Hattrick:Getting started
Help section 
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| The Start |
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Welcome to the wonderful world of the Hattrick Wiki, the English guide to Hattrick that anyone can edit, as long as he has registered for a username. The Hattrick Wiki works almost exactly like the larger Wikipedia. If you've never visited the Wikipedia, you may want to do so now.
Using the Hattrick Wiki
The Hattrick Wiki is a collective knowledge base of all things involving Hattrick - its community, its rules, and even its economy. But before you can start writing articles, you should learn how to navigate the site.
The Main Page is the hub of the Hattrick Wiki. You can find links on the main page to the bulk of the basics of Hattrick. If you are just getting started with the game, you may want to read these pages before moving on to the rest of this guide.
To find a specific page, use the search bar located toward the bottom of the left navigation links. Or, if you think the page is pretty obvious, try typing its title into the address bar after .org/. For instance, to view your country's wiki page, type its local name into your address bar as: http://wiki.hattrick.org/Country (and replace Country by the name of your country). On your country's page, you may find interesting links on country-related topics. Each region in each country also has its dedicated page.
Please remember that the wiki is a work in progress, and content may be lacking in certain or even many areas. You can help by adding content of interest to you. Now that you know the basics of navigating the wiki, on to editing!
Editing the Hattrick Wiki
Editing the wiki can seem intimidating. After all, once you save something, everyone who visits that page will see your work. But, please know that we don't expect you to be perfect. Editing is a learning process, and as long as you're doing more good than harm you're helping the wiki when you do it!
Please note:
- An edit occurs when the content you added is saved. If you simply click the 'edit' tab, you can view the formatting of the page without editing the page. This can be useful if you don't know how to do something that appears on a certain page.
- When you've edited an article, others may edit your content. If you don't want your writing to be edited mercilessly, then this unfortunately isn't the right place for your articles.
Before you start editing
Before you can start editing pages, you have to create a username. You aren't able to edit without a username. It also masks your IP address. Usernames help the rest of us to know who is making those edits too. It is suggested to use your Hattrick username. To create a username, click on the small link in the top right corner that says "create an account or log in". This link should appear next to your IP address and a link to your talk page. Once you are on the 'log in:' page, fill in the required information (Username, password, and, optionally, your email address and real name). Then, click 'create new account.' That's it, simple as that, now you're a member of the Hattrick Wiki, and you'll get credit for all the thought you put into the edits you make.
How to edit a page
To edit a page, click the 'edit' tab at the top of the page. You should see a text box that resembles the box you see in the conferences when writing a post. To edit the page, add any content to the text you want to, then click 'show preview' at the bottom of the page. If the page looks good, save it. If not, change it as needed. Be sure to summarize your changes in the summary box at the bottom of the page if you made major changes; this is a good habit to start and makes things easier for everyone else. If you made a grammatical change or fixed some faulty formatting, click the minor edit tick box at the bottom to indicate to everyone else that you didn't make any big changes. However, whenever you add content you should save it as a normal edit.
Formatting text
The wiki has a different set of formatting markers than that of the conferences. To format text, use the following markers:
''Text''
Italicized text (two apostrophes before and after the text)
'''Text'''
Bold text (three apostrophes before & after)
[[Link|Alternate Title]]
Internal link to another article in the wiki (two brackets before & after)
- If you want to make a link appear as a different name, use the optional |Alternate Title parameter (and the link will appear as "Alternate Title" but link to Link). The technical term for this is piping.
[http://www.webaddress.com Link Title]
External link to http://www.webaddress.com with appearance "Link Title" (one bracket)
== Headline ==
Creates a headline that appears in the table of contents of the page (the size of "Editing the Hattrick Wiki" on this page)
=== Sub-headline ===
Creates a smaller headline (i.e. Formatting Text on this page) that also appears in the TOC. Also use 1 equal sign to make a very large headline and 4 equal signs to make a small headline.
[[Image:ImageName.jpg|Thumb|Image Caption]]
Embeds ImageName.jpg in a page as a thumbnail with caption "image caption" (image caption and thumb parameters are optional but strongly recommended when using images larger than 300px)
--~~~~
Creates a signature with your name, time of edit, and date (use when adding comments on a discussion page)
<nowiki>Text</nowiki>
Tells the wiki to ignore wiki formatting marks for all Text within the tags.
<br>
Creates a line break (use these instead of the Return/Enter button on the keyboard)
*
Creates a bullet (like the one under the Internal Link parameter above) - use two or more in a row to make bullets with different indentations.
You can also use the buttons at the top of the editing box to produce most of these formatting marks, but it should be much faster to simply type these marks in while you type.
You can practice your editing skills on the Sandbox
Editing etiquette
1. When you write the general descriptive paragraph (aka the summarizing introduction), bold the name of the article. For example, if you're writing an article about the USA, you would start by saying:
"The USA is a country in Hattrick..."
This format is the standard for the Wikipedia and the Hattrick Wiki, so use it!
2. Use lots of internal links, but only link the first instance of a word in an article. For example:
New York is a region in the USA. In Hattrick New York has been a region since the USA was established.
Notice that region and USA were only linked the first time they appeared. Links are good, so use them when they're relevant, but don't put multiple links to the same article.
3. Before writing a new article, try to check the variations of the name to make sure the article doesn't already exist under a different name. For instance, the U.S.A. may not be an article, but the USA is an article. If you do create an article and find out later that another exists, use a Redirect (refer to the Advanced Editing section below for info on how to do this).
4. Keep external links in the middle of an article to a minimum. In most cases, external links should either go at the end of a section of an article or in an External Links section at the bottom of a page. Try not to use external links in the middle of a block of text unless it's absolutely necessary.
5. Don't sign pages that you created, the Hattrick Wiki editors should be modest. Please don't sign your edits; once you add content it belongs to everyone who uses the wiki. Consequently, if you don't want content that you made copied or edited, don't put it on the wiki. Editing is part of the process. Think of the wiki as a piece of open-source software. It can be changed or copied by anyone to make it better or worse.
6. Don't Vandalise! Vandalism, or trolling, is intentionally altering any page on the wiki to change the content so that it is less helpful to the reader. Anyone who purposely vandalises an article may be banned from editing the wiki, so simply don't do it! It's a pain for everyone involved in the editing process.
7. Don't edit User:(name) pages, unless it is your own or you are given specific permission. Exceptions to this are mostly: if there is an obvious formatting error that needs to be fixed, or if the user has been inactive for a long time. Also the user pages might be edited to add a country category. Only several users are allowed their own articles in the main name space (like the Hattrick workers)
8. Name your articles correctly. For information on naming conventions, please refer to the Naming Conventions page.
9. Try not to use any colors or formatting on pages outside of your user page that you've never seen elsewhere on the wiki. It's a good idea to ask someone if you're not sure of how to present information.
10. Keep it clean. The use of profanity on the wiki where it isn't necessary is, well, not necessary, and any articles containing profanity will probably be edited anyway. So, do yourself a favor and write like you would on Global, or maybe even a little nicer. :-).
11. Don't take on more than you can handle. You're not expected to write ten articles a day. It's much more helpful for you to write one good article than ten short ones. Or, if all you have time for is one short article, that helps too. But, if you're not sure about how to do something or you just don't want to do it, just add the {{stub}} tag and save the article (see below for more info on the stub tag). A good article can take weeks or months of work to ripe.
Advanced Editing
Once you've mastered the basics, you're ready to write a basic article. But what about the fancy tables, like you see on the Main Page, or the category tags?
__FORCETOC__
Forces a Table of Contents to appear at that spot in your page. Alternatively you can use NOTOC to force the wiki to show no TOC. Otherwise, the wiki will add a Table of Contents after the default required number of categories.
{{template}}
Adds the template 'template' to the page. The most common template is {{stub}}, which you use to indicate an incomplete article. It appears as:
This article is a stub. You can help Hattrick Wiki by expanding it.
Put this template at the bottom of an incomplete section or at the end of an incomplete article.
[[Category:Name|Indexed Name]]
Adds the article to Category 'Name'. Within that category, the name of the article is indexed under 'Indexed Name' (optional parameter), though the name of the link in the category appears the same as the actual article name.
{| border=1 cellspacing=0 cellpadding=2 style="border-collapse:collapse"
|- bgcolor=#eeeeee
! Cat1 !! Cat2 !! Cat3
|-
|Entry 1-1 || Entry 1-2 || Entry 1-3
|-
|Entry 2-1 || Entry 2-2 || Entry 2-3
|-
|}
Creates a typical wiki table that appears as follows:
| Cat1 | Cat2 | Cat3 |
|---|---|---|
| Entry 1-1 | Entry 1-2 | Entry 1-3 |
| Entry 2-1 | Entry 2-2 | Entry 2-3 |
- Tables are probably the toughest part of wiki code, but practice enough and you'll figure it out.
- To add another column, add another !! after Cat3 and after that write the title you want. Then to enter values into that column add || after the last entry in each line followed by the desired value.
- To add another row, add |- after the line above where you want the row, then add | Column 1 Value || Column 2 Value || etc.
#REDIRECT[[Article Title]]
Add this to a page to perform an automatic redirect to a different article.
----
Use this to create a line in the page. Use this sparingly - probably only on talk pages or data dumps.
[[Media:Example.ogg]]
Use this tag to link to a media file. Probably not of a lot of use on this wiki.
<math>Insert formula here</math>
Use this tag to write a math formula. Again not of a lot of use on this wiki.
*SPACE*Text1 *SPACE*Text2
Writes the text in a box (like the one that the formatting marks are in) that appears as below:
Text1 Text2
Advanced Editing Tips
- Use #REDIRECT sparingly, as redirects are annoying when they do not make sense. Only use a redirect when redirecting from a common misspelling (such as 'Offence') or a different word for something (such as Bjorn instead of HT-Bjorn), or in other instances when there is already another article that speaks about something very similar to what an article would be about.
- Use tables, but be sure to format them correctly. A poorly formatted table stands out like a sore thumb. Base your color choices on the rest of the page, and also be sure that your table is the right size.
- Label any and every incomplete article as a stub with the stub template. That way, when frequent editers are looking for work, they can view the pages that have the stub template and go from there. Any incomplete article should be labeled as a stub.
- Use templates. They're your best friend. You can learn how to use a certain template by going to the page "Template:'Template_Name'" to view the template. There should be a guide to using the parameters in the discussion page, as well as an example of how it looks when it is used. An exception for that is if the template is a one-liner, such as the stub template.
- Use categories. To view a category, go to the page 'Category:Category_Name' to view the list of all articles in that category. Categories are much more useful and easier to use than a simple list, so if you're making a list of articles, use a category.
You should now be an editing pro. At this point, you may want to try your hand at writing an article. Or, if you want to learn about other functions, read on!
Special Functions
Beyond editing and using the wiki, there is a handful of extra functions that you may want to use when creating an article or managing the wiki.
Uploading Files
To upload files go to the 'Upload File' page in the toolbox (under the search bar). You can upload pictures, data files, or even music, as long as it is only used on the wiki and pertains to Hattrick. Images are almost a must have for any article before it can be deemed 'complete,' so you will probably be uploading those the majority of the time. The size requirements are pretty loose, so that shouldn't be a problem. For more info on uploading, check out the Upload File page.
The Discussion Page
Every article automatically has a discussion page. This is where you should discuss ideas about the article or concerns you may have but are afraid to edit without asking someone else. When you use the discussion page, be sure to divide your comment with either a header or a line (unless you are responding to someone else, in which case you would probably use either a bullet or a tab break). Also be sure to sign your comments by using the Signature tag (--~~~~). Never erase anyone else's comment. If you leave a comment on a user's talk page, they will see that they have "new messages" at the top of the next wiki page they view when logged in. This is a great way to contact wiki users if you have a question about something.
Moving Pages
Use the 'Move' function by clicking the move tab at the top of an article. To move a page, the target title must be a non-existent page (not just blank, but non-existent). Move pages when you notice that a title is incorrectly formatted, misspelled, or otherwise. If you have to manually move a page (i.e. cut-paste to the new title), be sure to place a Redirect on the original page to the new page and erase all content from that page. When you move an article, a redirect is automatically placed. Please be careful when using this function as misusing it or using it without thinking on the consequences might cause severe trouble.
Thanks for reading this guide to the Hattrick Wiki, and happy editing!
