Help:Contents

Contents

BoyWiki is a free, open content resource for boylovers and others who are interested in the collective knowledge and culture that has developed over the years. Built upon a powerful wiki engine, BoyWiki was designed to make contributing as simple as possible. The following pages are designed to help you become more familiar with this resource.

BoyWiki guidelines
Terms of service
Administration
BoyWiki Council Keeper of the Wiki Curators
Content guidelines
Content guidelines Copyrights Relevance policy Text of the GNU General Public License What BoyWiki is not
Policies and guidelines by section
Encyclopedia Entertainment Life
Disclaimers
General disclaimer Legal disclaimer
Deletion guidelines
Abuse policy Deletion process
About BoyWiki
BoyWiki BoyWiki:About

Getting started

What is a wiki?

A wiki is a web site where almost every page can be changed or added to by you. You can even create entirely new pages. All changes appear immediately, but old versions of the page are still available. A wiki's users constantly act as proofreaders and copy editors to expand and improve existing articles and clean up vandalism.

How do I sign up?

Just click the link at the top of any page which says Create an account or log in and enter the username you would like, a password, and optionally, your email address. Then click the "Create new account" button. The "by email" button can be used if you would like to receive a random password and verify your email address in one step. You can log in at this page in the future.

What if I don't want to register?

Everything on BoyWiki is available to you without the need for a BoyWiki account. However, if you do not have an account, you will not be able to make any changes.

Registering does have other benefits, such as giving you a personal user page and enabling others to send you emails without revealing your email address to them. But registration will never be necessary to read any content or to redistribute content under the GNU Free Documentation License.

What if I don't know HTML?

You don't need to know any HTML to contribute to BoyWiki and you don't have to have any Web authoring experience at all. Formatting on BoyWiki is created using a very simple technique called "wikitext." Making a link is as simple as wrapping double brackets ([[ and ]]) around a word. Making a bulleted list is as simple as putting an asterisk (*) before each item on its own line. You'll be able to figure out how to add formatting by seeing how existing articles are written. While BoyWiki allows approximately the same basic HTML tags as BoyChat does, we suggest everyone uses wikitext markup to write their articles.

What if I don't understand wikitext?

If you have something to say but are worried about using wikitext, don't use it. That's right, you should just type in what you have to say with no formatting. If it is important, then it will be valuable without links or other formatting. Others can come along and add formatting for you, but never let worrying about "how it looks" stop you from adding new and useful information to BoyWiki.

What if I find information that is wrong?

All wiki articles are written by human beings, and errors will find their way into articles. If you see something that you know is factually incorrect, simply edit the article and change the unfactual information. If you find a typo, feel free to fix it. What makes BoyWiki so powerful is the ability for everyone to pitch in and help out.

What if I find an article I disagree with?

Some articles are "factual" articles, and address subjects by including what is generally accepted as being "factual" - scientifically demonstrated or "proven" by scholars, scientists, etc.

Other articles are opinion-based. The only way for BoyWiki to be well-rounded is if people with differing opinions contribute while respecting each other's differences of opinion. If a BoyWiki article expresses what appears to you to be an unbalanced opinion, you can help by rewriting the article to be more neutral or by adding a section with a counterbalancing opinion. In some cases, you may wish to work together with other users on the article's talk page to figure out how to be fair to all viewpoints.

The important thing to remember is that BoyWiki allows for the expression of many differing opinions, and we all should strive to make sure each viewpoint is fairly represented, side-by-side with other viewpoints, and without trying to "shout down" or "drown out" other users whom we disagree with. If you believe that a certain idea does have merit, then your stating that idea clearly and respectfully within an article will allow others to perhaps learn a bit, and then to better decide for themselves how they feel on the issue being discussed.

What if I find an article that has been vandalized?

You may occasionally encounter vandalism or inappropriate content within an article before a Curator does. If this happens, you can help out by clicking the "History" tab on the page. and then finding the latest version of an article which has not been defaced or altered. Just click the edit tab for that revision, and then "save it over" the vandalized article. You should add a comment, such as "Reverted vandalism by such-and-such user", in the edit summary.

By doing the above, you will do two things: you will make the article useful again for the next person who reads it, and you will demonstrate to the vandal that he is actually powerless. While BoyWiki's "article history" feature makes it impossible for vandals to destroy content, our users do have the power to repair vandalism as soon as it is noticed, which makes BoyWiki self-healing. BoyWiki depends on users like you to help keep BoyWiki healthy!

Exploring

BoyWiki organization

BoyWiki articles are organized into different categories, with three main root categories. Most articles can be categorized as either factual and research-based encyclopedic articles, entertainment-based articles with information about media such as TV and radio, or life-based articles which deal with the boylove community, personal experiences, things to do in the real world, and silly things such as jokes. Sometimes an article deals with more than one area and is classified under more than one category at a time.

You can surf through the different categories starting from the Portal:Index , or you can view a list of all categories or All pages on BoyWiki.

Remember that BoyWiki is a "work in progress", and categories may be revised, changed, added to, etc. as necessary. With the newly-installed (April, 2014) updated version of the wiki software, we are currently in the process of doing just that. You can help out by suggesting ways that you think BoyWiki could be better-organized to be more useful to you, the reader. You are, after all, why BoyWiki is here in the first place!

Searching for articles

If you aren't looking for a specific article name, you can type any search term(s) you wish into the search field and click the Search button. A page will come up listing all articles with the words you entered.

Finding related articles

Any given article will have hyperlinks to other articles sprinkled throughout. But many articles also have a section called "See also" which lists other relevant articles that were not referred to in the main article text. Clicking on "What links here" in the toolbox to the left of each article gives a list of other articles which contain a link to it. In addition, every categorized article will have a link at the bottom of the page which leads to its category, and a list of all parent categories. These may be good ways to find other articles on a subject.

Finding new articles and changes

The Recent changes page lists all contributions to BoyWiki in the last 30 days. You can find a summary of when a change was made in GMT, by whom, and whether it was a minor change (m) or if a new article (N) was created. You can also quickly see the page history (hist) or the difference (diff) between the old version and the new version.

If you are interested in keeping track of a specific article, click the "watch" link on that article page to add it to your watchlist. Depending on your user preferences, you can elect to receive an email any time a page on your watchlist has been updated. Whenever your user talk page has been updated, you will see a message at the top of BoyWiki informing you that you have a new message. Visit your talk page to clear this notification.

Finding other users

A list of all users can be found on the Special:Listusers page. This displays an alphabetical list of users, and also notes which users have special duties on BoyWiki. Article histories also have a list of users, and you may find people who share common interests are editing the articles you enjoy. Going to a user page will allow you to send an email to that user if he has a confirmed email address with BoyWiki. Please note that this will reveal your own email address to that user! You can also send public notes via BoyWiki by editing a user's talk page.

Editing

Creating a new article

If you have something to add to BoyWiki that hasn't been covered before, it may be time to create a new article! The simplest way to create a new article is to find an article that has been linked to but does not yet exist. These show up as red links. Just click on the link and you'll be able to create the article. Of course, you can also view the list of most wanted pages, determined by the articles that have the most links but have not yet been written.

If you would like to write an article which has not been linked to, do a search to see if there there is an article on the topic with a different name. If none exists, then see if you can edit an existing article to create a link to your new one. Just add double square brackets ([[ and ]]) around a word or phrase in an article and save it to create a link. Then you can click on the link to begin editing a new article.

But if there is no article that serves as a point to link from, simply type the new article name in the search box (spaces are okay in the name) and click the Go button. Then you will be able to follow the link in the resulting message and begin writing a new article.

Picking a proper article name

All articles on BoyWiki begin with a capital letter, so the first letter in a link can be capital or lowercase. Except for the first letter, article names are case-sensitive, which means that Case and CASE would refer to two separate articles. To make it easier to make links, articles with more than one word should be in lowercase except for proper nouns. So an article on computer security should be called Computer security and not Computer Security. If you would like to write an article with an ambiguous name, you could describe it in parentheses, so that Computer security (Linux) might be a different article from Computer security (Windows). Just try to think ahead. Curators will rename articles when necessary.

Editing an existing article

Existing articles can be edited by clicking on the Edit tab on the top of each page. This brings up the wikitext of an article. Wikitext is a simple markup language that lets you worry about what you want to say instead of learning complicated HTML.

A good reason to edit an article is if you see a misspelling or typo on a page. You might even feel that an article needs more formatting, or more consistent formatting. You might see a word or phrase that is not linked to another article but should be, or that you feel would make a good article for somebody to write. Feel free to to make these improvements. If you only make minor changes that do not change the meaning of an article in a significant way, please check the "This is a minor edit" check box before you save.

In other cases, you might feel that an article is not well-organized or that there are misleading or false statements. Feel free to move text around or rewrite things to make the article easier to read. If you do this for more than one sentence, it probably does not qualify as a minor edit.

Some things to keep in mind while editing existing articles is that you can restrict your editing to single sections by clicking the [Edit] links by each section header. This way others can edit other parts of an article at the same time without edit conflicts, and you don't risk accidentally changing parts of an article you are not interested in. Please write a quick description of the changes you made in the summary field to help futures users looking at an article's history Lastly, in most cases, you should not remove a contrary point of view to replace it with your own. If you disagree with an point of view, you should create a new section and add your opinion so that the two viewpoints are represented side-by-side.

Submitting media for articles

Due to the potential for abuse, users are not allowed to directly upload images or other files to BoyWiki. Once you have read the content guidelines for images and have determined that your image or other media is suitable, you may email it along with your BoyWiki username to info@boywiki.org where it will be reviewed by a Curator. Once it has been uploaded, you can incorporate it into articles.

Related article : Help:Images, Requests for file uploads.

Community

Discussing an article with others

Many articles inspire discussion that for one reason or another doesn't belong in the article itself. Maybe you would like to give opinions on how the article could be improved, or work together with others to make changes, or ask similar questions about how you might improve the article. No matter what you would like to talk about, you can use the article's talk page to discuss the topic at hand. Talk pages can be accessed by clicking the "discussion" tab at the top of any article and work the same as article pages. Feel free to seperate different discussions with headers by using the + tab next to the "Edit this page" tab to add a new discussion.

It is useful to indent your responses to others' comments by putting one or more colons (:) at the beginning of each of your paragraphs. It is also very polite to sign your comments by using the signature button in the editing toolbar or by manually putting --~~~~ at the end of your comment. This will display a signature like this: --Hínandil 20:47, 26 August 2005 (EDT)

Sending messages to other users

If you would like to leave a public message for another user, you may do so on his user talk page. Just go to a user's user page (which is linked in his signature and in article histories) and click the "discussion" tab. There you can add a note for him.

When somebody has left you a message, you will see a notice on the top of every BoyWiki article that you have new messages. This notice remains until you check your own user talk page.

Sending email to other users

If you have registered and validated your email address with BoyWiki, you may send an email to others who have done the same. From a user's user page, "E-mail this user" will appear as an option in the toolbox on the left column. Follow this link and you will be able to enter a message that will be emailed to that user. You will not see the user's email address, but please remember that your email address will be sent with the email so he can respond to you.

Creating your user page

As a user of BoyWiki, you have your very own user page where you can publish whatever you like, so long as it conforms with BoyWiki:Content guidelines and BoyWiki:Abuse policy. This is an opportunity for you to tell a bit about yourself; publish personally written essays and stories; share movie, music, and game reviews; run polls; and keep notes and personal research for use in BoyWiki articles. Simply click on your name at the top of any BoyWiki article while you are logged in, and edit your page like any other wiki article.

Unlike main article pages, user pages can have subpages. For example, if you were user Hínandil, and you create a link to the page User:Hínandil/This_is_a_subpage, you could click that link and have a blank page to edit. You can use subpages to organize the different things you would like to publish through BoyWiki.

Please remember that like main articles, what you publish on your user page is also licensed under the GNU Free Documentation License. BoyWiki is not a blog or journal and is not meant to be used as such, but welcomes you to share your thoughts and ideas with the entire boylove community. What your write on your user page is free to be redistributed and edited by others as long as they give the same permission for their changes. Make sure you read and understand BoyWiki:Copyrights and do not publish things you would not like to see reposted or changed on other Web sites.