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

There are different ways to navigate through the wiki. One option is the search. Another one is a listing of all pages or categories, or listing the recent changes and additions. The category tree can also be retrieved and the subcategories for each branch can be opened and closed one-by-one, by clicking on the small arrow in front of them.

For each page, the category(/ies) it belongs to are listed in a side panel on the right side of the main panel of the page. The categories are clickable.

Clicking on a category will open its page, with the category description (if any), and the pages and subcategories in alphabetical order, belonging to that category.

Links are highlighted in blue, they can be used to navigate towards related content. Red links refer to missing pages. Such a page can be created or the link can be corrected to point to an existing page (for instance, if a page title has been renamed without replacing all references to it, older references may still point to the former page).

Creating a New Page

The easiest way to create a new page is to enter its title to the search box. If no page is found with that title, the system will offer the option for contributors to create it, via a red link.

Enter the contents in the big text box. Use an existing page of a similar content as a template (until official, approved templates are ready to use) in the following way: Open another browser tab or window, go to an existing toolbox wiki content page, click 'edit source' and copy the contents of that page to the clipboard (Ctrl+C). Go back to the new page and paste the contents (Ctrl+V). You may delete any specific content elements and retain the structure of the whole page as a reference. You can learn practices of using the wiki markup from it, too (such as linking, category reference, sections or lists etc). If you need to add extra data fields or content, feel free to make suitable adaptations of the template.

Do not forget to assign one or more suitable categories to the page (see below).

See more details on editing below, in section Editing Content.

After entering the contents, the page can be saved. A description field is offered to enter the summary of the edits, but it can be left blank.

Use the checkbox 'Watch this page' if you want to get notifications of any edits being made by other contributors in the future.

Referencing a Category

To add (assign) a page to a category, just put the category reference to the end of the page, in the form of double square brackets, like this: [[Category:Blazing]]. This will not appear in the text, but in the side panel on the right of the page. You may assign one or more categories, one after another (each in a new line, as recommended).

If you want additional references to that (or other) categories, which should appear explicitly in the content text, use a colon preceeding the category, like this: [[:Category:Blazing]]. Using this format will not add the page under the Blazing category, but will put a link to Blazing as a related category.

This way, the page will appear in the listing of the assigned category(/ies). Note that each page is listed only in the explicitly referenced categories, and a page assigned to a subcategory will not appear in the listing of its parent category. However, in the future, it may be considered to design & implement special inclusive listings to utilize the category tree more effectively.

Creating a Category

Creating a category is similar to creating a content page. Just write Category: as the prefix and write the desired category name. Do not add a space behind the colon. However, you may have spaces inside the category name.

Turning a category into a subcategory of another (parent) category, is done exactly the same way as adding (assigning) a page to a category. This will build up the category tree. The parent category does not have to reference its child categories.

If you want to refer to another, related category, in a way which does not create a parent-child relationship, use the colon as the starting character in the double square brackets, such as [[:Category:Blazing]]. This will be an explicit link to the referenced category page in the content text, instead of assigning the page itself to the referenced category.

Editing Content

Any authorized contributor can edit any content, and the editing history is logged for future reference and transparency. Based on that, it is also possible to revert to a previous edition of a page.

To edit any page (including a category page) click on the Edit source link. This will open a window where you can use the wiki markup syntax to enter content. Plain text is treated as usual, but special characters or arrangements have special meanings. This way you can add section headers, internal or external links, lists, other elements or formatting.

The most important elements are the following:

• Entering a newline will not break the text. If you want multiple paragraphs, add at least one empty line between them.
• A line starting with an equal sign followed by a space, and ending with a space and an equal sign will be treated as a primary section header.
• You can use multiple equal signs next to each other to create subsection headers in different levels.
• A line starting with an asterisk and a space creates a bullet list element.
• Double square brackets create internal links in the texts. Just type the exact page title in these brackets to make a clickable reference to a specific page.
• If a linked page does not exist, the link will be displayed in red. Most of the time, it indicates a spelling error. Links to existing pages are colored blue by default. However, you may intentionally link to a nonexistent page in advance and create it by clicking on the red link.
• If a category is linked (using the prefix Category:), it is not shown in the main text, but will be interpreted as an assignment of the page to the category named. If you want to explicitly link to a category, use the colon as a prefix (such as :Category:).
• Uploaded files can be linked just as any other page. Use the File: prefix for them in double square brackets.
• You can use four tildes next to each other to add your username and the date-time of your current edit. This is useful when you make personal comments, reviews, or in a page discussion (see below).

There are many other wiki markup options you may use for formatting and adding special elements. Check the general explanation here: https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Help:Formatting .

Note that there is an Edit option as well, which opens a graphical editor, where you can use a toolbar for adding special elements or formatting. Beware that not every element will be visible, and you may have issues applying some of the special markups. You can always switch back to source editing mode by clicking on the pen icon in the upper right.

After you have finished editing, you should save the page. Note that if your connection is unstable, and you are making a major edit, you might loose your work if saving of the page is not successful. Therefore, it is always recommended to copy the whole contents to the clipboard before saving, or to make only minor edits in a row.

When saving, you can give a brief comment as a description, mainly for fellow contributors, highlighting the essence and/or reason of your edit. This can be left blank if it is straightforward. You can also subscribe for future page edits, by adding the page to your watchlist (requires a registration of an e-mail address in your user profile).

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