts can be removed. So be clear and provide references.
To practice editing, go to the sandbox and click the "Edit" link, which opens an editing window containing the text for that page. Type in something fun and interesting, or just replace words with your own. Now click the Save changes... button and see what you have done!
Visual editor
You can edit most articles on PathfinderWiki using a Visual Editor, which lets you directly edit an article while previewing what the changes might look like. This is the easiest way to make small changes and additions to an article, like fixing a spelling or grammar error, editing a cited fact, or adding paragraphs of text with basic formatting.
The buttons in the image above, from left, offer the following functions that might be familiar if you've used a document editor like Microsoft Word or Google Docs:
- Undo and redo
- Paragraph or heading style selection
- Text styles, like bold or italics
- Linking, both to other wiki articles and external links
- Citing a source
- Creating a list
- Inserting images, templates, tables, and more
- Adding special characters, like typographic dashes or accented characters
- Help, including links to the Visual Editor user's guide and keyboard shortcuts
- A menu with more advanced options
- An edit button to toggle between the visual and source editors, if possible
- A button to save your changes
If you want more help with the editing interface, see the VisualEditor user's guide.
Edit summary
Your first practice edit (above) left off two steps that you should do if you are editing an article or other page that will be read by the public. So, click the "Edit" link again, enter some text, then do those two additional steps.
First, any time you edit an article, it is considered good etiquette (or "Wikiquette") to explain your changes in the Summary box, which you'll find in the "Save your changes" window that appears when you click "Save changes..." on an article.
It's okay for your explanation to be short. For example, if you are correcting a spelling error, you might enter just "typo". If the change you have made to a page is minor, it's helpful if you check the Minor edit box. For your sandbox edit, you probably want an edit summary such as "Testing".
Review changes
Second, you should always Review your changes. After you've edited the sandbox, click the Review your changes button instead of Save changes. This previews the changes your edits will make to the article before you save.
We all make mistakes; this feature helps you catch them before other people see them! Reviewing your changes before saving also allows you to test format changes and other edits without cluttering the page history. Do not forget to save your edits after reviewing, though!
Preview changes
You can also Preview changes to view the page as it would appear with your changes applied. This option might not be available on every change you make, but it is useful especially when making large or complex changes to confirm that your changes have the intended effect.
Save the page
After you've provided an edit summary and reviewed your changes, you're ready for the final step: click the Save changes button.
Source editor
The visual editor gives you all the tools necessary to make simple changes and corrections to articles. For more complex operations, you can also edit the more detailed source of the article, which includes syntax for formatting and reusable pieces of content known as templates.
(You might also see pages that have only Edit source links, or encounter the source if you have switched the visual editor to the Source editing mode or disabled the visual editor in your user preferences.)
PathfinderWiki source can be overwhelming! If you want to make a source edit, you can always ask for help in the PathfinderWiki Discord chat and refer to the source-editing cheatsheet for examples.
The next steps in the tutorial also cover source-editing details to help you become more comfortable with using them.