User:Wwwwolf/Wiki notes

Or a helpful collection of random tips that people have needed.

wikEd

wikEd is awesome. It used to be installed as a MediaWiki gadget in the 110mb era, but isn't installed here yet. I'm using it in cwcki as a GreaseMonkey script.

While wikEd does have its own quirks (slow to load, makes the editor do weird things, doesn't always cooperate well with custom skins in other wikis, etc), it adds cleanup tools as well as a search/replace tool that understands regular expressions too. Say, cleaning up main page references? Put "^(:\s*)?''Main article: \[\[(.*)\]\]''" in search field, put "{{main|$2}}" in replace field, hit "Search field is a regular expression" button and "Replace all matches" button. Tada!

The {{{1}}} seen in wild

When using quote templates, you sometimes don't see the text - just "{{{1}}}". The solution is to add "1=" in the beginning of the text.

MediaWiki template syntax is {{templatename | name = text | ...}}. If you omit the parameter name, they are assigned to numbered variables: {{templatename | text}} is equivalent to {{templatename | 1 = text}}. Many templates are built in a way that they use only these numbered parameters.

So, if templates have "=" in an inconvenient place, the template parser get confused. {{templatename | THIS = SPARTA! }} looks to the parser like you're using name "THIS" with text "SPARTA!". To avoid it, use this : {{templatename |1= THIS = SPARTA! }}, i.e., add "1=" in the beginning of the text.