Xeno Series Wiki:Basic editing and syntax

Wiki editing can be confusing, so this page is designed for beginners to get to know what all those funny square brackets and curly braces are for.

As stated in the New Editor Welcome: "If you ever find yourself unsure how to do something, check another page that's done it already. Copy-pasting syntax from one page into another, and editing it to fit what you need on the new page, is the best way to learn wiki-ing." Learn by doing, then use this article as a reference for when you can't figure something out.

How to edit an article
There are a few steps to editing an article:
 * 1) Click the "Edit" button. By default this will be on the top-right, between "Read" and "View history". This will take you to a webpage with the wiki article's source code (i.e. the basic text that wiki editors wrote in order to create the article).
 * 2) Make your edit by changing the source code.
 * 3) Optional but recommended: In the "Summary:" box below the source code, type a quick summary of what you've added, changed, or removed. Mention why the change was made, if it's not obvious. This makes it easier for future editors to check the article's history, and is nice for those reading Recent Changes.
 * 4) Optional but HIGHLY recommended: Below the Summary box, there are buttons for "Save changes", "Show preview", and "Show changes". Click the "Show preview" button (possibly opening a new browser tab) to show you what the article will look like when you save the changes.
 * 5) Once you're satisfied, click the "Save changes" button. Congratulations — you've edited the article!

There are some variations on this procedure. For example, article headers have an "edit" button, and clicking that will bring you to a special edit page which only modifies the article section below the header.

How to create an article
If an article hasn't been created yet, it won't have a convenient "Edit" button. Instead, you'll have to get to the article creation page yourself.

If the nonexistent article has been linked to from somewhere else on the wiki, this is easy. The link will appear red (indicating that there's no article there), and clicking it will take you to a webpage where you can create the article. This looks almost exactly like an existing article's edit page; the main difference is that the box for the source code will be blank. Fill it in with the code you'd like the article to have, check the preview, hit the "Save changes" button, and voilà — the article has now been created.

If you can't find a handy redlink, the next best way is to go to Main Page and scroll down to the "Create new article" button with a box to the side. Type the name you want the article to have in the box, click "Create new article", and you'll be sent to the article creation page where you can fill in the source code.

Links
Links are one of the core features of a wiki such as this. When a concept is mentioned on a page, and another article on the wiki covers that concept, it is standard to link to that other article.

The most basic way to link to a page on the wiki is to wrap the page title in two square brackets: Page title For example, suppose the Xenogears article says "The protagonist is Fei Fong Wong." The following syntax would result in "Fei Fong Wong" becoming a link to Fei's wiki article: The protagonist is Fei Fong Wong. This results in:
 * The protagonist is Fei Fong Wong.

When linking to a page in this manner, the first character is not case-sensitive, but the rest is. For example, if you're trying to link to Gem crafting, then  will work, but   won't.

Often, the text you want to use as a link won't exactly match the page title. If that's because the text is the page title but with a suffix, such as plurals, you can just wrap the page title in square brackets and the entirety of the word(s) will still be a link. For example: Shulk sees visions of the future. becomes:
 * Shulk sees visions of the future.

If not, you can link to any page with any text using a pipe character : Your text here For example: Jr. heads back to his ship. becomes:
 * Jr. heads back to his ship.

Common link syntax patterns are often done using templates — see below.

Section links
Sometimes you'll want to link to a specific section of a page. To do that, use a hash symbol  followed by a page section's header: your text here For example: Cross can use a large number of types of weapon. becomes:
 * Cross can use a large number of types of weapon.

Redirects
A redirect is a special kind of link that gets automatically executed: when a user lands on a page that redirects to some other page, they automatically get sent to the other page.

A redirect can be made from page ABC to page XYZ by making page ABC's source code consist of: #REDIRECT:XYZ or: #REDIRECT XYZ Both styles have the same effect. One can also redirect to a section of a page by styling the part in square brackets like a link to a page section (see above).

Redirects are useful in creating aliases - while the actual page may be at Fei Fong Wong, it'd be inconvenient to have to say "Fei Fong Wong" rather than just "Fei" whenever you try to link there, and it's also inconvenient to always have to remember to format links as (say). So we use a redirect, meaning that the Fei page only consists of the following source code: #REDIRECT Fei Fong Wong Other common uses of redirects include sending ambiguous names to disambiguation pages, and pointing a concept's name to (a specific section of) a page which discusses the concept if the concept isn't special enough to have its own page.

Text stylisation
Text doesn't have to be plain. It can be formatted in a number of ways, and our standards for page layout often entail stylising the text in some way. See the Manual of Style for said standards.

Some text formatting patterns can be added to a page quickly using the buttons on the top of the edit box.

Bold and italics
Bold and italics are added by surrounding a word or phrase with multiple apostrophes :


 * For italics, use two apostrophes on each side:  is rendered as italics.
 * For bold, use three apostrophes on each side:  is rendered as bold.
 * Use 5 apostrophes on each side to combine them:  is rendered as bolded italics.

Headers and subheaders
Headers and subheaders add readability to an article and provide a good way for future editors to know what content is supposed to go where. Plus, they allow other articles to link to specific sections of the page; see above.

Headers are created by surrounding a line of text with equals signs. A level N header is made by adding N equals signs to either side of the line: ==Level 2 header==

Level 3 header
and so on. Main headers should be level 2, and subheaders should be level 3 or deeper. One equals sign to either side results in a level 1 header; don't use this though, since that's reserved for article titles.

If an article has at least three headers (not counting the article title), a table of contents (TOC) will be automatically generated. This can be disabled by adding  anywhere to the page.

Since level 2 headers feature a line that stretches all the way across the page horizontally (in the default skin), they may interact weirdly with elements aligned with the right of the page. Put  immediately above a header (or anything else) to force it to go below everything that's meant to be above it.

Indenting
To indent text, place a colon  right at the beginning of a line. The more colons you put, the further indented the text will be. The indent lasts until the next carriage return (the next "enter"/"return" character).

For example: This is aligned all the way to the left. : This is indented slightly. :: This is indented more. is shown as: This is aligned all the way to the left.
 * This is indented slightly.
 * This is indented more.

Bullet points
Bulleted lists are done by prefixing lines with asterisks. Multiple asterisks cause the line to be indented.

For example: * First item * Second item ** Sub-item under second * And so on shows as:
 * First item
 * Second item
 * Sub-item under second
 * And so on

Numbered lists
You can also create numbered lists. For this, use the hash symbol. As with bullet points, multiple hashes will add an indent. They also create a sub-list with its own indexing.

For example: # First item shows as:
 * 1) Second item
 * 2) Sub-item under second item
 * 3) Third item
 * 1) First item
 * 2) Second item
 * 3) Sub-item under second item
 * 4) Third item

Tables
Tables are, unfortunately, both vital for formatting information on most pages and not easily explained. A table is made with syntax like the following: This shows as:

The class="wikitable" part gives the table a 'standard' format which clearly delimits cells and highlights header cells. Sometimes you'll want users to be able to sort columns (in alphabetical or numerical order); for that, use class="wikitable sortable" instead.

The best way to add a table to a page is to click the table icon on the top of the edit box, under "Advanced" and "Insert". If that doesn't give you what you wanted, your best option is: If you want to read the syntax documentation, which provides actual information on tables' intricacies, go here.
 * 1) Copy-paste the source code for a table from another article.
 * 2) Edit the table code to fit what you're trying to do.
 * 3) Check the edit preview.
 * 4) Fiddle around with the table code when the edit preview inevitably doesn't look like what you wanted.
 * 5) Repeat until the edit preview shows that you got it right, then save the edit.

Monospace
Monospace font can be used to distinguish sections of text, as this article is doing. There are two ways of doing so. To inline monospace font, wrap it in code HTML tags: shows up as. Or you can make a code block with the pre HTML tag:  shows up as Your text here Note that each newline character forms a line break in code blocks, unlike ordinary wiki text in which only double newlines show up as a paragraph break.

Monospace is often used in template documentation (see below).

Source code comments
Normally, all source code is intended to affect how the resulting article looks. But this is not always the case. Sometimes an editor may want something to only be visible to those looking at the page's source code - to send a notice to other editors that is spoilery or irrelevant to ordinary wiki users, to add paragraph breaks for source code readability which would mess up formatting if they appeared on the article, etc. This is done using comments.

Comments use the same syntax as HTML comments: anything enclosed in  (for example,  ) will have no effect on how the article appears.

Non-formatted text
Sometimes you want to just show text as text, without it doing its regular formatting. In this case, use nowiki html tags:  shows as Unformatted text.

Some characters do special things by default, and they have special shorter syntax for escaping their formatting use. Use  for an unformatted   (particularly useful for tables),   for an unformatted ,   for an unformatted  , and   for an unformatted.

These latter forms are examples of templates.

Templates
Whenever you see text enclosed in two curly braces, the page is calling upon a template. A template is a way of adding specific text to a page's source code without actually typing all the text out. They are commonly used when specific syntax patterns show up frequently, and it'd be convenient to not have to type the whole thing out every time, or when the pattern is liable to change and we want to only need to change it in one place rather than on many individual articles.

Each template has a name, and may take a number of parameters or "arguments" which modify the resulting text. Within the curly braces, the template name comes first, followed by the arguments (separated by pipes ). For example, the syntax for using a template with three arguments is as follows: For example, the For template can be called as follows: The For template automatically replaces this with the following text: :''This article is about the Zohar in Xenogears. For the Zohar in Xenosaga, see Zohar (XS).'' which appears on the page as:

Templates can have optional arguments. For example, the Userbox XCX template can be put on a page as-is with no arguments, like, and it'll appear as follows:

But the template was written such that if one argument is included, it changes what the userbox says. For example,  shows as:

Like links, the first character of a template's name is not case-sensitive, but the rest is.

There are many other things one can do with templates. See this page for detailed documentation.

Handy templates
There are some templates that editors will probably be seeing over and over again. Here's a crash course on the most common ones:

Link templates
Because linking is so common, even a few characters saved per link adds up to a substantial amount of editor time. Therefore, several templates exist purely to shorten links.

When two concepts in the series have the same name, the page for at least one of them will receive some sort of label in (brackets) to disambiguate between them. An example is Monado (prologue). However, it is seldom the case that one will want the bracketed label to appear in page prose. It's fully possible to always type, but there's a better way: Template:B. This (normally) takes two arguments: the first is the page name before the brackets, and the second is the text in the brackets. So,  is a faster way of typing.

Due to the wiki's standards for disambiguation labelling, using an acronym for a game's name as a label is so common that there's a special template to do just that for each game: Template:XG, Template:XS1, and so on. This saves a few characters. ,, and   all do the same thing, but the first is the shortest.

Similarly, playable characters will always have a page dedicated to their gameplay with title "Character/Gameplay (game acronym)". The short way to link to this without the "/Gameplay (XYZ)" part uses Template:gp. For example,  results in  (for the lazy, that link does indeed go to the gameplay page).

Other link templates exist: see Category:Link templates.

Page notice templates
Many articles have some sort of meta-relevance to the wiki: they're incomplete in some manner, the images need replacing, their title is unofficial, and so on. Announcing this is the role of page notice templates, which add an unsubtle box on the page announcing the specifics, and may add the article to a specific category.

Common page notices are Template:Incomplete (when a page or section is missing something), Template:Stub (when a page is missing almost everything), Template:Image needed, and Template:Translation needed. Most of these can just be placed on a page without any arguments (e.g. ), but if the editor wants to elaborate (e.g. to state exactly what's missing), they can add some prose to the template as an optional argument (e.g.  ).

Infoboxes
A lot of articles on the wiki are about things that can be classified into larger groups: characters, music tracks, enemies in XC1, and so on. When that's the case, quick info about the entity in question is often provided in an infobox: a special template geared towards the class of entity in question. For example, a character page will have a character infobox, including things such as their species and the game(s) they appear in. This makes the quick info easier to find both by humans and by search engines.

An infobox template goes at the top of an article, and will typically take lots of arguments - one for each piece of info provided to the template. Many of these arguments may be optional, as not all information is known for all characters.

Sometimes you'll look at an infobox and it seems to be taking in way more arguments than it's showing, or you'll look at the source code and there'll be all sorts of stuff besides the part that makes the actual box. Usually, that's because the infobox is also adding data to the page so it can be referenced by other pages. This is advanced trickery and outside the scope of this article.

Navboxes
If someone's looking for an article on one thing, they'll often be interested in articles on related things. That's what navboxes are for: a collection of links to each article in a certain set. For example, at the bottom of this page is a navbox with links to other wiki meta pages: Template:Help navbox.

Navboxes go at the bottom of an article, and very seldom take any arguments.

Formatting templates
Some templates are used for text formatting. The most important of these is Template:Rollover, which makes a little text box pop up if the user's cursor hovers over the text for a second. This is useful if something needs elaboration, but including said elaboration in ordinary prose isn't ideal (e.g. because doing so would take up too much space in a small table cell). appears on the page as:

Another common text formatting template is Template:Ja. This is used for writing Japanese text, with arguments consisting of: the text itself, the text's pronunciation in Latin characters (romaji), and optionally, a ruby pronunciation guide. It is often used in conjunction with Template:Ruby for greater flexibility in displaying ruby characters.

Icon templates
A bit of flavour is added to (almost) every article with the game icon templates. These are little icons for each game that the article's subject appears in, appearing in the top right. These are added to an article with templates such as Template:ArticleIcon/XG.

These templates do not take arguments. They are often added at the bottom of an article's source code (mostly to keep it out of the way), although some infoboxes, navboxes, and other special templates may add an article icon to a page automatically.

Editing templates
Each template is a page on the wiki itself, at the page "Template:Template name" (e.g. Template:B). The source code for a template determines what text gets added to an article which uses the template. This source code can (usually) be edited like any other article (although some high-use templates can't be edited by most people to protect against vandalism).

Templates can also be created by users. When creating a template, don't forget to "put it in the template namespace": that means prefixing the page name with "Template:" so the wiki knows it's a template. (If you forget to do this, it's possible to move the page to a different namespace after the fact.)

Template pages make substantial use of "noinclude" and "includeonly" HTML tags. Anything wrapped in  tags only shows up on the template's page; this is useful for text that explains how the template works. Anything wrapped in  only shows up on pages where the template is used, not the template page itself; this is done for things like article icons that the template automatically places on the page.

Good documentation is necessary for good coding. Each template should have some sort of documentation explaining how it works: what it does and what the input parameters are, unless it's painfully obvious and there are no surprises (e.g. for navboxes). For very simple templates, this can be put on the template page itself, wrapped in noinclude tags. For more complicated templates, it's typical to have a documentation page at "Template:TemplateName/doc" (e.g. Template:Anchor/doc), and put that on the template page via.

The MediaWiki help pages have in-depth documentation for creation and use of templates.

Nested templates
The source code for templates can call upon other templates, and they often do. This is especially true for templates that display an entity's data, for which all sorts of processing may be necessary in order to get the raw data into a state that's useful to wiki users. It's considered good coding practice to be modular in this way; although it might make it less obvious for those just starting out, it often means less labour when things have to be changed.

Editing deeply nested templates is frequently a matter of checking the source code for a template, seeing what template(s) that one calls, checking that template's source code, and so on until you get to the template which needs editing. The good side of this is that once the edit is made, hopefully the edit should propagate through every page and every template that calls upon the edited one, so one change can fix a lot of articles at once.

Images
There are many ways to add an image to a page. All of them entail uploading the image to the wiki first. To do so, go to Upload file (available from the sidebar on each page), upload the file with the "Choose File" button, set the name it'll have on the wiki with "Destination filename", add a category in "Summary", and hit "Upload file". Once the file is on the wiki, other pages can link to it and embed it.

The file upload page outlines some ways of including a file on a page. Other ways exist: for example, many infobox templates (such as Template:Infobox character) have an argument for accepting the filename for a picture of that character.

Galleries
A substantial portion of articles could reasonably feature a great many images. However, loading too many images is resource-intensive and makes a webpage cumbersome. When many images are to be featured in an article, they are normally placed within a gallery towards the bottom of the page, which shows just image thumbnails and (typically) captions for each image.

A gallery is formatted as follows: If there are a ridiculous number of images, the gallery for an article might get its own page. This typically only happens for character articles, when the number of images reaches around 50.

Categories
Categories are how the wiki organises pages and files. Pages and files are placed into categories, and categories are grouped into higher-level categories. For example, the article for the music track Battle!!/Torna is in Category:Music (TTGC), Category:Music (SSBU), and Category:Songs composed by Kenji Hiramatsu. The Music (TTGC) category is itself part of Category:Music by game and Category:Xenoblade Chronicles 2: Torna ~ The Golden Country, and Music By Game is in Category:Music.

Every article, file, and almost every category should ideally be in some category or other. To add a page to a category, add  - anywhere on the page works, but the bottom of the page is standard practice as it keeps them out of the way of more interesting page content. Categories naturally appear on the bottom of an article anyway, regardless of where they're placed in the source code.

To link to a category, you can't use the standard link format, as that'll put the page on the category. Instead, prefix the link with a colon:, for example,.

A category's page's source code only needs to include the inclusion of that category into the higher-level categories it is a member of, possibly with some additional explanation of the category in the rare cases that that's not obvious. So, the aforementioned Category:Music (TTGC)'s source code is simply: The rest is taken care of automatically.

Moving pages
If an existing article (or template, or what have you) needs a different name, you can change the name of a page by "moving" it. This is done by going to "More" (near the "Edit" button) and hitting "Move". This'll take you to a page where you can select the new name for the article.

Unless you have special permissions, once you do this, the old article name will become a redirect to the new article name. You can go back and edit the old article name's page if this isn't desired; if the page should be gone entirely, mark it with  and an admin will delete it for you. (Regular users don't have the rights to delete pages themselves, for anti-vandalism reasons.)

It may well be the case that there were pages with links pointing to the old article name. If they really should be pointing to the new article name (which will often be the case, especially if the old name shouldn't be a redirect), you'll need to find them all and edit the pages accordingly. If you're doing this manually, the easiest way to find all such links is the following:
 * 1) Go to the page with the old name (if this is a redirect page, you may need to click the "Redirected from (old name)" once you get redirected to stay on the old name's page).
 * 2) Click "What links here" in the sidebar. You'll be taken to a list of articles that link to the old article name.
 * 3) Go through each article in the list, find all instances of a link to the old article name (ctrl-F/cmd-F is your friend), and edit the link so it's going to the right place.
 * 4) If the link is part of a template, you'll need to edit the template instead. This can be confusing because a lot of pages in the list may just be including a template that links to the old name, especially if it's part of a navbox.
 * 5) Once you're done it may take a while for the "What links here" page to be uploaded. This can be under a minute in the simplest cases, or even up to a day if weird template caching is involved. Either way, reload the page after a while to make sure you've got everything.

Sometimes a page will be in the wrong namespace. A namespace is a very broad gathering of page names that are treated differently by the wiki backend, and it's distinguished by a prefix on the page name with a colon. (Template is an example of a namespace you've seen earlier; any page prefixed with "Template:" is in the Template namespace.) If a page doesn't seem to have this prefix, it's in the "Main" namespace. There's a dropdown menu in the Move Article page to change the namespace when you move the article.