Building a wiki is a lot like building a Minecraft world. First, stake out some some territory. Wiki “territory” can come in the form of both unexplored land, such as pages that don't exist yet, or run-down, fixer-upper pages that could use some renovation. Once you find yourself some white space, mine it out with your keyboard and build something there. If you see a block out of place, perhaps someone made a typo. Don't bother asking; just fix it!

This page explains wiki editing in a nutshell. If you think nutshells are hard, just ask the capuchin monkeys.

Anything. You can even edit the start page, or this document, but that is not always the wisest idea. The most appropriate content is automatically placed on the start page, and this document needs to reflect how the wiki actually works. In Minecraft, it is impolite to add random rooms to someone else's home. A similar etiquette applies here on the wiki—it is poor form to rearrange someone's user page on a whim. Speaking of user pages, now may be a good time to create one. Go ahead, tell us about yourself and your creations—after all, you're probably the best person for the job.

Everything you write here will be indexed by Google and saved for all eternity. As such, we ask that you obey the following two guidelines in all of your posts:

1. Refer to other players by their minecraft username. Do not use real names, aliases from other services, or any other personally-identifiable information.
2. Don't post anything you, or your fellow players, don't want the world to know.

It is possible to protect a page so that only logged-in users can view it. To protect a page, start its name with private:. The colon is important. The mumble server page is one such protected page. Please use this feature sparingly.

Choose a name for your page. If it is your user page, it should be your username. If it's about a location, it should be the name of the location. Navigate to that page and hit the Edit button. All pages should begin with a title. The title should be similar, or identical to, the name of the page. The wiki software doesn't understand, on its own, what is and is not a title—it is functionally illiterate, after all. The software needs your help to determine what part of the document is what, and the mechanism by which this is accomplished is wiki syntax. To give your page a title, type something like

====== Wiki Conventions ======

at the start of your page. The equals signs are wiki syntax that tell the wiki software that the enclosed text is a title. Wiki syntax can do all sorts of really cool things, and if you haven't followed the obvious link to wiki syntax page and skimmed it by now, you should probably take a few minutes to do so.

The big toolbar above the page edit text box can help you with the syntax, if you can't remember. If you see something cool-looking on another page that you want to include on one of yours, just edit the page, copy the syntax, and paste it into yours.

Documents should have lots of links. If you reference another player or page in your document, the reference should probably be a link. You can even reference pages that don't exist yet—the link will work if someone writes it up later. Ideally, it should be possible to go from the start page to any page on the wiki in less than three clicks. Feel free to link to things on other websites, such as the Minecraft wiki, but remember that nothing is forever—and hyperlinks are particularly short-lived.

Sometimes it is appropriate to redirect one page to another. The page on the DTA simply redirects to the Dwarven Transit Authority, as “DTA” is really just an abbreviation. To make a page redirect automatically, make the body text

#REDIRECT where_the_page_should_point_to

Your document should end with a list of descriptive tags which help the wiki software categorize the page. What does your page describe? Is it a location in the world or merely an abstract concept, such as a wish-list? To insert a tag, use the following syntax:

{{tag>some tags here}}

where each tag is separated by a space. Tag names may not have spaces in them. You might want to consider tagging pages about your locations with your username—that way, you can find them later.

Certain tags are magical—they will make the wiki software link to your page automatically. These magical tags include:

• location: Anything which describes a point, area, or region in the world should be tagged as a location. There are several specific types of location tags. These tags should be included in addition to the location tag.
  • home: Any permanently-inhabited space, such as the one in which your character resides. You can have more than one home. Any page with this tag will be listed on the start page.
  • landmark: If you've spent five hours building a complicated model of something, and you want everyone to see it, include this tag. Landmarks are also listed on the start page.
• player: Your user page should contain this tag. User pages are of supreme importance and are linked to, prominently, on the start page.

It is worth nothing that these magical tags all use the singular form—i.e., player instead of players.

There are other tags which are not magical right now, but if they become popular enough they will gain their own wiki page. These tags are:

• info: Generic information about the world that is not location-specific.
• blueprint: Plans, schematics, and designs.
• region: An article describing a large area of the world.
• your_tag: If you want to propose more standardized tags, include them here!

Tag magic is easy to learn—the incantation is relatively straightforward. Anyone can automatically generate a list of pages with one or more tags. If you've tagged a bunch of pages as butterflies and you want to list all pages which are tagged butterflies, just use

{{topic>butterflies}}

and such a list will be inserted into your page. The syntax for the tagging engine is described on an external website and not on the main syntax page.