Hiya! And welcome to Wiki!#

WikiWiki is Hawaiian and means "quick". The original idea of WikiWiki was to create a collaborative, fast environment which would still be persistent.

Anyone can contribute, even anonymously. Yes, you can delete what other people said, and even delete whole pages, but surprisingly, wiki does work.

When editing, you can easily create (and you should create) hyperlinks by just putting the word in square brackets, [like this]. If the page you are referring to does not exist, the resulting page will show the name underlined, with a following question mark. Like this: ThisPageDoesNotExist. (Please don't foil this example by creating that page...)

WikiNames that contain spaces or underscores are crushed together and capitalized, so that [This is a link] becomes [ThisIsALink].

Wiki is and should be simple. This is why there is no need for complex HTML. You can get some effects, such as bold text and italics, but nothing very complex. Layout is the problem of the Wiki itself. There is more information in TextFormattingRules.

Here's a short reminder on the most common formatting rules you have at your disposal. A complete list is available in TextFormattingRules.

(empty line)     Make a paragraph break.
----             Horizontal ruler
[link]           Create hyperlink to "link", where "link" can be either an internal 
                 WikiName or an external link (http://)
[text|link]      Create a hyperlink where the link text is different from the actual 
                 hyperlink link.
[text|wiki:link] Create a hyperlink where the link text is different from the 
                 actual hyperlink link, and the hyperlink points to a named Wiki. 
                 This supports interWiki linking.

*                Make a bulleted list (must be in first column). Use more (**) 
                 for deeper indentations.
#                Make a numbered list (must be in first column). Use more (##, ###) 
                 for deeper indentations.

!, !!, !!!       Start a line with an exclamation mark (!) to make a heading. 
                 More exclamation marks mean bigger headings.

__text__         Makes text bold.
''text''         Makes text in italics (notice that these are single quotes ('))
{{text}}         Makes text in monospaced font.
;term:def        Defines 'term' with 'def'.  Use this with empty 'term' to make short comments.
\\               Forced line break (please use sparingly).

|text|more text| Makes a table. Double bars for a table heading.

Don't try to use HTML, since it just won't work.

To embed images just put them available on the web using one of the approved formats, and they will get inlined automatically. To see the list of approved formats, go check SystemInfo.

To make a code block, use triple {'s to open, and triple }'s to close.

(Wondering where this text comes from? It's on a page called Edit Page Help, which you can edit too!)