dKosopedia:Basic navigation
From dKosopedia
This page describes basic navigation to get you exploring DKosopedia.
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Basic navigation in DKosopedia
How to navigate DKosopedia
DKosopedia articles are all linked, or cross-referenced.
Wherever you see text like this, it means there is a link to some relevant article or DKosopedia page with further information elsewhere if you need it. Holding your mouse over the link will often show you where a link will take you. These links mean that articles do not need to cover common ground in depth; instead, you are always one click away from more information on any point that has a link attached.
There are other links towards the ends of most articles, for other articles of interest, relevant external web sites and pages, reference material. At the end of the article are relevant categories of knowledge which you can search and traverse in a loose hierarchy for further related information in a field.
Some articles may also have links to dictionary definitions, audiobook readings, quotations, or the same article in other languages.
You can add further links if a relevant link is missing, and this is one way to contribute.
Category browsing
DKosopedia contains a growing amount of information on all sorts of subjects ranging from politics, elections, to DKos itself (you know how we love meta!) Every article has a list at the bottom of all the major categories it belongs to and most often, a subject matter can fall into multiple categories. For example, a page relating to candidates running from office in a particular state in 2006 would probably be found under a category for that state as well as Elections 2006.
Each of these categories can be browsed and is linked to related categories in a loose hierarchy or web.
The category structure is one of the hardest to get a handle on when first setting up a wiki like this and is will evolve over time. To the extent possible, a person creating a new article should browse through the existing categories to find all of the ones another reasonable (???) person might use to find the information being written about and categorized their article under those.
Try browsing the various categories below right now.
Other useful buttons and panels
Sidebar (left)
To the side of each article are some standard options for navigation, and for tools, and on some articles, for languages:
Navigation options include:
- Main page - the DKosopedia home page
- Community Portal - as a community building this tool, DKosopedia has a portal for users, giving easy access to many of the useful some of the development thoughts, pages and working discussions within DKosopedia
- Current events - latest political news reported within the DKosopedia community – this would be a great place to link to your DKos Diary to a Hot Topic (not sure how relevant or updated it will be otherwise)
- Recent changes - articles that are being edited at this moment
- Random article - lucky dip, if you're ever bored or want to learn something new!
- Help – hopefully, it is what it says
Toolbox includes:
- What links here - useful for tracing where this article is referenced from.
- Related changes
- Upload file - how you add images (and occasionally other files) to DKosopedia
- Special pages - all the special functions and administration options can be found here.
Other sidebar functions include:
- Search - allows you to search other articles across the whole of DKosopedia.
- Other languages - if an article exists on the same subject in any of the other hundred languages in DKosopedia, it should usually appear on a list of other language links in the sidebar too.
Top tabs (above the article)
Each page in DKosopedia contains an article, and a discussion page (called "Talk..." in some situations) NOTE: A good reason to register on dKosopedia is that YOU will have your own dKosopedia page and related talk page that can make organizing some quick get togethers easier without publishing your email address; you can edit your own userpage the same way you edit an article page)
You can see these above, the article is labeled "project page", the discussion page is the tab to the right of it. These are treated as two separate pages in DKosopedia, but are shown side by side on the tab bar, for ease of use.
Whether you are looking at the article or project page, or the discussion page, you will see there is a button marked "edit this page", possibly a button "+", and a button labeled "watch" or "unwatch".
- Edit this page - this is the key to contributing to DKosopedia. When you click this button, you change from viewing an article or discussion about an article, to being able to edit the article, or add comments to the discussion that is going on. (depending on which tab you were on before clicking on Edit)
- Occasionally, pages that are important or may be vandalized are locked, in which case the "edit" will show "view source", and you will not be able to edit the article at that time
- Page editing is simple with DKosopedia, and you cannot harm a page if you make a mistake, since all changes can be undone. This is part of DKosopedia's vandal protection.
- "+" - adds a new section to a page, without changing what is already there.
- Watch/unwatch - adds or removes a page from your watchlist, the list of pages you are tracking. You can view your watchlist with the user option button "my watchlist" at the top right of the screen. You need to register and log in to allow the program to help you track pages you are interested in.
User options (top right)
These control your user account. To create a user account you only need to choose a name and a password. An email address is optional and only used for password reminders.
Unless you create an account you will not be able to customize DKosopedia preferences for yourself. Almost all experienced editors use an account in order to ensure accountability.
The user options also include links to view your watchlist (articles you are tracking), and contributions you have made.
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