Getting started with the Cynefin Wiki

From Cynefin.net
Jump to navigation Jump to search

The first thing to do is to update your user page. The format is down to you, but something about who you are, your CV, publications, links to material which will tell the community something about you. If you work for Cognitive Edge, the Cynefin Centre or have some form of associate status please provide a CV as a minimum as we will use that in proposals.

You can get to the user page by clicking on the person icon at the top of the page. Have a look at other user pages such as Dave's to get an idea of what to do but be creative. You can also create a unique signature for use on article talk pages as well as make other decisions using preferences.

After that read the style sheet which outlines the conventions and has a guide to some basic markup language -if you think something is missing or could be improved then go ahead and make the change. But if other editors disagree then be prepared to be reverted and it might be an idea to read this key essay on Wikipedia before you go much further.

It is probably best not to start with a new page, but if you do use the templates! There are a lot of pages already there which need formatting to match the various templates and that is the best way to get started. If you need help then just ask by place a request here pending our setting up a more general help forum.

The home page has links to priority editing needs and technical tasks which may help. If you find a fault add it to the technical tasks list

It is worth getting into the habit of looking at recent changes every day or week to see what is going on. Getting to know which editors you trust and reading their edit summaries helps considerably in deciding where to put your time.

Everything you do is on record so you may want to use the 'show preview' button to check before saving

As a tip - you can log in on several screens - having one you are editing and another where you can find the names of articles etc can make life easier.

If you reference an article always link to it as follows: [[Article name|your text]]. If you are linking to a web site then [websitename your description] should be used.

Never ever cut and paste the same text into different articles, create a new one that can be linked and make sure the name is in the directory. If you don't know how to do that post a notice on Dave's talk page saying what you have done and he will make the changes - this is an interim solution

A mini case on editing

This sequence of edits may help you understand how it works

On the 6th Feb Greg made some changes to an article

On the 7th Feb snowded was monitoring all recent changes, spotted that and started with two minor changes before cutting and pasting the contents of the methods template (edit, select all, CTR-C) and then [https://wiki.sensemaker-suite.com/index.php?title=Silent_listening&type=revision&diff=876&oldid=868 populated that with existing and new material to create a more complete article.

In the course of doing that the user made a change to the template (something that should be done with caution as it is used more and more. A reference to an assembly resulted in a stub article being created.

Realising that many articles would need to reference what a set of standard questions the material was extracted from the complex faciliation article and a new article created and the name was inserted into the list of methods.

Note the use of edit summaries throughout