I understand the confusion. Wikis are different from ordinary web pages, in several ways. Once you get used to them, though, they are very easy and somewhat addictive. Click on Help in the upper left corner, and you'll open an excellent beginner's guide. For a short introduction, all those question marks mean that someone (me) meant for those things (American Flyer, Scenery, etc.) to have pages when you click on them, but there aren't any pages yet. Once you are logged in, you can just click on the question mark beside Wiring, for example, and instantly be creating a page on wiring. Wikis are meant to be plain text, not with all the fancy html tags you see when you view a web page. When you edit, you edit plain text, but there are some special things you put in there to say that this is a link to another page. (There are some formatting things you can do, too, but see the beginner's guide.) When editing, for example, you create a link by enclosing something in double parentheses, ((like this.)) That will make it appear with the question mark after it, and you can create the page by clicking on the question mark. For organization, there are almost as many ways of doing it as there are people creating content, but it seems to me that a logical tree structure makes it easiest to keep track of what we are doing. For example, here is a sample tree that we might use: *** Model Trains *** *** S Scale *** *** *** Scale Modeling *** *** *** *** Trucks *** *** *** *** *** Archbar Trucks *** *** *** Product Reviews *** *** *** Layout Planning in S Scale *** *** AF *** *** HO *** *** DCC *** *** *** Modules *** *** *** *** Programming Modules *** *** Wiring *** *** Layout Planning *** *** *** Realism vs. Space Considerations *** *** *** *** Prototype curve radii for various operations and scale conversions *** *** *** Political Boundaries (family negotiations) and so on. If this really gets going, the tree will have literally thousands of leaves. One thing that is universal to Wikis is that things always start out in the wrong place. Some really like to generate content, and that's great. Others really like to organize the content, and that's great, too. Once you are registered, you can do either or both. Now, please DON'T take that as criticism of Art for creating the Archbar Trucks material; it isn't. That is exactly what we need up there. We should probably put it in a different place, but right now, it is fine. It is EASY to fix stuff that gets created in a non-perfect place. The important thing is to CREATE it. If you are at all interested in this, I urge you to go to the site and go into the beginner's guide. It is based on the ____ for Dummies series, and it is amazingly well-written for a free internet guide. If something doesn't come out right or end up in the right place, don't worry. Brian
_____ From: [email protected] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] On Behalf Of Don DeWitt Sent: Monday, February 18, 2008 6:09 PM To: [email protected] Subject: {S-Scale List} Re: The S Scale Wiki is now live I visited the wiki and I am already confused. Perhaps a general education statement should be made here? When I clicked on http://www.modeltra <http://www.modeltrainwiki.com/tiki-index.php> inwiki.com/tiki-index.php I found a page listing: Welcome to the Model Train Wiki! Model train content built by and for model train enthusiasts. Sections S Scale American Flyer? Lionel? Layout Planning Laying Track? Scenery? Buildings? Wiring? Benchwork? My confusion is: Is this entire site for all scales, and the S scale link (folder) is for us? When I clicked on the S scale link I found a discourse about archbar trucks and then two links to: National Association of S Gaugers Regional S Scale Clubs If this is going to be a general education location for S scale, I would think that an article about archbar trucks should be in some subfolder about wheels rather than the first thing we see. Thanks very much for getting this started, but I think we need a lot of handholding, and I think we need someone to be in charge of organizing. I look forward to adding my two cents worth regarding modules. Thanks Don [Non-text portions of this message have been removed] Yahoo! Groups Links <*> To visit your group on the web, go to: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/S-Scale/ <*> Your email settings: Individual Email | Traditional <*> To change settings online go to: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/S-Scale/join (Yahoo! ID required) <*> To change settings via email: mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] <*> To unsubscribe from this group, send an email to: [EMAIL PROTECTED] <*> Your use of Yahoo! Groups is subject to: http://docs.yahoo.com/info/terms/
