Draft Help:Getting around

This is just a draft, (rough at first but hopefully getting better!), to help with redesign of Help:Contents

Browsing the Sustainable Community Action wiki
With several hundred pages or articles in the wiki it helps to know how to get around easily. This is useful for just exploring the wiki but is also particulalry helpful when creating new content. The more you are aware of what's already here the better you can integrate your new content. It's very good (although by no means essential when starting an article) to integrate new content with lots of internal links. This increases the cohesiveness of the wiki and helps keep up a high standard of having lots and varied ways of navigating the wiki.

There are a variety of ways into the wiki, and ways to get around and explore further. There aren't any especially right and wrong ways, just whatever people find themselves comfortable with. Read this article for a summary and overview of ways of getting around. Please remember this is only an introduction and signposting to further sources of more detailed and more comprehensive help.

Left hand column
The left hand column appears on most SCA wiki pages, and provides links to some of the main pages on the wiki, for example the Main Page and the Community Portal.

Main sections of the wiki
A broad general structure is provided by half a dozen main kinds of information, these are listed in What's here part of the Main Page and under Get around in the Community portal. This latter listing also points to some of the main sub-sections or main articles or start points within the main sections.

Search
To search for an article on a given subject within Sustainable Community Action use the Wikicities box on the left. (Use the Google box to search the wider internet.)

Categories
This is a much more flexible way of organising content than simple lists or a tree-type structure. Explore categories by clicking on the category links at the bottom of pages which have been categorised. Here's an example: Categories can have one level of sub-categories. Ideally when (or soon after) each article is created it is put into at least one category, and categories themselves are put into a (broader category). The top level category is category:Browse.

There's a broad match up between the way categories are organised and the main sections of the wiki (which were set up before the category system was introduced to this wiki). There isn't a need to be too fussy about matching up (or indeed concentrating on only one way of organising the wiki content as (remember) the wiki is constantly evolving.

Top back links
On some pages there are a few links at the top of a page or article which provide quick means of getting back to other articles that someone using the wiki may have come from.

End of page quick links
On some pages there ar quick links to some of the main broad sections or subsections of the wiki.

Internal links within text
In most articles there may be several internal links to other pages within the text of an article. For example an article that mentions climate change can link to the article with that title, like this climate change.

Special pages
There are a number of special pages which can help you get around or get an overview of what's here. Special pages can be accessed via the laft hand menu in the toolbox. You might want to explore some of these, for example Special:Allpages gives an alphabetical listing of all articles in the main article namespace.

Namespaces
Namespaces are particular parts of the wiki that group together similar types of pages. Click on the blue button to the right of the namespace box to view the types of namespaces. Don't worry if all this sounds a little confusing at first. Remember this is only a brief overview of ways of getting around. Things like namespaces will make more sense as you gain more experience of using the wiki. Or if you want to find out more see wikicities:Help:Special

Cityscape
If the Sustainable Communtiy Action wiki is viewed as a virtual city, Cityscape references, (or analogies) for example towards the end of the Communtiy Portal page just give an idea of what sort of place it might be from people's understanding of real cities.

Interwiki links
Sustainable Community Action is part of a much larger project called Wikicities. Within the Sustainable Community Action wiki, the Sister Cities page lists several other wikicities which maybe of interest, and our WikiNode page provides an overview of relationships between SCA wiki and other wikis.

On the central wikicity Society Gardens lists some other wikicities about reasonably serious topics and some interest in mutual support and encouragement.

Ther are also many links to relevant Wikipedia articles thoughout the SCA wiki, and some links to other similar Projects, such as the Commons, Wikinews, etc. - see for example the useful links section of the Community Portal

External links to other wikis
SCA's WikiNode page can also show relationships to other wikis (outside of the wikicites community) on similar or relevant subjects, and some of these may also be mentioned on other SCA wiki pages, for example in individual topic articles within the Local Sustaiabiilty Ideas Bank.

External links to other websites
There's a huge number of these within (usually towards the end of) individual SCA wiki articles, for example topic articles within the Local Sustainabilty Ideas Bank or Projects listings.

To be in category Help once out of draft stage