How to edit IFWiki

IFWiki is a wiki, which means that anyone can easily edit nearly any article and have those changes appear immediately on that page.

How to edit a page

Editing a wiki page is very easy. (You'll need to create an account first, though.)

1. On the page you want to edit, click on "Actions," then "Edit". For some pages with infoboxes, you can click on "Edit with form" instead of "Edit."

2. Edit the text of the page. If you want to add a heading, bold text, and so on, you can use the formatting toolbar. (For more formatting help, see these MediaWiki help pages: Help:Formatting and Help:Contents.)

3. Please write a short summary of your changes in the "Summary" box. You can mark an edit as being "minor" if it only contains spelling corrections, formatting, or minor rearrangement of text.

4. Click "Show preview" to see how your changes will look.

5. If you're happy with what you see, press "Save changes" and your changes will be immediately applied to the article.

Automatic formatting of code is now possible on the wiki. Just use the <syntaxhighlight> tag to enclose code. See the extension's page on the MediaWiki website for full details.

If you want to experiment before you try editing a real page, please do so on the sandbox page.

How to add a new page

First, search to check that the page doesn't exist already.

If you want to add software or event pages, then please use the forms at Form:Software and Form:Event respectively.

To create other kinds of pages, you can do one of the following:

Option 1: Edit an existing page. Create a link on that existing page by adding [[New page name]]. When you save the page a red link will appear. You can click on the red link to create the missing page.

Option 2: Type https://www.ifwiki.org/New page name into your browser address bar. You will be prompted to create the page.

How to fix broken links

See Replacing dead links.

How to use Talk/Discussion pages

Most IFWiki pages have a corresponding Talk page for discussion. You can get to the Talk page by clicking on the "Discussion" tab.

To add a comment:

1. Click "Actions" and then "Edit." If you want to start a new discussion, you can click on "Actions" and then "+" (this will add a new section at the bottom of the page).

2. Type your comment. If you are replying to someone else's comment, you can indent your comment by typing a colon (or colons), for example:

:: This comment begins with two colons, so it will be indented twice. ~~~~

3. Sign your comment by adding four tildes (~~~~) at the end. When you save the page, the tildes will automatically be converted to your user name and the date and time of your comment, which will appear something like this:Ben Brockert 00:18, Nov 19, 2024 (UTC).

4. Click "Save Changes" (or, if you want to see how it will look before you save it, click "Show Preview" first).

Databases, forms, and infoboxes

IFWiki has various databases that allow information to be searched, browsed, and displayed on multiple pages across IFWiki:

A software database for details about authoring systems, interpreters, and utilities
An event database for details about competitions, jams, conferences, and meetings

The way to add information to one of these databases is by using a form.

There are a few different ways to open up the appropriate form:

Option 1: Go to Form:Software for software, or Form:Event for events, and type the name of the software (for example, Lectrote) or event (for example, IFComp 2026).

Option 2: If the wiki page already exists for that software or event, go to that wiki page, click on the "Actions" menu, and click “Edit with form." (If "Edit with form" does not appear, you will have to use Option 1, above.)

Option 3: If the wiki page for that software or event already has an infobox, you can look for an "Edit this infobox" link in the infobox.

Details that have been added via these forms are displayed in an infobox (for example, software details about QTads appear in an infobox on the QTads page).

When you update details using the form, that information automatically gets updated in the infobox and on other pages, too. For example, software details are automatically updated in the various recommended lists of interpreters, and upcoming events are automatically displayed on the front page of IFWiki.

Tips

We prefer a neutral point of view in most of our articles.
You can click "Tools" then "What links here" to find which articles already link to the current article. Make sure those links make sense. If those links shouldn't link to your article, they need to be edited to point to where they should point. See also: Category:Disambiguation.
Add links both to and from your articles. Wiki pages work best when they support each other. Reduce the number of "orphan pages" when you can.
Add a category to your pages. Every page should belong to a category, except Main Page and the Basics category itself. If you use a form to edit the page (such as the software form or the event form, the form may add a category automatically.

What should I edit?

For a list of current projects that you can help with, please see the Current Projects section of the About IFWiki page.

Questions?

If you are having trouble editing IFWiki, try asking for help on the Interactive Fiction Community Forum or contacting an IFWiki administrator.