Tips for beginners

The help and Frequently Asked Questions pages have background information on just about all you could ever want to know about editing SourceWatch.

A few basic tips for beginners:

1. an asterisk creates a bullet as used in a list.

2. two ' starts italics and another two turns it off; three is bold.

3. if there is a formatting trick you are unsure about you can open a page, click on 'edit this page' - which allows you to see the formatting codes - and then simply go 'back' without making any changes to the page.

4. two square brackets around a word, name etc creates a blank file - like this. After saving you can then go and click on the blank file (which will be in red) and add content. (Red text means its empty, blue that there is some content.)

5. start a new section by three = enclosing the subtitle

New section
6. referencing - there are many variations to how this can be done but the basic format using a hypothetical reference to Fred Nurk article. If there is no date, note that and preferably the date the file was accessed (so that if the link/site goes dead it can be referenced to an approxiamte date.)


 * Joe Blow, "The inside scoop on Fred Nurk", Whistleblower, volume 1, no 2, June 10, 2002.

7. if you start a page or add something to a page you can easily track changes by clicking on 'recent pages' - this allows you to view the evolution of the page, who made what changes.

8. if you have a query about something in an article, want to make a suggestion or explain reasons for a deletion click on the 'talk' link on a specific page, scroll to the bottom and post your query or comment. (Be warned though - this system is not guaranteed to get a response as a query can be overlooked if there have been many postings).

Have I missed any simple points that would be useful for beginners?