User:Pavithraes/Sandbox/New technical writers
 | This page has been merged to Documentation/New technical writers |
Overview
[edit]MediaWiki's documentation is a significant resource for a lot of developers and software users. It relies on its contributors for constant improvement and update.
This page contains some useful information for new technical writers to get started.
Basics
[edit]- Sign up for a Wikimedia account.
- Learn to create and edit Mediawiki pages (Wikis). Wikis can be edited using the source or visual editor. Wiki markup is used for formating the text.
See Help:Contents. - Search and navigate Mediawiki pages effectively. Checkout Special:AllPages and Namespaces.
- Learn to use templates.
- Go through the Wikimedia Documentation Style Guide.
- Familiarize yourself with the task tracking tool Phabricator and code repository Gerrit. Also see, Set up your development environment and Communicate that you work on a task at How to become a MediaWiki hacker.
- For discussions, join IRC and mailing lists.
Contributing
[edit]- Edit pages on the go. You might come across outdated, missing or incorrect content when you refer to certain pages. Make changes to the docs, file a bug report or create a new task in Phabricator. Note to discuss the issue on the talk page and understand the task creation terms on Phabricator before proceeding. See Technical documentation prioritization.
- Work on a documentation task. The tasks tagged 'good-first-bugs' are beginner friendly.
- Write new documentation, new templates, READMEs, etc. See Technical documentation templates and suggestions.
- Contribute to the Web APIs hub.
- Translate a page.
Suggestions for new writers
[edit]- Developer documentation is your primary reference; IRC, mailing lists, source code, etc., are secondary.
- Use the search bar in the top right instead of google-search for mediawiki specific search results.
- Before making major edits or starting a new page, you can create a page in your Sandbox. Replace username with your Wikimedia username and pagename with the name of the page you want to create at https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/User:username/Sandbox/pagename.
Resources
[edit]- Documentation - An overview of technical documentation.
- Manual:FAQ - Frequently asked question about MediaWiki.
- Documentation/Technical writer guide - A community help guide for Wikimedia's technical writers.
- New Developers - A guide for new Wikimedia developers.
- Developer hub - An overview of MediaWiki development.
- A beginner’s guide to writing documentation