Sustainable Trails Toolbox Users' Guide

General Structure

Each resource (publication - paper, book, manual or other material included in the toolbox) gets a page with a structured description. The description is written in a wiki-style markup language, where different parts of the text can be marked as (sub)titles, or highlighted (bold and/or italic), numbered or bulleted lists, internal or external references (links).

According to our current convention, the title of each page should start with the title of the publication it is referring to, followed by the name of the author and its year of publication in brackets. If the original title is not in English, an English translation of the title should be separately added in brackets between the original title and the author-year pair.

We usually provide a link to the referenced resource only, but it is technically possible to upload a file and link it to the page internally.

Each page can be assigned to one or more categories, based on its topic(s). See more on categories below.

A category itself is also a page and may have a description. A category page is prefixed with Category: in its title. This prefix can be used for searching categories and creating new categories as well. For example, to search for or refer to the category Bridges, you may enter Category:Bridges.

Everything which appears as a red link, means that is a link to a page which does not exist (have not been created) yet. Clicking on a red link opens a form for contributors to create the missing page (including categories).

Category Tree

Categories are organized into a tree-like structure, whith parent-child (category-subcategory) relationships. Each category is linked to its parent category. For example, the child Category:Blazing has Category:Trail Marking as its parent, and this relationship must have been defined in the subcategory Category:Blazing.

Some categories may have multiple parents, therefore, categories form actually a directed acyclic graph, not a classical tree.

Furthermore, categories may be linked to others if they are found to be related by contributors, to help visitors browse among related content. This liking is different than assigning a parent category.

The general root category is Category:All, which has the main general dimensions of our categorization as direct children, such as scale, environment character, sustainability pillar. Categories can be nested in an arbitrary level.

It is advised to assign the most specific category or categories to each page, related to its content.

Searching for Content

One or more words can be entered into the search box and hitting enter will list the pages in which the typed words can be found. The search looks in page titles primarily, and in the full text of page contents, secondarily. By default, only the pages (corresponding to publications) are searched for their content.

To search not only in pages, but in categories as well, click on Everything in the search page. This will include all content, including the categories too.

To search for categories, or pages belonging to a category, you add Category: as a prefix to the category name. It will retrieve the category page, if exists, the pages and direct subcategories belonging to that category. If pages assigned to its subcategories are to be listed, or subcategories of subcategories, then these can be listed for each subcategory separately, by opening the corresponding subcategory page.

Browsing and Listing Content

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Editing Content

Wiki markup explanation for formatting text and creating references https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Help:Formatting

Uploading a File

Normally it is enough to provide an external link to the resource/publication. It is, however, possible to upload a file and link it to its toolbox page, by using the internal link format, and the File: prefix. You will find the file upload link on the Main page. Legal issues must be clarified in general.

Issues, Ideas & Suggestions

If, as a contributor, you find any mistake in the content, feel free to edit it. Our goal is to bring in our best as a collective, and build consensus. If there is no agreement on the content, the discussion/talk page is available to exchange opinions for any content page or category.

If you happen to have any suggestions for future improvement beyond the above, or you notice any errors in the system, please add it to this page: Toolbox Ideas & Todos.

Admin Contact

This Wiki is created and maintained by the WTN Trails and Sustainability Task Team, Nat Scrimshaw & András J. Molnár. Contributors welcome.

Contact: nat@mountainsteward.net