VUSSC/Mauritius BC/wiki guidelines

Recommended page nodes for use by VUSSC in WikiEducator
To improve organisation and navigation in WikiEducator, we have separated planning and organisation documentation from the actual content being developed. Please keep the following in mind when creating new pages:


 * 1) All major documents and initiatives relating to VUSSC are linked from the VUSSC page node;
 * 2) There is a separate link from the VUSSC node that has been created for the  Mauritius Bootcamp. In other words, please do not create page links for the Bootcamp on the VUSSC node. These should be listed on the  Mauritius Bootcamp node.
 * 3) Planning documents must be separated from content development pages. Planning documents include, for example: agendas; curriculm outlines; project plans; minutes of meetings; and profiles of participants. Participating members of the Mauritius bootcamp are free to add pages and links to support their work on the Bootcamp node.
 * 4) Content pages are developed in a separate area of WikiEducator. This way visitors to WikiEducator who are interested in finding content will not be confused by all the planning documentation.
 * 5) * You will find a link to VUSSC content from the general Content node in WikiEducator;
 * 6) * Course content for VUSSC initiatives are listed on the VUSSC Content node;
 * 7) * A separate content "home page" is created for each discrete area of content being developed. For example, Tour Guiding;
 * 8) Structure is important, and we need to use a syntax that will keep track of all our content pages in a way that is easy to find. Therefore you must read the following section on how to create new pages within WikiEducators structure.

How to create pages that keep structural relationships in tact
The structure of a wiki is best described as a network. Each page in a wiki is potentially a node of the network, and can link to any other page in this network. The only requirement is that you do not use the same page name twice. However, educational content is more structured and we must find ways of linking pages without losing their logical structures and relationships with other pages. Fortunately the Mediawiki software we are using is very powerful and there are easy ways to link pages according to their logical and structural relationships with other pages. There are essentially two ways of doing this:


 * 1) The hard way, or the
 * 2) easy way.

Both are illustrated below because there are occasions where you might want to use the more complicated syntax.

The easy way of linking pages
Use this method to link a subordinate page directly from the parent page. For example, to create a sub-page called Tiger from the parent page called Big Cats,


 * 1) Make sure you are on the parent page node, in our example Big Cats
 * 2) Create a new wiki page in the normal way (from the parent page) using two square brackets. However, the new page name is preceded by a backslash ("/"). For example:  /Tiger 
 * 3) This will create a link as if you used Big-Cats/Tiger or from another page What ever page you are on/Tiger
 * 4) However, this will display the link with the backslash ("/") which may be confusing to some readers. There are two ways you can fix this:
 * 5) * Adding an extra slash:  /Tiger/  or
 * 6) * By creating a piped link for example:  Tiger  - this is useful when the page link contains a number of slash arguments.

The harder way
This method requires you to specify the full slash argument containing all the sublevels including the parent and resepective children. It is useful when creating or linking a sub-page when you are not on the actual parent page. For example, lets assume you want to create a page called "Mypage" linked from the bootcamp page.

 Mypage 
 * 1) You can create this link from any page in the wiki - in other words, you do not have to create the link from the parent page. Lets assume that you want to create the "Mypage" link from this page.
 * 2) You would use the following sytax to create your new page that is linked to the Mauritius Bootcamp hierarchy:
 * 1) This syntax results in the following link, note the piping text "Mypage" after the "|"character, which will not display the full breadcrumb (VUSSC/Mauritius_BC/Mypage) as the link:
 * 2) * Mypage
 * 3) Visit the link above and you will see that Mediawiki automatically generates a breadcrumb linking back to the parent node.