WikiSTC:User guides/New user guide
Subversive Technologies & Countermeasures
Q: What is WikiSTC and how do I use this site?
A: Detailed information about WikiSTC; This help page is a starting point for new users to WikiSTC and the MediaWiki software. The information here will hopefully provide enough of the basic operational concepts of WikiSTC for you to start using the site.
Navigation
Sidebar (navigation bar)
The sidebar is a persistent navigation tool that is located on the left side of the page that is broken down into several section boxes of associated links.
This box contains links to aid in navigation of the major sections of WikiSTC.
Links to any recent page activity, and site logs.
External link to official documentation on Search from Meta.
External link to official documentation on Navigation bar from Meta.
Links in the toolbox are context dependant
- What links here in the toolbox sidebar will show all the links to the current page.
- Related changes in the toolbox sidebar will list all recent changes linked to from the current page.
- User contributions will list all contributions made by this user.
- Block user (Administrator) blocks current user from editing.
- E-mail this user if this user has a valid email address and has Enable e-mail from other users set in their preferences.
- Upload will allow you to upload files to the server. (requires an active account)
- Special pages in the toolbox provides access to many of the core features in the MediaWiki software.
Page tabs
Page tabs are located at the top of content pages and provide access to features specific to that page.
- article: Content section of the current page.
- discussion: Talk page associated with the current page.
- edit: Editor page to change the contents of the current page.
- history: List of changes to the current page with associated user, dates, and summary.
- protect/unprotect: (Administrators) Block or unblock the current page from edits.
- delete/undelete: (Administrators) Delete or restore the current page.
- move: : (Renaming) Renames the current page and optionally its Talk page.
- watch/unwatch: Add the current page to your watchlist.
Hyperlinks
Links are used heavily on WikiSTC to create a navigational mesh of content. By linking articles with other articles residing on WikiSTC you provide a navigation method of like topics.
There are two basic types of links:
- Internal links will show up in a method consistent with your browser and css.
- Example: I am an example of an internal link.
- External links will show up the same as internal links but with a
at the end of the link.
Images
Clicking on a image will take you to the image page that corresponds to that image. This page contains copyright information pertaining to the image and its use on WikiSTC as well as any other relavent details.
Tracking changes
There are several different ways of tracking changes to pages each with a different focus and granularity.
New pages
Recent changes
Interpreting recent changes information (from left to right):
- (diff) links to the diff page for this edit; it is not available for new pages, or for page moves
- (hist) links to the history page showing all edits on this page.
- A bold m indicates that the user marked the edit "minor".
- A bold N indicates that the page is new. It is possible for an entry to possess both the "minor" and "new" indicators; this is typically used for new redirects.
- Link to the current version of the page.
- UTC timestamp of when the change took place.
- Link to the home page of the user who made the edit.
- (talk) page link of the user who made the edit.
- *(block) block the current users account. (Administrator ability)
- Extended information about edit:
- Section that was modified.
- (Move log) will display old and new name.
- (Deletion log) will display information about the delete.
- (Upload log) will display the file name and summary.
Interpreting enhancedrecent changes information (from left to right):
Watchlist
My watchlist is your personal list of pages you are interested in.
You can add a page to your watchlist by clicking the watch tab.
You remove a page by clicking the unwatch tab at the top of the page. (must have an active account)
Page history
Page history is a list of all changes on the current page and can be accessed from the history tab at the top of the page.
Related changes
Related changes lists all recent changes in each article linked to from the current page.
Usernames
Choosing a username
Using your real name is the preferred option, but using a pseudonym that you feel more comfortable contributing under is also acceptable. Your username should be chosen carefully since it will be linked to everything you contribute on WikiSTC and will be a reflection of who you are.
If you use a pseudonym rather than a user name that identifies you with your real name, U.S. copyright law grants you only a fixed period of copyright rather than one based upon when you die. Also, the GFDL encourages giving appropriate credit to authors, and your username is used to give that credit.
Inappropriate usernames
Inappropriate user names are those often found offensive by the general public and will be subject to renaming.
These include, but is not limited to:
Inflammatory, defamatory, or harassing names:
- Names which are pornographic, obscene, or contain profanity
- Names which refer to sexual acts or genitalia
- Names which are commonly recognized as slurs, racism, or bigotry
- Names which are intended to taunt, belittle, or harass other editors
- Names which are derogatory versions of established user names
Misleading names:
- Names which include commonly used MediaWiki software or community terms, or imply an official position on WikiSTC. (eg, terms such as recent changes, Administrator, or namespace)
- Names which closely resemble other established user names with the intent to mislead
If you see what you believe to be an inappropriate user name you can have it reviewed by adding inappropriate username template on their user page.
Changing your username
If you decide after creating an account, particularly if you did so using your real name, that you would rather user a pseudonym, you can use WikiSTC:Username/Request name change to do so. When this is done, all your contributions will be reassigned to the new user name. You may also request your user and talk page linked to the previous name be deleted.
Any talk pages that you have signed will still display your former user name. These need to be changed manually by editing the pages concerned. If you feel strongly about your name no longer appearing on the site, you can edit these pages to remove your signature. The easiest way to find these is by clicking what links here from your user page. There is currently no means of removing signatures from old revisions in the page history.
Changing inappropriate usernames
Users who have chosen inappropriate names will be given the benefit of the doubt with notice on their talk page to request a name change. If no request for name change or progress is made within a reasonable amount of time, notice will be given on their talk page informing of blocked from editing status until a new appropriate name is chosen.
Usernames that are designed to impersonate legitimate users may be blocked immediately and indefinitely.
Deleting your user account
Accounts with contributions can not be deleted since it is not feasible to remove edits across revisions of every page you contributed to. After removing the account it would leave all contributions still linked to the user name allowing another user to recreate the account and claim authorship of any previous contributions.
Logging in
The ability to contribute on WikiSTC requires that you have an active account. Creating an account only takes a few seconds with minimal information required.
- In order to contact other WikiSTC users you must provide and verify a valid email address.
- If you wish to receive credit for your contributions on WikiSTC you can optionally provide your real name with your account.
- Your privacy is important to WikiSTC and we do not share any of you private information with third parties. A more detailed explanation of our privacy policy is provided for your review.
- Logging in:
- Extended options of a logged in user:
Account benefits
- A Personal home page
- Ability for you and others to track your contributions
- Ability to upload images
- Ability to create or edit content
- Ability to use talk pages to express your opinion
- Watchlist to track page changes
- Cusomize your viewing preferences
Practice edits
Sandbox
If you just want to experiment or test out some editing features a sandbox is provided for you to make you mess in.
Your personal home page
You have a personal home page located in the namespace User:<your username> accessible from Allpages that you can edit and do with as you please; as long as it does not violate policy. You can access your personal home, or talk page by clicking on your user name or my talk in the upper right hand corner of the page.
Real world
You can also experiment by clicking edit on a page
and only using the "Show preview" button to see how your changes affect the page.
WikiIncubator a open scratch pad
WikiIncubator is an open MediaWiki that is a scratch pad for you to experiment across almost any namespace. The content of the wiki will be regularly reset, so anything you wish to keep should be copied and kept at your location.
Namespaces
Namespaces are composed of two parts, an optional namespace name:, and the remainder of the title. For example, this page has the title Help:Namespace, so it is in the Help: namespace, WikiSTC:policies is in the WikiSTC: namespace, Template:Helpdesk link is in the Template: namespace, and so on. A title without a colon, for example Main Page, is in the (main) namespace.
Using WikiSTC Namespaces
- (Main): This namespace should include ANY AND ALL articles on WikiSTC.
- Help: This namespace should only include help pages that pertain to WikiSTC or MediaWiki.
- User: This namespace is users space; User:<username> is your personal homepage, with User talk:<username> used for public communication.
- Image: This namespace is used for all files that have been uploaded.
- Template: Self explanatory, contains templates.
- Category: This namespace contains all category pages.
- WikiSTC: This namespace is for projects relating directly to WikiSTC.
Contributing
Contributing content can be done by anyone with an active account and in many forms.
- Writing articles
- Helping to categorize articles and pages
- Minor edits to help clean up small errors
- Active dialouge on talk pages of disputed content
Are only a few examples of how you can help contribute your knowledge.
Policies
 Key Policies
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Guidelines
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Articles
Articles on WikiSTC consist of white papers, proof of concept code, scripts, technology guides, interesting behavior papers, security trends, software & hardware operation, and a variety of other security related issues. These pages are freely editable by anyone with an account that wishes to provide content to help create a multilateral view. By having many contributors of content WikiSTC hopes to achieve the most robust view possible in its articles.
Writing an article
Before attempting to create a new article you should use the search feature to make sure that it has not already been written under that title or one very similar. If you use "try exact match" or "Go" and the search fails you will be presented with a "Create a page" link. Below is a search box provided for convenience.
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As an introduction for users unfamiliar with editing the url in your browser to create a page, a form is provided below. Just type the name of your article you wish to create into the box below and click "Create article".
It is best to write your article before hand and make use of spell checkers or other tools. When writing your article use the "show preview" button to check for errors or see how your changes will look before you commit to the database. This will cut down on the entries you create in recent changes or page history
making your page easier to understand for other editors.
Creating an article by url can be done by appending the title of your article after the wiki/ in the address bar.
Example: http://www.wikistc.org/wiki/I am an article
Categories
Categories are used by WikiSTC to classify and index articles to aid in navigation of related topics. They are not strict hierarchical structures but more of a mesh with sub categories able to exist across multiple categories. The root categories collectively make up the top most categories present on WikiSTC.
Navigating categories
A categories page can be accessed from the sidebar that provides a user interface to help visualize and navigate categories.
An alphabetical list of all categories can be found by selecting special pages from the sidebar toolbox; Selecting All pages from the special pages page will then let you view ALL the contents of ANY namespace.
From All pages select category from the Namespace: drop down box and click Go.
This will provide an alphabetical list over every category present on WikiSTC.
Creating categories
New categories on WikiSTC should only be created if at minimum they meet the following criteria:
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Adding a page to a category
Adding a page to a category is done by inserting
[[category:category name]]
into the page you wish to index in that category. Guidelines for adding pages to categories should be reviewed before attempting to categorize a page.
Talk page (discussion)
Standard talk page
Every page has an associated talk page, except pages in the special pages namespace. These talk pages are used to discuss the content of the associated "main" page and not intended for general banter. Talk pages can be used to propose additions, modifications, clarification, or anything that has the possibility of advancing the content associated with the talk page.
Users talk page
A user's talk page is generally used for open communication with other users and is an open forum, anyone can view or edit its contents. Non public communication can be done with email if the user has activated this feature.
If someone has modified your users talk page "You have new messages" is automatically displayed on all pages you view until you view your user page.
Signing a talk page
You should sign your contributions by typing three or four tildes:
- ~~~ will display Username
- ~~~~ will display Username + current time and date
- WikiSTC 14:02, 25 January 2006 (CST)
Vandalism
Vandalism can be losely defined as any behavior that is intended to disrupt, destroy, or maliciously alter content or access to it.
Reporting vandalism in progress
Protected pages
View source
Users are presented with a view source tab when a page is protected allowing them only to access the editing page in a read only status.
Why pages/images are permanetly protected
Pages/images that are permanently protected are done so to maintain the integrity of WikiSTC. These pages/images are crucial to navigation or general use of the site and any type of vandalism, or improper edits to this content could limit others ability to use the site. Seasoned users would be least effected by these type of interruptions since most of the protected infrastructure pages/images are there to help guide new users. These types of protected pages/images are not set in stone content and recommended changes to them are welcomed on their corresponding talk pages.
- Pages that have legal responsibilities such as WikiSTC:Copyrights, WikiSTC:General disclaimer.
- Pages that are integral for proper site operation such as Main Page, WikiSTC:Help.
- Images that are integral for proper site operation such as Image:Pagetabs_viewsource.png, Image:Toolbox_sidebar.png, Image:Pulsante_03_architetto_f_01.png.
Why pages/images are temporarily protected
Pages/images are temporarily protected to give a cool down period due to some type of behavior that is either disruptive, or problematic.
- "Cool off" period for edit wars.
- Pages that have been targets of large scale vandalism, spam, or any other disruptive behavior.
- Investigations of bugs in the MediaWiki software.
Requesting page protection
Protected page requests can be made at WikiSTC:Protected pages/Request protection
Contact information
Contacting WikiSTC
- General questions relating to WikiSTC can be sent to helpdesk@wikistc.org
- Copyright infringement, banned account / IP address, and administrative problems can be sent to abuse@wikistc.org
Contacting WikiSTC users
- You must have a valid account, provided a valid email address, and be currently logged in.
- In the search box type; User:<username>.
- Click "e-mail this user" in the toolbox sidebar.
Talk page
- Click on (talk) next to the users name from recent changes or page history, and leave a message on their talk page.
- or Navigate to Allpages using the User: or User talk: namespace to located the user.
Privacy policy
Your user account
Data on users, such as the times at which they edited and the number of edits they have made are publicly available via user contributions, recent changes, page history, etc.
You may provide an e-mail address in your preferences. This allows other logged-in users to send email to you through wikiSTC (unless you disable this in your preferences). Your address will not be revealed to them unless you respond, or possibly if the email bounces.
However if you do not provide an email address, you will not be able to reset your password if you forget it. You can remove your email address from your preferences at any time to prevent it being used.
Cookies
The MediaWiki software will set a temporary session cookie (PHPSESSID) whenever you visit the site. If you do not intend to ever log in, you may deny this cookie, but you cannot log in without it. It will be deleted when you close your browser session.
More cookies may be set when you log in, to avoid typing in your user name (or optionally password) on your next visit. These last up to 30 days. You may clear these cookies after use if you are using a public machine and don't wish to expose your username to future users of the machine. (If so, clear the browser cache as well.)
Passwords
Many aspects of the WikiSTC community interaction depends on the reputation and respect that is built up through a history of valued contributions. User passwords are the only guarantee of the integrity of a user's edit history. All users are encouraged to select strong passwords and to never share them.
Deleted content
Deleting content from WikiSTC does not permanently delete it, anyone can look at a pages history and see what has been added or removed since the pages creation. If a page is deleted, any administrator will still be able to see the entire page history. Only WikiSTC staff can permanently delete information from the database and there is no guarantee this will happen except in response to copyright infringement or United States legal action.
Sharing information with third parties
WikiSTC will not sell or share private information, such as email addresses with third parties, unless you agree to release this information, or it is ordered by United States law to release the information.
Using MediaWiki software
Current version of MediaWiki used by WikiSTC
Purge server cache for WikiSTC:Getting started
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