Wiki Editing Guidelines

1. ACL and headers

At the very top of every page, you should put a header similar to the one below this paragraph. The most important part is the first line, which is an Access Control List (ACL). If you don't have one, then a set of default rules about who can do what to a page kicks in, and they aren't necessarily what you want nor expect.

#acl HlpLabGroup:read,write,delete,revert,admin All:read
#format wiki
#language en
#pragma section-numbers 2

Let's examine what these lines do, so you understand them and know what to change to do what you want.

#acl HlpLabGroup:read,write,delete,revert,admin All:read

The pound sign (#) at the beginning of the line tells the wiki software that this is a command for it. acl tells it that we're giving it an access control list. There are a number of groups and users on the wiki, and you can control what kind of access they each have. In this case we're giving members of the [wiki:HlpLabGroup HlpLabGroup] permission to read, write, delete, revert (i.e. undo someone else's changes), and admin (i.e. change permissions) for the page. We're also giving everyone permission to read it. If you don't give someone admin access (at least yourself!), the permissions can't be changed down the road without contacting Chris Freemesser. Other potential groups you might want to give some degree of permission to are [wiki:TanenhausLabGroup TanenhausLabGroup] and [wiki:HlpLabGuestGroup HlpLabGuestGroup]

#format wiki

Good question. I'm kind of cargo-culting this one. I think it's saying to look for wiki formatting codes, rather than any other it might know. -- AndrewWatts DateTime(2008-05-28T14:46:33Z)

#language en

This tells the wiki that this page is primarily in English and to follow the rules for formatting English text.

#pragma section-numbers 2

Finally, this command tells the wiki to start the section numbering at the 2nd level of headings instead of the first. This way you can have a big heading at the top of the page that doesn't have a number in front of it. You can certainly leave this off if you want section numbers starting from the 1st level.

2. Namespaces

Several labs in the department use this wiki. Please create all new pages under [wiki:HlpLab HlpLab], rather than at the top level. This makes it clear who the page belongs to. We have a partial ontology of pages. See if your new page fits under any existing sub-page before creating a new level or dumping the page at the base level.