Help:Quick Guide to Editing

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Contents

This page is about the most common editing functions you'll use over and over again as you edit and write articles on Judgepedia (JP).

Creating links

Internal links (wiki-links)

You can link to other pages within Judgepedia (for example, the Main Page) by placing double brackets around the name of the article on Judgepedia you want to link to from the page you're currently editing, in this fashion: ([[ ]]). Be sure to put the exact title of the other Judgepedia article you're linking to, including the exact capitalization of that article; otherwise, your link won't work.

Putting a link on one Judgepedia page to another JP page is known as "wiki-linking". If I put a link here to the Judgepedia Wikiteer article--like I just did--you would say that I had "wiki-linked to the Wikiteer article".

Tip: If you want to use text to describe the name of the other JP article you're directing people to other than its title, the way to do that is to add a pipe symbol ( | ) after the title of the JP article you're linking to and then type however you want to describe that article.

(Note: The pipe, or "|" symbol, is usually located on your computer keyboard on the key under your backspace key.)

  • For example:[[History of the Supreme Court|John Marhsall]]
  • Which will appear as this on the finished article: John Marshall

External links

To link to a website outside of Judgepedia, you can just type out its URL; for example: http://www.google.com.

Stylistically, it is preferred if you attach that URL to a clickable word that describes the website you're linking to. To do that, surround the URL with single brackets ([ ]), insert a space, and then type the word(s) you want to show as the link: Google Search

When you insert such an external link, a little arrow pops up after your external link. That little arrow is how you (and readers) can tell the difference between an internal link and an external link.

Inter-wiki linking

You can also place links on a Judgepedia article to articles on Wikipedia and to articles on Judgepedia's sister projects, Ballotpedia and Sunshine Review. This is known as "inter-wiki linking".

The way to insert a link on a JP article to an article on Wikipedia, Ballotpedia or Sunshine Review is as in these examples:

  • [[Wikipedia:Georgia|Georgia]], which looks on the saved page as Georgia.

Formatting commands

To use italics, surround the text with double apostrophes.

For bold text, use triple apostrophes.

If you want to super emphasize what you are writing, surround the text with five apostrophes.

If you are already comfortable with <tags>, those will work as well.

Italic, Bold, Boldly italicized!

In Wiki form: <i>Italic</i>, <b>Bold</b>, <i><b>Boldly italicized!</b></i>

You can strike out deleted text, or underline an important point. 

In Wiki form: You can <strike>strike out deleted text</strike>, or <u>underline an important point</u>.

To divide your page, you can use a horizontal line by using <tags>:

or by typing horizontal dashes:

A new line will not start a new paragraph, however, leaving a blank line will.

(Click "edit" and look at this section to get a better idea of what that means.) 


To put text in a box like this, simply put a space at the beginning of the line.

Bullet points and lists

  • bullets are created by using asterisks (*)
    • by doubling
      • or tripling the asterisks up you can deepen your lists

You can also itemize with numbered lists:

  1. numbered lists are created by using the pound (#) sign
  2. at the beginning of each line

Creating article sections

Judgepedia articles can be subdivided into sections by using headers. To create a header, put double equal signs (==) around the section title. To create a sub-section, use three equal signs (===), and so on.

Once you have a certain amount of section headers, JudgePedia will automatically create a Table of Contents for you at the top of the page.

References

Many articles include references to scholarly articles and books and reports, in the course of a passage of prose. The way to cite on Judgepedia is exactly the same as scholarly citation: with footnotes.

After the passage in question, add this language (without the extra line breaks within the tags, included here only for formatting purposes): 

<ref>''[http://books.google.com/books?id=I3mal2inJQgC&dq=
lomasky+democracy+and+decision&printsec=frontcover&source=web&ots=
lsqIY4Moic&sig=lrtppVyjbakW5v_Ky97pEkq6ZIc#PPP1,M1 Democracy and 
Decision: The Pure Theory of Electoral Preference]'', Geoffrey 
Brennan and Loren Lomasky, Cambridge University Press, 1995</ref>

and then, at the bottom of the page, add this: 

==References==
<references />

In this way, a discussion will look like this:

It appears that voters do, for the most part, vote their conscience, as philosopher Lomasky, and economists Brennan[1] and Caplan[2], have demonstrated.

Anything else?

Is there an editing question you would like to see addressed here? Click on the "discussion" tab at the top of the page, and let us know. Or add it yourself! That is the fun of Wikis, after all.

Acknowledgment: the content of this help page in Judgepedia has been adapted from Wikipedia.

Note (example)

  1. ↑ Democracy and Decision: The Pure Theory of Electoral Preference, Geoffrey Brennan and Loren Lomasky, Cambridge University Press, 1995
  2. ↑ The Myth of the Rational Voter: Why Democracies Choose Bad Policies, Bryan Caplan, Princeton University Press, 2007
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