Irvine Wiki Guide

The following is a guide to Irvine Wiki. If you are like me and hate reading, just skim everything and read what is bolded.

As you might have ascertained, Irvine Wiki is the wiki pertaining to the city of Irvine and the University of California, Irvine. What separate’s Irvine Wiki from Wikipedia is that Wikipedia "requires" all of it’s information to be notable. Irvine Wiki doesn’t necessarily require notability but whatever you create should still be pertinent in some way to Irvine and UCI.

You can write about your neighborhood, or compile a list of places to buy tacos, or spots to hang out in Aldrich Park. None of this would fly on Wikipedia but it does here. Davis Wiki is an excellent collection of ideas to help inspire you to think beyond the confines of Wikipedia. Some of my favorites from Davis Wiki are Sleeping on Campus, the Cleanest Bathrooms at UCD, and Getting the Most out of Your Student Fees.

I refer to Davis Wiki because it is an excellent example of a community wiki. You may borrow but don’t blatantly steal from Davis Wiki. For example I "borrowed" their wiki engine. I "borrowed" the format of their front page and several other pages. I "borrowed" the wiki formatting code for numerous pages because I have minimal wiki editing experience. Why reinvent the wheel? Why rethink why there are even wheels? Sometimes there is a reason why things are the way they are. However, while there are several great pages on Davis Wiki, what works in Davis might not necessarily work in Irvine. The idea is to transplant Davis Wiki not recreate Davis Wiki.

Don’t blatantly steal from Wikipedia or anywhere else for that matter. While I too enjoy Wikipedia, it is Wikipedia, and not Irvine Wiki. They are both wikis in the sense everyone may edit, but they have different styles and different purposes. Additionally you will notice that any current event article on Wikipedia is less of an article and more of a collection a zillion news links which perhaps only ten have any real news information. This is because people just copy and paste every single update, by the same four AP staff writers, rather than making an effort to translate what is essentially gibberish. In this regard Wikipedia is shit. Next time you write a paper, try copying and pasting from the internet and see what happens. Even if you aren't caught, you probably won't receive a decent grade.

If you haven’t already, register an account to start editing. It is completely free, with no spam and no ads (which already makes it better than Facebook), courtesy of the nice people at Wiki Spot. Feel free to add a user page (we all know you like to read and write about yourself) and link it to the Irvine Wiki Directory (the tab in the upper left labeled People). My user page is organized (relatively) and conservative but you are more than welcome to make yours look how ever God awful tacky you’d like.

If you have an idea for a new page type the name of whatever you would like it to be into the search box. It will ask you if you actually meant something else or if you would like to create a new page with that name. You can then go about writing whatever it is you would like. Clicking on links with dashed underlines works equally as well. You can also try typing in Wanted Pages for a list of pages that others would like to see. Just remember to link your pages. Otherwise your page will be orphaned, fairly uninteresting and may starve to death because of your negligence. Continue further to learn how to link or just start editing pages and copy the linking format others have written.

If you like to read instructions before you do things you can check out the Help with Editing section. Included for your convince if you would rather not scroll down yet another page to find what you want:

• Help with Formatting — general text formatting rules
  

• Help with Linking — hyperlinks, wiki links, and external images
  

• Help with Headings — section headings and dividers
  

• Help with Lists — lists and indented sections
  

• Help with Tables — tables
  

• Help with Colors — for making snazzy-looking tables
  

• Help with Images
  

• Help with Macros — magic macros!
  

• See also Comments for instructions on adding comments to pages!
  

• Help with Maps — using maps!
  

• Templates — a list of the templates to aid in creating pages

Or

You can learn by doing. Click on the edit icon near the upper left on most pages (there isn't one here) and start editing! Look at what other people have written and copy how they made a link or how they uploaded a picture and made a thumbnail. By the way take pictures! Text is boring. You won't break Irvine Wiki since anything can be reversed. Try to use the "Preview" option before you select "Save Changes". You'll notice that I have an excessive number of edits and this floods the Recent Changes tab which makes it harder for others to determine what has been changed. It is considered sloppy to say the least and if you can try not to do it. However everyone is learning and mistakes will be made. If you want a completely consequence free realm to learn or to release some pent up angst, jump into the Wiki Sandbox. Don't go too far into the deep end.

The only pages on Irvine Wiki you can not edit are those concerning with the actual wiki itself. These are locked because there is no reason to edit them; they're perfect. Any other page on Irvine Wiki is fair game, although you should refrain from editing anyone's user page. I have a comments section on my user page and this is technically editing by the mechanics of how it works. Comments, if they user has decided to include a comments section, are okay. Advanced users might be interest in these helpful resources guiding you where to start editing:

• All Pages — An automatically generated list of every single page on Irvine Wiki.
  

• Orphaned Pages — An automatically generated list of pages without links leading to them. Ideally this should be zero.
  

• Outgoing Links — An automatically generated list of pages with the number of links leaving from them. Zero means the page is a dead end which is bad.
  

• Random Pages — An automatically generated list of 25 random pages if you have ADHD.
  

• Recent Changes — All of the recent changes to Irvine Wiki. It also appears as one of the tabs at the top.
  

• Wanted Pages — A list of pages wanted by users of Irvine Wiki. Here's your chance to be a hero.

All pages in Irvine Wiki can be linked a physical location using Google Maps using either the latitude and longitude coordinates or street address. This obviously only applies to certain pages that a physical location would be appropriate like a building, geocache, sitting spot, or trail head. More information can be found in the Help with Maps section. The default location is "Irvine, California" because this is Irvine Wiki.