RuneScape:Editing/Your first edit



This is part 1 of the series of editing guides of the RuneScape Wiki. This guide is a step-by-step process to your first edit - or, how to edit plain text with the visual editor.

This guide is made from the perspective of a logged-out user (or a logged-in user with default preferences).

Spotting an error
Finding an error to fix can sometimes be hard, but there are definitely pages that need fixing; the wiki is far from perfect. (All of the various cleanup categories will be covered in more detail in another guide.)

For now, lets assume you've found a page with something simple to fix (e.g. just something in the prose). I have found such an example for this demonstration: the experience section of heroic skull seems pretty poorly worded. I'm going to reword it.

Opening the editor
Opening the editor as simple; just click the Edit button at the top of the page, rightbelow the title.

You are now in the editor. It looks like the page, but some bits may move around, and there's an edit toolbar at the top. This editor is called the VisualEditor, a WYSIWYG (what you see is what you get) editor. It behaves like any word processor (e.g. Microsoft Word). Feel free to click around and explore the parts of a page and what they look like when left-/right-clicked.

Editing the page
Now, I'm just going to edit the experience section. This bit is just plain text with no additional stuff; so to edit it, we just select where to type, and type there. You can select text to copy, paste, delete, etc. A new paragraph can be created by pressing enter.

Here's my finished reword. It may not be perfect, but it should be more readable and clear. I have also added a linebreak to the above section.

Saving the edit
Saving an edit is done by clicking the 'Save page' button on the right side of the toolbar. Click it to open the save dialog. The cancel button adjacent to it cancels your edit (with a warning) and returns you to the normal page view.

In the dialog there's a textbox to put an edit summary, and three buttons. First, we're going to check the 'Review your changes' button.


 * Reviewing changes

Changes are shown to you as a diff (which you may be familiar with if you use tools like git). The left column of text (with the green theme) is the currently viewable page, and the right column (with the blue theme) is the text as you've changed it. Lines with something that has changed have a thick left border, and lines with nothing changed are flat grey. Text that has added, changed, or removed is highlighted in green on the left, and the replacement (and new) text is highlighted in blue on the right. This text is in a markup language known as wikicode (covered in greater detail with a later guide).

What we're looking for is twofold: double check our changes are what we want to do (proofread it), and see if anything has changed that should not have changed. The VisualEditor has persistent bugs that can cause it to insert/delete a lot of extraneous text. If you notice this has happened to you, it may be possible to fix it by using source mode (see source mode introduction guide); however, you might have to start the edit over. Luckily, our example edit seems fine so we'll continue.

It is optional but recommended to do this for every edit.

Clicking Return to save form brings us back to the previous form. Here we're going to add an edit summary and finally save the page.
 * Saving

An edit summary is a comment attached to your edit that isn't visible on the page itself, but is publicly viewable when looking at the changes that have been made. You should try to succinctly summarise your edit so that other editors can see what you've done. You can be as brief or descriptive as you like, but bear in mind there is a 255 characters limit. You can also use wikicode links in edit summaries, if you like.

Edit summaries aren't subject to most style policies/guidelines, but they are subject to community ones, like the user treatment policy (i.e. if you are rude to other users in a summary, that is grounds for a block as much as an edit). Edit summaries can't be changed after the fact, only deleted by an administrator (and only within certain criteria).

I've gone with simply describing the edit as "reword".

Now, we just click save. After a short time (don't close or reload the page during this; your edit may be lost if you do!), the edit is saved and the page automatically reloads to show the newest version of your page.

And that's it! The edit has been saved and is viewable to all.

Common things to fix and not fix
There are several simple things you should fix if you see them, for example:
 * Typos
 * Links to incorrect places
 * Incorrect or outdated information
 * Poorly-formatted/worded paragraphs

Things you shouldn't change or should otherwise bear in mind:
 * The wiki uses British English spelling and style throughout (except when the name of an in-game item or NPC is in American English). This means that:
 * Words should be spelled using British English; common examples include "colour" (not "color"), "utilise" (not "utilize"), "dialogue" (not "dialog"), and so on.
 * Dates should be in D M Y format, without '-th' qualifiers, for example "26 October 2016", and not "26th October 2016" nor "October 26 2016". (A comma between M and Y is optional, so "26 October, 2016" is also fine.)
 * Building floors start at 'zero', where the floor that is level with the ground is the "ground floor" (the American "first floor"), the floor above that is the "first floor" (the American "second floor"), and so on. You may find it easier to use more universal flooring references like "climb to the top floor".
 * When referring to in-game items and monsters, unless the name is/includes a proper noun, sentence case should be used; i.e. don't capitalise the monster/item name. "The abyssal whip is dropped by abyssal demons." not "The Abyssal whip is dropped by Abyssal demons."
 * Location names are always proper nouns, as are skills. Take care to distinguish between the verb and noun uses of a skill; i.e. "mining runite ore requires level 85 Mining."
 * In most prose, abbreviations/acronyms generally should be avoided. Some common examples:
 * "experience" not "XP"
 * "life points" not "LP"
 * "coins" not "GP"
 * In certain cases (usually tables), the above abbreviations are fine to use. However, things like "sara gs" are never okay to use. Additionally, if an acronym is used, it should be uppercase. If you're going to use an abbreviation in a section, make sure to define what it means at the start.
 * Opinions are not valuable content; e.g. "The Zaros godsword is the best melee weapon" is not appropriate, but "The Zaros godsword is the highest level melee weapon" is.
 * Players, clans, and friends chats should not be mentioned, except under very specific guidelines.
 * Exchange prices are generally automatically updated. If a price is out of date, you should ignore it and allow our database to update itself. If a price is more than three days out of date, there may be an issue, so let an administrator know via RS:AR, Special:Chat, or any other method.

You can see more about this in the policies guide.

The next guide
The next guide in the series is RuneScape:Editing/VisualEditor basics, about using the VisualEditor to edit various other parts of an article. You may prefer to skip straight to source mode with RuneScape:Editing/Source mode basics.

You may also want to read about editing policies at RuneScape:Editing/Policies.

See RuneScape:Editing for a list of all guides.