Help:Wiki Community

Before you continue reading, join the wiki as a user. We do not require for you to do this, but encourage you to register.

Why we need YOU! The Xen.org Wiki has existed for some time and as with many Wiki's contains a lot of content that is out-of-date, or not relevant any more. We decided to migrate to a new MediaWiki based wiki, which allows us a fresh start. We hope to be able to mobilize Xen community members and are planning a number of regular activities and approaches: Regular Document Days on IRC Recognize community members for their contributions Make new Wiki much more manageable by using Categories and other proven Wiki tools Help magrate pages from the old Wiki: Migration Instructions from Old to New Xen Wiki

Wiki Conventions

We want to make it as wasy as possible for users to use and find content in the new Wiki and also ensure that the Wiki remains up-to-ate.

Useful Built-in Wiki Pages

These pages will help editors spot pages that need work.

Changes	Missing Content	Manage Pages
Recent Changes	Wanted Pages »» Create page	Uncategorized Pages »» Categorize
Related Changes	Wanted Files »» Upload file	Action Needed »» Needs deletion, refactor, review, ...
	Wanted Categories »» Create category	Needs formatting »» Easy fix for a beginner
	Wanted Templates »» Create template	TODO Item »» Contains TODO item

Managing Pages via Templates

Templates to help manage content
Template	When to use
Template:Needs_Archive	Indicates that this page needs to be archived. Please specify a reason why.
Template:Needs_Additions	Indicates that this page is incomplete and can benefit from additions and improvements. Please specify what should be added.
Template:Needs_Delete	Indicates that this page needs to be deleted. Please specify a reason why.
Template:Needs_Formatting	Indicates that this page has some formatting issues. Please detail the issue.
Template:Needs_Refactor	Indicates that this page needs to be refactored, such as merging or splitting. Please be concrete about the reason and proposed ocurse of action.
Template:Needs_Review	Indicates that this page needs to be reviewed. If specific parts of the page need reviewing or are incorrect, please state in the macro.
Template:Needs_Rewrite	Indicates that this page needs to be rewritten; in other words it is useful but contains lots of errors. Please provide more information in the macro.
Template:Needs_Recategorize	Indicates that this page needs to be properly categorized. Please specify a reason why.
Template:TODO	This is a generic template that indicates that something needs to be done to this page. Should only be used if the more specific templates are not applicable.
Other more generic templates
Template	When to use
Template:Info	This is a generic info box, which highlights some information about this page.
Template:InfoLeft	Same as Info only that not centered
Template:Warning	This is a generic warning box, which highlights some information about this page that typically warns the user of something.

Also see:

• Help on Templates
• Example on how to use any of the above templates:

  {{Info|This is an infobox with this text in the box}}

• Another example:

  {{Needs_Archive|This page is out-of-date: this project completed in 2009.}}

Categories

We use categories to help manage Wiki pages:

• Each Wiki page should be at least in one category
• Our category pages are not normally just indexes, but have a hand-edited header, which highlight important information.

Creating new pages

• Please make sure that you choose ONE of the following categories on a new page
  • Technology: Xen, XCP, XenARM, PVOPS
  • Audience: Beginners, Users, Developers,Project, Community
  • Documentation Type: Manual, Overview, FAQ, HowTo, Tutorial, Example, Compatibility, Glossary, Index (pick what fits best)
  • Life span: choose category Transient if the document is transient (e.g. describes an event)
  • External: choose category RefToExternalArticle if the is a stub linking to an external article
• For other categories, please check Categories for Authors for more detail
• If your article is important, please go to the most relevant category and add the article to the hand-maintained content
• Help on categories: Help:Categories

Creating a new Category

• Please do NOT just create an empty category
• Add content the top the category: examples are Category:Host_Install and Category:Arch_Linux
• Please describe the new category in
  • Categories for Users
  • Categories for Authors

Improving Accessibility of topics with Trails

Trails are sequences of documents (or indeed sections of documents) that are suggested to be read in a certain order. Note that trails are automatically added to the Category:Trail.

Usage of Trails Trailbox Syntax Trail Syntax Using both templates together

Archiving Pages

Pages are archived in the following way:

• Add [[Category:Archived]] to the page
• Rename the page from <pagename> to Archived/<pagename>
• Ensure you do the same with all sub-pages and translations
• Keep all categories as they are
• If you cannot rename the page, then mark it with {{Needs_Archive|Reason why}}, such that a wiki adminstrator can rename the page

Multi-language Help and Conventions

Also see Category:Languages!

The Languages Template

Pages and categories which exist in multiple translations must have the {{Languages}} template at the bottom of the page. This allows user to see the translations that are available for that page.

If you use multiple languages, the {{Languages}} template must be on every page in that language.

The English page contains:

<!-- The content of the actual page is here. -->
<!-- The {{Languages}} template must be at the bottom of the page! -->
<!-- There should be NO empty lines after {{Languages}}  -->
{{Languages}}

The translated page contains:

<!-- The content of the actual page is here. -->
<!-- The {{Languages}} template must be at the bottom of the page! -->
<!-- There should be NO empty lines after {{Languages}}  -->
{{Languages|<name of English page>|<language code>}}

For example [[Main Page/pt]] contains

{{Languages|Main Page|pt}}

The English version of a page is always the main version of a page, with all other languages as sub-pages, named using the appropriate language code (see below).

Naming conventions for translated pages

Translated pages need to follow the following naming conventions.

<My Page Name>/<2 Letter Language Code>

The two letter language code must be one of the codes shown in the supported languages table, for example

Page Name	Language
Main Page	English
Main Page/de	German
Main Page/es	Spanish
Main Page/fr	French
Main Page/ja	Japanese
Main Page/ko	Korean
Main Page/pt	Portuguese
Main Page/pt-br	Brazilian Portuguese
Main Page/zh	Chinese

Examples

Examples of valid page names are:

[[Category:Xen/ja]]

[[Frontend_Driver/de]]

[[Archived/XCI Getting Started/pt]]

[[Template:Fmbox/doc/zh]]

Languages Category

Translated pages must be Categorized: they must contain a category of the form

[[Category:Languages/<Language code>]]

such that it is possible to find all pages of a specific language.

Examples

Examples of valid category names are:

[[Category:Languages/ja]]

[[Category:Languages/pt]]

Links for translated pages

You have to be careful when linking to other pages. Say you want to link to

[[DomU_Install_with_Virt-Manager]]

If you use the page above, you will go to the English page. If you want to go to a translated page, the link must look as follows

[[DomU_Install_with_Virt-Manager/<language code>]]

E.g.

[[DomU_Install_with_Virt-Manager/es]]

If you keep links to English documents in a translation, it is a good idea to use the following convention

[[DomU_Install_with_Virt-Manager]] (English)

such that people see, that the document is in English.

Examples & Testing

Example Page

Note that it is important to follow the conventions as outlined here. If not followed, the language templates do not work properly and users will find it hard to find translated content.

Page Foo must contain

{{Languages}}

Page Foo/es must contain

{{Languages|Foo|es}}

The following notation also works, but is harder to use

[[Category:Languages/es]]
{{Languages|Foo}}

Example Category

Page Category:Foo must contain

{{Languages}}

Page Category:Foo/es must contain

{{Languages|:Category:Foo|es}}

Testing whether you have done OK

You should be able to see the following:

• A box called 'Languages on the English and translated page (see bottom of Main Page as an example)
• A box called 'Languages on the English and translated category
• The 'Languages box should show: English, The Language You added, languages somebody else added. If it doesn't, you probably used the wrong language macro on the English page.
• Translated pages should be in the Language/<your language> category, e.g. Language/es. You should go to the category for your language and check whether all pages are in this category.

Language Policy

This page describes the current multi-lingual policy on wiki.xen.org.

The main page

The English version of our front page is located at Main Page. Translated versions are located at MediaWiki/code, where code is the language code (e.g. Main Page/fr).

Importantly, the rules about language codes (see below) should be followed here as well.

Other namespaces

Apart from the Main Page, no policy has yet been decided about other namespaces. For the time being, if you would like to create translations for pages in other namespaces then please do so as described for the Help: namespace, however content may be moved or deleted depending on the policy that is eventually adopted.

Note that the rule that English content should not be placed in sub-pages does not apply to other namespaces. This is one of the issues that needs resolving.

Language codes

Throughout wiki.xen.org you should use the language codes specified by the MediaWiki software when creating language-specific content (see Names.php for the full and up-to-date list).

Please also bear the following in mind:

• If the language code is not found in Names.php then we should not host pages in that language.
• If MediaWiki uses the 'incorrect' code for a language then you should also (for consistency) use that incorrect code here. If you think a code is incorrect you should discuss it on MediaWiki Bugzilla, and if this results in it being changed we will move the pages to match.
• Note that some language codes in Names.php are now deprecated (e.g. zh-yue has been replaced with yue). In these cases only the most recent code should be used.

Language:	English

Use of Discussions: Talk pages

Every wiki page has an associated talk page which can be used for discussion and communicating with other users. Talk pages can be accessed by clicking the “discussion” tab at the top of the page. Simply edit the page as normal to add your comment.

We encourage the use of talk pages. However, it would be good if you followed these Guidelines What to discuss:

• Keep focused on the task of building a wiki article: remember that editing the article itself is often a more effective means of communicating.
• Use discussion pages only to support this process: the topic of conversation should generally revolve around what needs to be done to make the associated article better.
• Talk pages are good in particular, if you suspect something is wrong with the content, but you do not quite know how to fix the page.

Conventions:

• Start a new discussion with a ==level 2 heading== at the bottom of the page (or use the “+” tab)
• Always sign your name after your comments. Use the four tildes “~~~~” wiki syntax (or the signature button in the toolbar above the editing textbox). For more information see Help:Signatures.
• Indent replies with colons (:) at the beginning of the line.

Also See:

• Help on Talk Pages

Language:	English