Team Fortress Wiki:New Users' Guide

The Team Fortress Wiki is the largest resource of information on Team Fortress, Team Fortress Classic, and Team Fortress 2 editable by anyone.

This page is aimed at the newest users primarily, however, older users who don't edit frequently may find it handy also.

Introduction

As the TF Wiki is a community-edited resource, it is the responsibility of the community to update and add to its content.

Guide

Editing

There are two ways to start editing a particular page; you can edit the whole page at once by clicking the "edit" tab at the top, or edit individual sections only by clicking "[edit]" to the right of the section header. Articles should almost always be edited in its entirety, rather than editing several different sections in several different edits. Certain pages, such as the Dictionary, may be edited in multiple edits due to the large page size slowing down or even crashing browsers.

Editing brings up a large text box filled with wiki formatting, which forms all pages. Wiki formatting can be daunting at first, however, is easy to remember once picked up. Below is an example of the most common forms that are used in articles:

This text is '''bold''' and this is ''italic''. This is a link: [[Rocket Launcher]]. [[Rocket Launcher|This is also a link]]. [http://www.google.com I am an external link]. [[w:Team Fortress 2|I am a link to a Wikipedia article]].

And it displays as:

This text is bold and this is italic. This is a link: Rocket Launcher. This is also a link. I am an external link. I am a link to a Wikipedia article.

Language translation

Main article: Help:Language translation

The Team Fortress Wiki supports language translation of articles into 21 languages, all of which have localization files for Team Fortress 2. Arabic is currently deprecated, existing pages may be updated, but new pages should not be created and template support is not guaranteed. A full guide is available at Help:Language translation.

Making changes

All Wiki articles and files can be changed, updated, or added to by anyone. The only exceptions are high traffic pages (such as the individual class pages), highly important pages (such as the Main Page), or pages that are prone to vandalism (such as the Notable Persons Project pages). Occasionally, an article may be temporarily protected from editing for different reasons, such as an article being the target of recent excessive vandalism.

Tips

• Use the Show preview button to revise your changes before submission. This way, you can iron out any mistakes on the page and minimise the number of edits issued to the edit log and edit history. Even the most seasoned editors benefit from using this button on every edit.

• Several templates, known as maintenance templates can be used to indicate that changes should be made to an article or to indicate something about the contents of the article (such as it being cut content, a custom map article, a recent addition, etc.). The former can be used if you lack the necessary skills (such as Half-Life Model Viewer images), permissions (such as for deleting pages), knowledge (such as with updating certain information), or otherwise to update the article yourself. They are always at the very top of an article, and should always have a reason attached to them. The latter are purely used to indicate something about the contents of the page, but most be present on all applicable articles. Some of the commonly-used maintenance templates are:
  • {{Needimage}}, {{Needvideo}}, {{Needaudio}} – to request the addition of an image, video, or audio file respectively.
  • {{Stub}} – for articles that are "stubs", meaning they are incomplete or generally have very little information on them.
  • {{Delete}} – for articles or pages to be deleted in case they are unnecessary, low quality, or otherwise break Wiki guidelines.
  • {{Cleanup}} – for articles that require a general cleaning up.
  • {{Update}} – for articles that contain out-of-date information, or for articles that cover subjects that have recently been updated and thus require an update.
    • {{Update trans}} – for translated versions of articles that are out-of-date, or simply require a small update (such as a missing caption or section)
  • {{Move}} – for articles that need to be moved to a different name, for example to have a more accurate name or a name that complies with the article name guidelines.
  • {{Merge}} – for articles, or a section of an article, that should be merged into another article due to the information fitting better in there.
  • {{Improveimage}} – for files that require improvements.
  • {{Custom map}} – for map articles that cover custom maps, rather than maps officially included in the game.
  • {{Recent addition}} – for articles that cover recent additions to the game, these are removed after 2 weeks.
  • {{Beta}} – for articles that cover beta, cut, unused, experimental, or unreleased content.
  • {{OtherWikis}} – for articles that are covered very briefly on this Wiki, but are covered more extensively in other places such as Wikipedia.
• Some of the jargon used on this Wiki is exclusive to wiki spaces, or even exclusive to this Wiki itself. The Wiki Glossary covers most of these terms, and should be updated to include any terms you've found confusing when first starting out.

Where to go for help

• For article-specific issues, visit their talk page and open up a discussion.
• For general suggestions, the general discussion page should be used.
• For general help requests, the Help Desk is always available.
  • For talk pages, remember to add your signature using ~~~~ and include a header using == Header text here ==. Alternatively, if available, the "Add topic" button will automatically add a header with the text in the "Subject" text field.
• Our most active editors are almost always present in our IRC channel #tfwiki (webchat) on the Libera Chat IRC network.

See also

• Help:Contents – main help page

External links

Helpful guidelines from Wikipedia

• Wikipedia:Be bold – if you see something that can be improved, improve it.
• Wikipedia:Assume good faith – always assume that new users are editing to make the wiki better.
• Wikipedia:Please do not bite the newcomers.