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How To Get An Account so you can Contribute

1. Click "Request Account". Fill in your "RealName" (no spaces), email, political party-state (ie. R-IA), write at least 50 words about yourself. Optional: upload your resume. Click to verify your email.

2. Go to your email folder on your phone or computer and click on the first link which this website sent you.

3. It will take you back here where you can submit your request for approval by a SAVETHEWORLD administrator. Click "create your account".

4. When a genuine human finds your request, and see you are a genuine human, he will approve your request and email you a temporary password. Click on the link, log in with the temporary password, change it to the password you want to keep, and your account is activated. One more step before you edit: go to "preferences" on the left, and confirm your email account AGAIN.

Your request for an account will NOT be rejected for disagreement about politics or religion. You CAN be rejected for not being a human. Or for imitating spam robots by peddling health, wealth, or lust.

If something doesn't work, please contact me, Dave Leach, at Biblewizard at) gmail.com or DaveLeach (at Saltshaker.US. Needed: volunteer computer wizard.

Want to read a more detailed description of how to get an account? See How To Get An Account - in Detail

RESOURCES

Rules are designed to facilitate productive dialog and limit hostility. Talk Tips are suggestions how to make your contributions persuasive. Forum#How to use the software shows a few cool things you can do with a little bit of code. Template has words and codes you can copy and paste. Forum#Ways you can contribute shows ways you can contribute: from the simplest - entering a comment on the "discussion" page, to adding corrections, more evidence, argument, etc to main pages, to starting new articles.

WHAT you can contribute, and HOW to do it

Add a comment on a "Discussion" page (Easiest)

No code required! This the most familiar way to contribute: it is like posting a "comment" after an ordinary article or blog, or in social media. The discussion page is most appropriate if your point is general, and not directed to any specific point on the article page.

How to do it: For each article, notice the list on the left edge of the screen. Half way down is the heading "This page". Under that is "Discussion". Click "Discussion". The page that takes you to will have the headline "Talk:" followed by the headline of the article. Click the "Edit" tab to the right of the title, or "Edit" in the list at the left edge of the screen. Write your comment!

Sign & Line On the next line after your comment, type (~~~~) (to identify you), and on the next line, (----) (dashes, not underlines, will create a horizontal line).

Review. Before you click "save", you might want to click "Review", which will show you what it will look like with the codes activated and not visible. Then "save".

(Why the ~'s and -'s? Those funny squiggles at the upper left of your keyboard (~) are called "tildes". Four of them will leave your SAVETHEWORLD "signature" when you finish editing, which will include your Real Name, the political party on your voter registration card, (or "N" if you are not a citizen), the two-letter abbreviation of your state (or country), and your phrase about yourself. The four dashes will leave a horizontal line across the screen, to separate your comment from other comments. (You don't HAVE to use that code. You can type it out if you would rather.)

(Weird Codes.You may be the first one to comment! If there are already several comments, you may see a bunch of weird codes with the text. Don't fear them. They are your slaves. But if you don't believe in slavery you don't HAVE to use them.)

Add your comment in the article itself, right next to what you are addressing (Easy)

Finding where to start: The best spot to add may be after the paragraph that you want to address. Find the first subheading above where you want to add, and click "Edit" at the right of the subheading. Scroll down to where you want to add.

Marking your territory. After you decide where to contribute, mark it with 4 dashes, (----)which will put a horizontal line across the page after you finish editing. Go down a little bit and put another 4 dashes. Do your contributing between those two lines. Before the second line, type 4 tildes, (~~~~) which will add your signature (name, party, state, phrase about you) and time.

Headings. Begin with a word or phrase describing the nature of your contribution. For example:

"Correction" if you are addressing an error so plain that you expect your correction will be widely accepted.

"Clarification" if you can explain the article's points better.

"Friendly Amendment" if you have another point to make with which you think the article's author will probably agree.

"Corroboration" if you can make the article's point stronger with more information.

"Evidence" if there are relevant facts you can document.

"Argument" or "Rebuttal" if you have a different view which was not addressed but should be, which you are ready to support with reasoning or evidence;

"Opinion" or "Consideration" if the value of your contribution is subjective, so that you can't really prove your view is more accurate but it is at least as valid.

Review, and then save your work. You may want to use the following basic codes:

Boldface, '''Bold,''' for your heading. If you don't want the labor of typing the three apostrophes on either side of what you want to be "bold", just highlight your heading and then click the "B" on the top left of your edit area.

Horizontal Line, (----) to mark the top and bottom of your territory. You can type four dashes, or just click the horizontal line on the right of the code toolbox on the top left of your edit area. (The line produced will be solid, not broken like ---.)

Your Signature, 4 tildes, (~~~~), explained above.

Links [http://example.com] in case you want to support your reasoning with a link to another website. (To automatically put this code around your link, highlight your link, and click the image of the globe in the code toolbox on the upper left of the edit screen.)

Internal Links [[Example]] in case you want to link to another page on this website. (To automatically put this code around your link, highlight your link, and click the Ab in the code toolbox on the upper left of the edit screen.)

Edit Another's Article, Work With the TOC, Start a New Article (Interesting)

Minor edits of others' material. If yours is a "minor edit" that doesn't add new information or change any meaning, such as correcting a typo, awkward grammar, or simplifying an awkward train of thought, perhaps with better word choices that strengthen the flow of thought, you needn't sign your name to it. If you think your correction will be obviously better to anybody, just make the change. (A record of when you did it will be available to anyone who cares.) If there is any doubt whether the author might prefer his writing the way it is, another way to handle it is to put your clearer reading in [brackets].

Work with the TOC You can make your contribution show in the table of contents at the beginning of the article, and if so, where in the TOC. This would probably not be appropriate if your contribution is only a short paragraph, or if it is in the middle of a section so that your insertion in the TOC would leave the last part of the section unrepresented in the TOC.

But if you have very much to say, and if your contribution turns the train of thought in a different direction than the existing TOC indicates, then instead of a line at the top of your contribution, put "equals" signs (=) on either side of your heading.

How many "equals" signs?

Use the same number of "equals" signs as surrounds the previous subheading, if your content is a subdivision of that train of thought as the previous heading covers.

Add one additional "equals" signs on each side of your heading, if your content is a different train of thought from what the previous heading covers.

Be sure to check the TOC after you save, to make sure it displays as you intend.

If your addition divides a subject, leaving the portion after your addition unrepresented in the TOC, then just below the bottom line, quote the previous subheading followed with "- Continued".

Starting a New Article. Suppose you have started to make your point and realize you don't want to stop for several pages! Time for a separate article! If what you want to say is very long - too long to fit in the existing article without disrupting its focus, yet relevant and important - you can put your complete content in a separate article which you can create from scratch, and add only a summary and link to the article that you want to address. Simply use the instructions to this point to make a summary of your point in the article you started addressing, and include a link to your new article.

Here's how you make the actual link: type the title you want of the new article, put two [[brackets]] on each side of it (or highlight it and click the Ab in the code toolbox at the upper left of your edit area) and "Save" your editing. After your editing box is closed and your edits saved, your article title will be activated. It will be red, indicating no article exists there yet. Click on it, and the website will take you to a new page where you can start writing your new article, which will already have a link to it from the article you began addressing. How cool is that?

You should also go to the list of articles under "Forum" (the leftest tab in the contents box at the top of most pages) and add your article to the list - in the same way: type your article title with two brackets on either side.

Listing your title that way under "Forum" is also a good way to begin writing an article from scratch. Once you "save" it, the link is activated and it takes you to where you can write the article.

Titles are case sensitive: if the capitalization in the article doesn't match that in the link, the link won't work.

Advantages of mirror articles. If you post articles elsewhere, you can "mirror" them here too, and link each article to its mirror. Overdoing this may trigger penalties from search engines. (Who knows? They change every week.) But the legitimate reason here is that the two kinds of formats complement each other: a blog post preserves the original version, while the Wiki invites more reader feedback where quality is encouraged by (1) the prohibition of ad hominem attacks, (2) the possibility of very specific feedback by posting it next to the subject matter referred to, and (3) the interaction with other readers, with the option of keeping contributions distinct or of merging comments to eliminate redundancy, or both.

Formatting

You can use formatting to make your contributions look great: bold, italics, colors, indenting, links, pictures.

The code tools in the code toolbox at the upper left of every edit screen are, from left to right: Bold, Italics, Internal link, External link, Embedded file (a photo, for which you might need special permission), File Link (not sure this works here), No Wiki (put this around wiki code and it won't activate the code but instead will let readers see it), and Horizontal Line.

Endless formatting possibilities are explained at MediaWiki.org.

Basics: To create a new article, go to The Forum#Index of Articles Posted, click "Edit", type your title in the list at the bottom, and surround it with double brackets. Click "Save" at the bottom; then your title will become clickable. Click on it, and a new blank page with that title will appear, ready for you to write. Easier way: to create a new article without listing it on this page, just type your article title in the search box and click "search".

To separate paragraphs, put a space between them with your "enter" key.

If you would like this kind of a highlighted box, 
put <blockquote style="background: pink; 
border: 2px solid rgb(153, 153, 153); padding: 
1em;"><pre> at the beginning, and 
<nowiki>

</nowiki> at the end

of your box text. You can change the color to yellow or gray and you can read black words in it. You can change to red or blue but they are too dark to read black text. Also you have to break up your paragraph into short lines with a space starting each line because otherwise your words will run off the screen. They won't "wrap". Which is a real bummer if you have something very important to say which you put off to the very end. </pre></blockquote>

<wikicode>Here's another way to highlight text.</wikicode>

With <code>(your paragraph)</code> the text will wrap, and the greyed text box will only go as far as the text does, but each line will have its own distinct box instead of a single box for the whole paragraph.

To indent a paragraph about 3 spaces, put a colon (:) at the beginning. The whole paragraph will be indented; you don't have to break it up into short lines.

To indent both the left and right sides of a paragraph about 7 spaces, put <blockquote> at the beginning of the paragraph and </blockquote> at the end.

To make symbols appear which normally are part of wiki formatting code, such as angle brackets (<>) or regular brackets ([]), surround the symbols with <nowiki>__</nowiki>

To sign your contribution, type 4 "tildes". (~~~~)Those are the squiggles (~) in the upper left of your keyboard. When you click "save", your name, state, and political party will be posted.

Copying and pasting Wordpress articles. If you are copying lots of text, or a whole article, from another post, some html will work here but not all. What will not, will show up as garbage text which you will have to delete.

For example, <b>html code for "bold"</b> works in wiki software as well as the preferred ''' on each side of what you want in bold. The same goes for <i>html code for "italics"</i> instead of the preferred '' on either side, and <H1>html code for "Heading"</H1> instead of the preferred equals signs on either side. (No guarantees the html will still work when the wiki software is updated.) Outbound links in html don't work, however.

But if you copy and paste "rich text" - that is, where the codes don't appear but the formatting and links all look great, none of the formatting or links will transfer; just the plain text. The icons that appear at the top of your edit space when you click "edit" will help you reconstruct them.

More about the icons that appear when you edit

Internal link - 3rd icon from left: To link to any article on this site, called an "internal link", type the title of that article and either enclose it with double brackets or highlight it and click the "Internal Link" icon. The link is case sensitive, so capitalize the way the article title reads. To link to a section within the article, place a hashtag (#) after the headline title and type the subheading title after the hashtag. Copy whatever spaces are between the words of either title, but don't put a space on either side of the hashtag.

Characters like question marks, when part of an article or section title you want to link to, can make it more complicated. They probably won't work if you copy them faithfully. A special code for the character may be necessary. To find this code, go to the article and/or section you want. Look at the url line (web address) at the top of your browser. If the link you want is to a section within an article and the URL is just to the article but not to the section, click "edit" by the section title, then "save" below it, and the URL will point to the section. Then copy the code it displays, or the whole title in the URL after "savetheworld", and surround that with double brackets to create an internal link. To make it more pleasant to look at you can replace the underlines with spaces.

One problem with internal links in wiki software, depending perhaps on the computer settings, is that internal links look so much like other text that it is hard to tell they have links. To make them more visible, add 3 apostrophes (''') on either side of the link, which is the code that makes text bold. But put it outside the double brackets, because if it is inside the brackets it will alter the link so that the program won't recognize it as to an article that exists. For that reason you have to add the apostrophes manually; you can't do it by double clicking the word to select it and clicking the "Bold" icon. Or, you can use the "bold" icon if you select not only the words of the link but the double brackets.

For more about internal and external links: Help:Links

External Link To link to any other web page, type the word(s) you want the link on, highlight it or them, and click the globe icon, 4th from left. In the box that appears, type the complete web address (URL) including the http://... To do the same thing manually, type a left bracket, then the web address, a space, the words you want linked, and then a right bracket. If you just type the URL (web address), including the http://, that will activate the link, if you don't need another word or phrase linked.

COLOR!

To make a word have colour, use: <span style="color:hex triplet or colour name">text</span>

Examples:

• <span style="color:red">red writing</span> shows as red writing
• <span style="color:#0f0">green writing</span> shows as green writing
• <span style="color:#0000FF">blue writing</span> shows as blue writing

Caution: wiki software uses red to indicate a headline for an article not yet created, and blue to indicate a headline for an article that has been created. So if you use red or blue for single words or very short phrases, that will only confuse people who will try to click on it, expecting a link. So only use red and blue for whole sentences or paragraphs. The link below gives more color options.

More information.

More tools:

Consult the User's Guide for information on using the wiki software.

OPTIONAL: Correcting a comment after you post it: the problem, and the opportunity

5. Another thing you can do here that you can't do with ordinary comments software, is change a comment after you have posted it. This creates the possibility of a small problem and a tremendous opportunity.

The small problem is that if you do it after someone else has already responded to what you are now changing, it could cause the response to not make sense. To eliminate that problem, please add, after or with your change, something like "(My comment used to say....)" In other words, just provide enough explanation so that the response to what you had said before can make sense.

The tremendous opportunity over traditional "comments" opportunities is that should one person in a comment stream persuade another, the one persuaded can more easily erase from his record all but a trace of what he now renounces. Consensus requires a lot of this, and the survival of civilization depends on more consensus.

Mind your own business

6. You will notice that when you are on the "edit" page, you have the power to edit other people's work. That doesn't mean you have the authority, any more than the power to grab candy off the store shelf without paying for it doesn't give you the authority to do it without unwelcome consequences.

On the discussion page you are authorized to make only three kinds of changes to the contributions of others: (1) fix obvious typos, (2) where grammar is very hard to understand (perhaps because the author's main language is not English) and you are sure what the author meant, you can insert corrected grammar [in brackets] after the poor grammar, and (3) if someone hits you with a "personal attack", you can grey it out. See Rules for how and when to do it.