Help:Guidelines for Editors

Becoming an Editor

To be a GAMEO editor, you need to be a registered user with a Login Name and a Password. These are initiated by GAMEO Managing Editor Richard Thiessen, Librarian at Columbia Bible College in Abbotsford, British Columbia, or Associate Managing Editor Sam Steiner, former Librarian & Archivist at Conrad Grebel University College, Waterloo, Ontario.

If you have been invited to serve as an editor, one of the managing editors will send you an email with your Login Name (which will be a combination of your first and last name) and a temporary password. After you log in for the first time, you should change your password to one of your choice. It should be at least ten characters long. We recommend that it be a combination of letters and numbers, and possibly even including a special character like a #, % or some such.

User Information and Preferences

User Page

When you login you will see your name on the righthand side near the top. Clicking on this link will bring you to your personal User Page. Here you can provide information about yourself, and upload a photo if you wish.

Talk Page

Immediately to the right of your name is a link to a "Talk" page. If you create this page, it is a place to communicate with other editors about things related to GAMEO, (or not, if you wish.)

Preferences

You should spend some time in the Preferences link.

User Profile - Here you see your user name and id number, as well as statistics about what you've done. Provide a Real Name and sure your email address is correct. Change your password if you've only had a temporary one.

Appearance - Accept the defaults, except to change image size limit to 1024x768px and thumbnail size to 300px.

Date and Time - This is up to your preference.

Editing - Accept the defaults until you are familiar enough with using MediaWiki to make changes. Please do not use external editors.

Recent Changes - This your preference, but you should probably start with default settings.

Watchlist, Search, Misc and Semantic MediaWiki - Start with the defaults; change when you have a reason to do so.

Available Help Pages

Help Pages That Are Available Include:

Guidelines for Editors – Guidelines for basic creation and editing of GAMEO articles. (This Help Page.)

Guidelines for Reviewers – Guidelines for reviewers to "publish" or "reject" articles, to add images, maps or other multi-media to articles.

GAMEO Style Sheet – This tells you how we do things, e.g. spell out numbers under 10, then use numerals; style to use in bibliographic entries, etc. Although it’s boring reading, you need to be familiar with this, or a Reviewer may send an article back to you for correction.

Common Abbreviations – These are bibliographical sources frequently used in articles in the print Encyclopedia, as well as newer forms. You can use this information to “cut and paste” into your bibliography on occasion, especially if you’re helping to enter articles from volumes 1-5.

Templates – Here are a variety of templates to consult when you’re writing a new article or extensively revising a current article. Biographies (Standard) Biographies (Brief) Congregations Institutions Periodicals Assigned Articles – This is an older listing of biographies and institutional articles that are being worked on/assigned by regional Mennonite historical societies in Canada. Writing a New Article To begin a new article:

Go to the “Tools” tab, and click on “Open Drafts Folder”. Click on “Add New” on the gold bar on the right, and select “GAMEO Article” Here you see a form with lots of blanks to fill out. Don’t worry – generally you’re dealing with only a few of them. Before proceeding for the first time, look at the five clickable tabs at the top. Default – This is where you are now at the blank form. Categorization – We have the option of filling in location and language, but we will allow these to remain blank and language neutral. Dates – This is used with News releases and Event information. We do not time constrain encyclopedia articles. Ownership – You will see your name listed as “Creator.” You can leave the fields blank. Copyright information is automatically inserted. Settings – Leave “Allow Comments” and “Exclude from Navigation” blank. You do not need to worry that an incomplete draft will be seen by the public – it is not visible until it is published. Now return to “Default” Completing the Basic Article Form Fill in “Title” with the approved form of entry, e.g. Darmstadt (Hesse, Germany); Dathenus, Petrus (ca. 1531-1588), etc. Leave “Description” blank. Anything filled in here will show up like a subtitle in the article. Fill in “Index ID” with the same information as you have in the title, e.g. Darmstadt (Hesse, Germany); Dathenus, Petrus (ca. 1531-1588), etc. Plone will create the Index ID with this information. It will eliminate blanks and special characters, and will insert underscores for you. Fill in publication location with: encyclopedia/contents It must be entered exactly as shown (but doesn’t have to be boldfaced), anything else will mean the article cannot be published. This also means no space at the end. Ignore the next check boxes (Parent Table of Contents; Source Document) In “Body Text” either type in the content or paste it in from your Word, WordPerfect or other document. The toolbar above this form shows various editing features you can use, not unlike a word processor. A few may not be obvious – the “tree” is for an external link (not usually used in the basic article); the “chain link” is for links to other GAMEO articles (you’ll use this a lot); the “anchor” is for linking to a lower spot in the article if it is a large article with subheadings and the like. This will not usually be the case. The “table” is to create tables. If you do need to create a table, generally use the defaults. (See g. for using a table in inserting an illustration.) If the article is long, you can experiment with the drop down where the default is “normal paragraph” The “html” tab takes you to the raw html if you are comfortable in using that.

If you cut and paste an article into this field it is good to highlight the whole article and click on “Normal Paragraph”. You may also need to click on "Remove Style." This will help ensure uniform formatting. You can eliminate extra space between paragraphs if necessary.

You probably have a number of proper names, institutional names or geographic locations in your article. We encourage you to create links to other GAMEO articles as much as possible. There are three ways to do this. Highlight the name or term you want to create a link from, e.g. “Palatinate” and click on the “chain link”. This brings up a search box. Fill in the term (perhaps you’ve copied it your clipboard and can paste it in). Hit the “Enter” key to start the search. Plone will give a list of terms that match the search. Look for the article that you want to link to – it may be somewhat further down the list, or the search may tell you that it found nothing. Click the term (the full title of the article will show up beneath the search box) and click OK if this is the desired article. The term is now a greenish color and is underlined. Follow the same procedure for any other links you want to create. (remove any paretheses in your term, or you will get an error message. The search box does accept letters with diacritics) Sometimes a term is very common, e.g. Pennsylvania, Palatinate, Menno Simons, Canadian Conference of Mennonite Brethren Churches. You can also open another session of GAMEO and open “Common Links” (listed on the Tools page). This is a page of links to commonly used terms – mostly geographic places and institutions. You can then copy the appropriate link and paste over your term in the article. If necessary you can modify the spelling to match the way the term was used in your article. Alternatively, if the search result is too long, or the term includes a diacritic, open GAMEO in another browser session. If the results of your search in option 1 are too long, go to the encyclopedia and browse to find the article I am looking for. Once located it, simply note the file name, go back to option 1, and search for the file name instead of the article name. That is especially helpful when looking for articles with diacritics.

If you wish to insert an illustration into text (an illustration already in the database, or that has been uploaded by a managing editor), go the paragraph where the illustration is to be placed. Click on the table box. Indicate there will be two rows and one column in the table. Uncheck the box for "Create Heading." Then click "Add table." This will create an empty table above the paragraph where you wish the illustration. With the cursor in the top cell of the table, click on the "tree" to find an image. The search box will in the images folder -- search for the image, you can use the file name of the image if you know it. When you select the right image, it will give you a choice on the size of the image to be displayed in the picture. Our default is the "mini" 200 x 200 pixels. In the bottom cell of the table place the caption for the illustration. This usually also includes the source of the image. Highlight the caption, click on the dropdown edit box and select the style "Image subtext." This creates italicized in a slightly smaller font. Now click on the image that is in the top cell and click on the "chain" to create a link to the full size of the image. You should be able to search again for the image. Now you need to decide whether you want the image table to be on the left or on the right. Click on "htlm" and look for the line that reads "

". It should contain your caption and other html code. Now insert align="left" or align="right" just before the last angle, i.e. . Be sure there is a space between "plain" and "align". Click on "html" again and you should see the image where you want it! If not try again, or ask for help from a managing editor. Skip the Commentary box – this is used only with some large articles that are mounted by the managers. Skip the check box for “Use Parent Bibliography.” This is used by Managers in creating Large Articles. The Bibliography form is similar to the “Body Text” form. Make sure your bibliography follows the correct style. Again be sure "normal paragraph" is the format for entries on this page. If there is a reference to an online historical source, you may create an external link to that site. Highlight the term as you would for internal links, but click on the "tree." This brings up a place to fill in the web address for the site. You can check that it works, and then say OK. Skip footnotes; this is only used in some “source” document. We do not use footnotes in regular articles. Skip the check box for “Use Parent Additional Information” The Additional Information form will be where you might place a link to the website of the church or institution the article is about. For a congregation or institution you may provide “Directory Information” in this section (Address, phone, conference/professional affiliations, etc.). Use the form: Address: 32 Weber Street West, Kitchener, Ontario N2H 3Z2 Phone: 519-578-4900 Website: Rockway Mennonite Church Denominational Affiliations: Mennonite Church Eastern Canada Mennonite Church Canada We do not put email addresses in the directory fields. If you have tables for listing pastors, membership, board chairs or whatever, they also go into “Additional Information” Other things you may wish to place in this area are: A link to Worldcat for articles about books, hymnbooks or periodicals to provide information on where a book might be located. See Agape (Periodical) for an example. Instructions on making links to Worldcat can be found at: http://www.worldcat.org/links/. If there are multiple editions of the work, you may want to use a title search. For an example see Alt-Evangelische Mennonitische Brüderschaft in Russland (1789-1910). Use the OCLC, ISSN or ISBN search if only one edition of an item has appeared. A link to an online copy of a work that is not part of the bibliography. This is similar to an external link to an organization relevant to the article. See Offer des Heeren for an example. Skip the check box for “Use Parent Citing Information”; this is used only in large articles. Fill in the Author boxes as indicated. This is the person who created the content. That’s you if you wrote the article, or the actual author if you are doing the inputting for them. If there is only one author, leave Author2 blank. If there is only one author, and the author has a middle initial, do not put a period after the initial in the first box. If there are two authors, do use a period after middle initials. This information is copied into the “How to Cite this Article” at the bottom of the articles. Fill in month and year in the “Last Written” box, e.g. December 2007. There is no comma between month and year. If you putting in an article from the print edition, if the article is from volume 1 use the year 1955; for volume 2 use 1956, for volume 3 use 1957, and for volume 4 use 1959. If the content clearly indicates it was written at another time you can use that year. If you are entering an article from the print encyclopedia, check the “Use Herald Press Info” box, and also fill in the “Herald Press Citing Info” in the manner of: Vol. 3, p. 76 (no period at the end) or Vol. 2, pp. 11-12 Otherwise leave these spaces blank. Click “Save” Check over what you’ve done. You will see the State is “Draft” in the right end of the gold bar. If you need to make corrections, click edit and make your revisions. If you click “Sharing” do not change any settings, you will only restrict persons from seeing the article. If you are satisfied with the draft, click on “State” and select “Submit for Review.” One of the Reviewers will look over the article, and either “Publish” it to public view, or return it to you for further work, hopefully with comments. If you wish to add an image to the article, you will need to forward the image to Richard Thiessen or Sam Steiner. Provide a full-size image (up to 800 pixels on the long side is fine) and the caption to go with the image. Give the source of the image if possible. There are instructions in 4.g for adding an illustration that already exists in GAMEO. If you go back to your Dashboard, you will see the new article listed among “recent changes.” Other registered users will see it as well. However, if you log out and search for the article as a public user you will not find it. Editing Current articles 1. If you want to go back and edit an article that you created earlier, you can search for the article (when you are logged on) and see that its state is “Published” on the right end of the gold bar. You can click on “State” and select “Modify”. This will give you the option to edit; the fields will look the same as when you created the article. You then will "Submit for Review" again when you are ready. 2. If you want to edit an article you did not submit you will need to ask one of the moderators to make you the “owner” of the article. We can change the "Creator" to include your ID, thus allowing you to edit the article.