The dakkadakka articles system uses software known as a 'Wiki' to operate as made famous by wikipedia. This allows anybody (even people who are not members of dakkadakka), to join in and add their expertise to almost any article. You can easily start writing an article on anything with us. Maybe a profile of your armies, perhaps add a battle report, add painting techniques and advice, or even add gaming fiction that you have written. Whatever you add will live on forever and not vanish beneath the thousandth page of a forum.

How to start a new article

Anyone, including you, can write or edit dakka articles. If you want to start a new article, click 'Add a New Article' on the left hand side of any articles page and follow the instructions there. Read the rest of this tutorial before doing so to ensure your article is as good as can be...

General principles

• Search to see whether someone has written a similar page before you start one yourself. Choose your page title carefully and accurately. Dont be too vague with your page title. 'Necrons' is a bad page title for anything other than a general Necron article listing page, but 'Necron Tactica' or 'Username's Necron Army' are good.
• Is a separate article justified? Perhaps it would be better to add the text to a related page (especially if the text is not very long); that page can always be split later, after it has grown. If you are adding a painting or modeling article then chances are we already cover the topic a little bit so please always feel free to add in your content to existing articles.

Starting a page from a link, or after a search

New, empty article links typically look different from links to existing pages. Links to new, empty pages are called "red links" due to their colour. Links to non-existent pages are created with [[New page name]] from the wiki editor. (In this case, the empty article "New page name" would be created).

Of course, you can also create the link yourself, in a related page, index page or your user page. However, it may be better to wait with creating links until after creating your article with the 'Add a New Article' link on the left, especially if the new link replaces one to an existing page.

Using the sandbox and user sub-pages

The sandbox can be used for temporary experimentation, but is emptied on a regular basis. For drafting an article, we recommend you write it offline in a word processor, then copy and paste it into a new article when it is ready. You can then insert images and correct the formatting once your first draft is up and readable.

A special area is reserved for you to have a general editing space for use as a blog, personal information dump, article playground or whatever you want to share, but you must be a registered user to use it. Simply go to your user page within the forums and follow the link to your personal article page.

How to edit an article

You can learn the specifics of basic and intermediate editing in our easy to read Editing Tutorial. Editing is easy and very similar to posting in forums. UBB code is not supported, but there are plenty of buttons above the editor to make editing simple.

Images

Adding images to your article is a little bit more complicated than if this were a forum. Read our Image Tutorial for more information and explanations on why this is so, as well as all you need to know to become an image master.

Minor edits

A user can mark an edit as "minor". Minor edits are generally spelling corrections, formatting, and minor rearrangement of text. Users may choose to hide minor edits when viewing Recent Changes.

Marking a significant change as a minor edit is bad form. If you have accidentally marked an edit as minor, make a dummy edit, verify that the Minor Edit check-box is unchecked, and explain in the edit summary that the previous edit was not minor.

Help!

If you need any more help, then please feel free to ask in the Nuts and Bolts forum (dakka user registration is required to post there). You can also PM one of the article moderators if you dont feel comfortable posting in the forums. You can see a list of our article moderators on the Articles home page.