Out of Sight, Out of Mind

Most wiki software offers two choices of markup when formatting content. Typically, most of them allow HTML markup, but more importantly they offer a special markup such as that of MediaWiki, or some equivalent to BBCode which is the de facto standard used across the most common forum softwares.

In nearly every case (with a major exception being templates), you should opt to use wiki markup rather than HTML markup. One of the key principles behind massive-collaboration engines such as MediaWiki, is that content should be easy to edit and format by anyone, including (quite especially) those untrained in HTML markup. I have heard some argue in favor of embedded WYSIWYGs for wikis – I am perhaps a bit more old-fashioned, but I have not yet formed a solid opinion one way or the other on this. I may address it in a future post.

In short, this means you should opt for using wiki markup to create tables, lists, and formatted text rather than HTML in most cases. As well, you should opt for the following (assuming MediaWiki):

'''Strong'''
''Emphasis''

*Unordered List Item 1
*Unordered List Item 2

#Ordered List Item 1
#Ordered List Item 2

[[Internal Link|Internal Link Text]]
[External Link External Link Text]

Rather than:

<strong>Strong</strong>
<em>Emphasis</em>

<ul>
<li>Unordered List Item 1</li>
<li>Unordered List Item 2</li>
</ul>

<ol>
<li>Ordered List Item 1</li>
<li>Ordered List Item 2</li>
</ol>

<a href="">Internal Link Text</a>
<a href="">External Link Text</a>

MediaWiki provides a complete Help document for Formatting.

When dealing with a wiki, longevity is key! I've made that point already, but I'll continue reiterating it so that it is sure to sink in. Each page you create in the short term is another step down the long term road. As your wiki grows, you need to make sure that it doesn't fall short in: content quality, content accuracy, and content organization. One might even call those the three Cs of a wiki – perhaps I will at a later date.

So clearly, one of our primary objectives is to keep a wiki maintainable, so that we can provide it with longevity. One of the simplest ways of keeping a wiki maintainable is making everything organized and easy to find. Nothing can truly be "lost" (as in, become unable to be found), because you can always find uncategorized pages. However, when a wiki user is caught up in the moment, it can be quite easy to get lost or find difficulty in locating certain pages or content.

When designing your wiki, you were advised to think about the following question:

• What categories will be derived from the wiki's overall subject matter?

In short, this means that you would've identified the overall topic of the wiki, and then would've derived from it, certain categories to be used for organizing sections (no matter how large or small) and pages of the wiki.

Different wiki software has different markup, but in MediaWiki you can very easily categorize a page by appending the following to it:

[[Category: Name of the Category]]

I recommend prepending this to the top, or appending it to the bottom of the article's wiki code. Depending on your theme, the category will be shown at the top or bottom of the page once saved, but that will happen regardless of where the categories are positioned in the wiki markup, so it's more sensible to put them at the top or bottom so that they're out of the way of everything else and not scattered about randomly.

The result on the page would look something like this:

Category: Name of the Category

You can add as many categories as you would like, as follows:

[[Category: Mercedes-Benz]]
[[Category: M-Class]]
[[Category: M 2010]]

The result will be:

Category: Mercedes-Benz M-Class M 2010

Categorization is perhaps one of the most important initial steps towards properly organizing pages on your wiki, and it's so simple that there's never a reason not to do it. Keep in mind that those categories will show up red until they are clicked on and a page is created to explain a given category. However, they will function properly even if you never create the category pages for them.

With templates being so easy to create and implement on a MediaWiki installation, there's really no valid reason not to use them. If you're unfamiliar with MediaWiki templates, please note that a template in this case is not synonymous with a style, skin, or theme. MediaWiki supports those as well, but templates are of special interest because they can make life on a wiki so much easier.

First of all, a template allows you to create wiki markup, as you would when creating or editing any other page on the wiki. Additionally, templates support as many variables as you so choose to give them. This means that you can create the markup for the presentation of some content in a template, and then insert variables where you desire dynamic information to be displayed. Once you have the template created, you can use it on as many pages as you wish and you can always go back and edit it as needed. You can do all of this on the wiki directly – you needn't edit any files of the MediaWiki installation.

Templates are especially great for times when you need a lot of articles (or perhaps sections of articles) to contain important information that you would like to be formatted neatly and consistently. For instance, let's assume we are documenting a bunch of different makes and models of automobiles, each vehicle having its own page on the wiki.

Ordinarily, we might create pages that contain the following table:

Wiki Tables

{|
| '''Make''' || Jeep
|-
| '''Model''' || Grand Cherokee
|-
| '''Year''' || 2000
|-
|}

HTML Tables (Not Recommended)

<table>
    <tr>
        <td><strong>Make</strong></td>
        <td>Jeep</td>
    </tr>
    <tr>
        <td><strong>Model</strong></td>
        <td>Grand Cherokee</td>
    </tr>
    <tr>
        <td><strong>Year</strong></td>
        <td>2000</td>
    </tr>
</table>

If we choose one of the above methods, either Wiki Tables or HTML Tables, it's rather simple and Wiki Tables are a bit more clean in the wiki source for an article (outright HTML unless absolutely necessary is not advised, for sake of keeping the wiki friendly for people not versed in HTML markup).

We will end up with something like this:

However, we may not want to type out all of the text for the Wiki Table or the HTML Table each time we create a page for another vehicle. We may not even wish to copy and paste the table and scroll through and change values. Wouldn't it be nice if we could design the table & format of the content only once, and then from there on, just assign values to the variables Make, Model, and Year? Fortunately, with wiki templates, we can accomplish exactly that!

We're going to create a template called Vehicle, and use it to format information for the Make, Model, and Year of any given vehicle. Then we're going to use it on a page. On MediaWiki, enter Template:Vehicle into the search box and click Go. You will be taken to a page that will say something like "There is no page titled 'Template:Vehicle'. You can create this page.", so go ahead and click on create this page.

Now, enter the following Wiki Table markup onto the template page:

{|
| '''Make''' || {{{1}}}
|-
| '''Model''' || {{{2}}}
|-
| '''Year''' || {{{3}}}
|-
|}

You can insert as many variables as you want by enclosing an integer in triple braces: {{{x}}} (x is an integer). The variables will be set in an ascending order starting from 1.

Now we have a reusable template, so let's see just how easy it is to use. Assuming we're going to create an article for a Grand Cherokee, we'll include this template and fill in the proper data by entering the following onto the Grand Cherokee article:

{{vehicle|Jeep|Grand Cherokee|2000}}

This will show up on the page just the same as if we had included all of the table markup. However, including all that markup is redundant and unnecessary in light of templates. The following is our result:

This is a very simplified example, but it still helps make repetitive content easier to add while maintaining cleanliness. Your templates can be much more complex, and your data and desired formatting may demand that they be. In the future, I will be sure to offer more advanced examples of how templates can be useful in complex situations. I hope this encourages you to make use of templates on your wiki. It will help you maintain your sanity in the long term.