How To Twine

Twine is Profusion and MoonBurnt's encyclopaedia and reference tool.

How to Twine is a help page and list of guidelines for the wiki. You should also make sure you understand Twine copyright before editing pages.

Quick picks

• To begin editing: either [login] (with user id number) or [set preferences]
• [Preferences] also allows you to change a few settings, including how you see the wiki.
• There may be known problems with the wiki - check that link if you're having trouble, especially with logging in.

Contents

1. Logging in

2. Basic formatting and links

2.1. Headings

3. Editing guidelines

3.1. What to name a new article

3.2. Starting to write a new article

3.3. Using notes and asides

3.4. Writing style

3.5. Images

4. Appropriate topics

5. Collaborative editing guidelines

5.1. Editing other people's stuff

5.2. Cleaning up a page

6. Using Twine Encyclopaedia at Pro and MoonBurnt

1. Logging in

The Twine Encyclopaedia can be edited by any Pro or MoonBurnt member.

If you haven't logged in before, go to [Preferences] to set your name and put in the edit password. (This uses a cookie.)

While on your preferences page, you can set a personal password (used for logging in from different computers). If you do this, also note down the "User ID" number, because you'll need that too. (Unfortunately there's no way to log in with your name at present. You could always note your User ID number down on your own Twine entry.)

Thereafter, to log in with your own preferences, go to the [Login] link (visible in the menu on every Twine page).

2. Basic formatting and links

• To edit an existing page, find the Edit This Page option near the bottom.
• To edit a page that's linked but doesn't exist, click on the [?] next to its title.

Here is an example page. It's not a 'sandbox', but you're welcome to practise editing it and preview your results without saving them.

• Type ''Italic'' or '''Bold''' to make italic or bold. (These are single quotes, not double.)
• To link to another Twine page, [[enclose the text in double-brackets]].
• [[Twine|Link text]] makes Link text. (Move the mouse over the link and look where it points. The target page always goes before the link text.)

2.1. Headings

The top level heading is == heading == on a line of its own. You can make sub-headings using === subHeading === and ==== subSubHeading ====. The spaces are important.

To make a heading numbered (this is needed for the table of contents, but not if you don't want one), use == # Heading == with a hash.

To add a table of contents to an article that contains headings, put <toc> where you want the table of contents to show up. (Troubleshooting: If a heading is on the page but isn't listed in the contents, it's probably because you forgot to number it with a hash. You can make use of this bug/feature to leave out headings you don't want listed in the contents.)

3. Editing guidelines

It's helpful to set your name under [preferences], so your edits will be attributed in RecentChanges. If you don't add a name, you will show up as an IP address instead.

3.1. What to name a new article

Page titles should be singular: Hellhound, not Hellhounds. (Exception: organisations or other concepts that are always known by plurals, eg Five Races.)

For terms used by more than one person, make a disambiguation page (as has been done for vampire, for example) and call the individual pages things like Vampire (Ree) and Vampire (Instar).

Don't know what to call a page? Say you want a separate page for a character's history - should you call it "History (Keith)" or "Keith's History"? It's not clear-cut, but here's the basic idea:

• Use a title in "Topic (clarification)" format for big hazy subjects like science and magic, which have different meanings for different authors or worlds. Brackets are for things that need a disambiguation index.
• Also use a title in "Topic (clarification)" format for names or terms that are used by more than one person. If there is more than one character called Sally, you can call them "Sally (elf)" and "Sally (dog)". If more that one person writes about heaven realms, you can use "Heaven (Mutt)" and "Heaven (Erin)".
• Other topics should have concise, sensible names like "Keith's History" or "Buttercup Plains" or "Shaded Scholars" or "Surviving A Dragon Attack".

To answer the "History (Keith)" / "Keith's History" question, it should probably be "Keith's History" for a character. If you were writing the history of a world and also wanted to make a history index to list all the planet histories in Twine, it could be "History (planetname)".

Subpages are not allowed. If you don't know what those are, don't worry. (The one exception to this rule is the By Author page.)

3.2. Starting to write a new article

Bold the title, the first time you use it on the page.

You should link to your new page from another article before editing it (see above for how to do that), because this will prevent 'orphan' pages that aren't findable from anywhere. However, you can get to any blank page by visiting its URL, for example http://twine.hellhound.net/Twine.

3.3. Using notes and asides

Sometimes it's useful to add a note at the top of an article (eg: there is another article with a similar name and people might confuse the two: example). Format the aside with an indent and italics.

Please note: Do this sparingly and only if appropriate.

3.4. Writing style

In Twine Encyclopaedia pages, write reasonably impersonally ("It has been suggested..." rather than "I think..."). The Twine Encyclopaedia is intended to be 'factual' in tone and content, such as you might get from a real encyclopaedia, because the impersonal voice is funny.

The Twine Encyclopaedia is intended to be humorous. [Wikipedia's Neutral POV] guidelines are helpful, but do not take them as inviolable.

3.5. Images

It is possible to include images in your post by just adding the URL. Obviously, please do not add ridiculous numbers of pics. All pics should be less than 300px wide and tall. (100x100 is ideal.) The total file size of images in any article should not be more than 20-25Kb.

There is a little leeway with these rules, but if a picture is big, please link to it (using the same procedure you would use to link to a web page).

4. Appropriate topics

Twine is not an encyclopaedia of everything. (For that, try [Wikipedia].) Real World topics are usually not appropriate to add.

In some cases, there might be something realworldly that isn't well known, or that is used by Pro and MoonBurnt members in a different way. This may be enough justification to add a short article about it. We don't need anything more than a short definition and an explanation of how the topic is relevant to our groups. For anything else, add an external link.

The page about Gender is an example of a good Real World article.

Don't make pages about commercial or copyrighted topics or characters. See Twine Copyright.

5. Collaborative editing guidelines

5.1. Editing other people's stuff

As a general rule, don't remove text unless you're replacing or rewriting it. Deletions and nuisance edits can be tracked and reversed, but since the wiki is members-only, this seems unlikely to become an issue.

If there is information on a page with which you disagree, which needs clarification or which you suspect to be inaccurate but aren't certain enough to edit, start a discussion at the foot of the page. Separate discussions from the article with a horizontal rule, wiki-format ----. Do not start a new page for discussions.

5.2. Cleaning up a page

Be aware that discussion sections and authors' comments may be removed when articles are 'cleaned up'. (If you're the one doing the cleaning, take a look to see if there's anything useful in there to salvage.)

• In thread/discussion areas, or when adding personal viewpoint and opinion, it's good practice to sign your contributions. Add a double-hyphen plus name/initials after the contribution, optionally linked to a page about yourself. Example: --Mutt or --mt

6. Using Twine Encyclopaedia at Pro and MoonBurnt

When posting at [Pro], you can use a formatting tag like \twine{How_To_Twine,any link text} to link directly to a Twine Encyclopaedia page. (For multi-word titles, you must put underscores instead of spaces or the wiki won't understand you.)

On [Moonburnt]: [twine=Article_name]any link text[/twine]. (Same proviso about underscores.)