How to Layout a Wiki Page

Title

The title is the first element at the top of every article and identifies the subject of your article. Titles should generally be nounal phrases.

Example:

Correct: Fuel Cells
Incorrect: How to Make a Fuel Cell

Titles should be concise and reflect the content of the wiki page.  No acronyms should be included; titles should be fully spelled out.  If a title is popularly referred to by its acronym (e.g., Environmental Protection Agency or EPA), include the acronym in parenthesis following the first restatement of the title in the introduction, bolding both the restatement of the title and the acronym (see below).

Introduction

The introduction defines the subject of the article, places it in the context of climate change, and provides an overview of the important issues or points related to the subject. Generally, the first sentence of the introduction restates the subject (in bold) and provides a definition that connects the subject to climate change issues--particularly if the connection isn't obvious.

Example: The Kyoto Protocol is an international environmental agreement connected to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC). The Protocol pursues the ultimate objective of the UNFCCC: "stabilization of greenhouse gas concentrations in the atmosphere at a level that would prevent dangerous anthropogenic interference with the climate system." (...)

The introduction is normally one or two paragraphs. Stubs or very short articles may only consist of several paragraphs (until another editor decides to expand them). Longer articles should be broken into sections and subsections, explained below.

Sections

Sections and subsections organize information in articles around different issues or subtopics.  Sections and subsections are delineated by headers and subheaders.  Like article titles, headers and subheaders should generally be nounal phrases.  The title, headings and subheaders are what also populate the table of contents, which appears automatically in the upper right-hand corner of the page.

• To create a new section, change the Style in your page editor (see diagram above) to Header or Subheader and type the title of the new section.  (Ex., "Background," "Kyoto Mechanisms," etc.)

Editors should take care with the length of their sections.  Sections that are too short or too long make articles look cluttered or inhibit their flow. An article's sections should organized following some sort of logical sequence.  If the order is unclear, you might use a common logical order such as alphabetical or chronological.  You can also refer to Climate Lab templates for suggested sections for your article. 

Footnotes

Footnotes should be the primary method of providing support for an article.  Footnotes refer to specific passages of an article and cite the sources for those passages.  All pages on the wiki should generally have a Footnotes section.  And apart from the shortest articles, most pages should strive to have at least three or more sources cited.

• To insert a footnote, (1.) use the  footnote button in your page editor to insert the footnote into the text and add  the source citation.  Then, (2.) create a Footnotes section at the bottom of your article, if there isn't one there already.  Format your footnotes in a manner that is clear and complete.  Editors are strongly encouraged to use widely accepted citation styles, such as Chicago or MLA.¹

Example: John Smith, Title of the Book (Publication Location: Publisher, Publication date) page number.

The URL addresses for web resources referenced in the Footnotes section should be turned into hyperlinks rather than be left as long URLs.  See below for how to create hyperlinks.  Hyperlinks in the Footnotes or Resources section can go to either other Climate Lab wiki pages or external sites.  Hyperlinks within the body of the article should only go to other Climate Lab wiki pages.

For more on hyperlinks, see How to Use Wiki Page Features and Tools.

Resources

Relevant and useful sources of information on the article topic that are not included among the footnotes should be included under the Resources section.  The Resources section should be the last section created in the article, below Footnotes. 

• To insert a resource, create a section at the bottom of the wiki page, below your article

Resources normally use similar formating as footnotes, although without the numerical reference, of course.  Note that while articles should have Footnotes sections, they may not necessarily have a Resources section.

For more information on resources, see Documentation and Citation.

As in the Footnotes section, URL addresses for web resources referenced within the Resources section should also be turned into hyperlinks. See below on how to create hyperlinks. Hyperlinks in the Resources section can go to either other Climate Lab wiki pages or external sites. Again, hyperlinks within the body of the article should only go to other Climate Lab pages.

For more on hyperlinks, see How to Use Wiki Page Features and Tools.

Headings

Wiki articles should be broken up into various page elements denoted by headings : Title, Introduction, Sections, Footnotes, and Resources.  To create a header, highlight the text you wish to modify and click on the Style button in the page editor  so that the dropdown menu appears.  From the list, choose either Header or Subheader to create your heading.

Lists

If you would like to create a list for a page, you can use the numbers or bullets with the  buttons on the page editor. For numbers, click on the numbers button and a 1 will appear and then add text. Make additions to the list by hitting the enter key, which will cause the subsequent number to appear. To discontinue the list, hit the enter key twice.  For bullets, click on the bullets button and a black bullet will appear.  Add text and then hit enter to add to the list.  To discontinue the bullet list, hit the enter key twice.  

Indents

To indent the text, use the indent button to the move the indentation to the left or right.