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The Schola Wiki is an encyclopaedia designed and created specifically for the Schola Draíochta forum, which is a Role-Play website set around the central building known as The Schola Draíochta. The website has many characters attached to it, as well as places and beings; all of which amounts to a great deal of information. The Schola Wiki is a place to bring all of that information together into one place where it can be easily found and read. It is also a place to explain characters in much greater detail than might be expressed in a simple profile.
The Schola Draiochta
The forum known as The Schola Draíochta is a Role-Playing forum designed to accommodate many different players and their characters into one united storyline centralised around the concept of a magickal school. The aim is to build a a community where all players can create 'canon' for the overall storyline. This makes a project like The Schola Wiki a very useful tool that can be incorporated into the forum-system.
Free-Form Role-Play
Because we treat it more as a writing project than a gaming world we rigidly upload the ideal of 'free-form role-play', which is a style of role-play that doesn't abide by 'dice' or 'cards' to get players through the game. It's the most open and liberal of all role-playing systems. It is due to this system that the site is able to accommodate characters from all walks of life, time, dimension or whatever other place a character could emerge from. We do, however, insist that you do not use copyrighted materials and abide by the few general principles of Role-Playing as outlined here.
Forum to Wiki
The biggest difference between the forum-based information and the Wiki-based information is the sheer level of detail. Players are encouraged to really delve into their characters, their backgrounds, their homeworlds and characters related to that homeworld. Masses of detail can be produced for the Wiki. In this, the Wiki is not just for viewers but for the writers themselves. After writing so much more information on your characters, you will find that you know your character so much better than you ever did before and, therefore, will be able to play out much more believable and in-depth responses back on the forum itself.
Editing the Wiki
When you come to create your own character page, it is highly advised that you imitate previously created pages. You'll need some basic coding to get your page looking standardised. Don't worry too much though, others will see mistakes made and swoop in to correct them on a regular basis. If you're a perfectionist, this section is for you. If not, feel free to write it all up without formatting and ask someone else to come in and format it for you! I would suggest, however, that you stick to the basic layout examples. Next will be the coding, followed finally by examples of layout.
Headings
Main Heading
You'll need to create your 'main headings' to indicate sections of your article. These main headings are usually followed by 'sub-headings', which will have information relating to the sub-heading. You may even split it further with bold headings or bullet points. For now, here is the main heading code. The equals signs give you the heading itself, whilst the apostrophes are the bold code;
== '''Main Heading''' ==
Sub-Heading
The sub-heading will usually relate to the main heading, but allow you to split up your article for easier reading and navigation. The coding for this is similar to the main heading, though you won't need the bold code'
==== Sub-Heading ====
Bold Heading
Frequently you may wish to further split your sub-headings, as has been done here for this article. The code for the bold headings is simple enough, just three apostrophes;
'''Bold Heading'''
Bullet Points
Bullet points act like Bold headings, however they are more likely to be used for a 'list' of similar objects, such as a list of major cities. For this you simply need to insert an asterisk at the beginning of the line. You may consider placing this heading in bold too, as the code shows;
* '''Bullet Point Heading'''
Linking
The main advantage of a Wiki is the easy ability to navigate between relevant articles that relate to the current one. This may be a link to the homeworld of a character or to a concept used by the character or simply to another character page. There are a variety of ways to do this depending on the result that you want, for instance you want to link to a specific location of an article or even to an off-site website.
Page-to-Page Link
The most standard of link is from one main article to another. This is the easiest link to make. You must use the exact article title for it to be an active link.
[[Article Title]]
Renamed Link
Sometimes you may wish to link to an article but use a different linking word, one that doesn't exactly match up to the article title. This may be because you have used the plural of a species, for example. Simply place a 'pipe' between the Article title and the words you want to show;
[[Article Title|Desired display words]]
Link to 'Main Article'
For many parts of an article you will use the introductory excerpt from another article, such as homeworld or species information on a character page. You will want to indicate that this information came from another page. So, to do this we ask you use the 'standard' coding. The colon creates an indent, similar to the tab button in a word program. The bracketed 'i' creates the italics.
: <i>Main Article: [[Article Title]]</i>
Linking to a Section
Sometimes you will want to link to a specific section on the same page that you're working on. This may be because you reference the name of a city early in the article of your homeworld, for instance. For this you can only link to headings, either 'main headings' or 'sub-headings', you will not be able to link to specific words or bold headings or bullet points. The hash is the indication that the following word is a title heading.
[[#Section Title|Displayed Word]]
</hr>
Linking to a Section of Another Article
As with the previous example, you may wish to link to a specific part of a different article than the one you're working on, such as the home town of your character from your character page! This is done similarly to the previous example;
[[Different Article Title#Section Title|Displayed Word]]
Image Linking
This is done quite differently than the other links. You must first Upload your image via the 'Upload File' option in the side menu. Once you have uploaded the file you will need to use the Image title to link to it. The 'Image' title indicates that you are inserting a picture. Then comes the file Title, this must be exact, along with the image file type! In the example is .jpg, though this may be another type depending on what you saved it as. Use the 'pipe' to separate parts of this code. The 'px' are the pixels. The standard is 200, however this may change depending on the shape and size of the original file, you may want to text this several times. You must place the word 'thumb' into your code to indicate that this is a thumbnail. Usually your first image will be on the right, however you may later have another image on the left. Finally you will insert a description of the image, especially how it relates to the article. This will appear beneath the image in the thumbnail box.
[[Image:Image Title.jpg|200px|thumb|right|Description of the image]]
Site Navigation Bar
The most complicated coding that will be on your page is the code for the navigation bar. My best advice is not to bother, I will insert it myself. However it you really want to insert it yourself, you ought to simply copy and paste it either from here or another page;
<!-- BANNER ACROSS TOP OF PAGE -->
{| style="width:100%; align=center; margin-top:1.2em; background:#f5f3fd; border:1px solid #dbd3ff;"
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<p style="margin:0 3px .8em 3px; font-variant:small-caps; text-align:center; margin-top:0; margin-bottom:.2em; font-size:105%;">
[[: Locations]] '''·''' [[: Characters]] '''·''' [[: Species]] '''·''' [[: Objects]] '''·''' [[: Other]]</p>
<div style="text-align:center; margin-top:0; font-size:95%;">
''[[Alphabetical index]] '''·''' [[Browse by Relation]] '''·''' [[Browse by Category]]</div>
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<p>
Help with Editing
If you are unsure how to approach a Wiki article or you would find it too much of a hindrance you can always have someone else write it up for you, provided you keep in constant contact for the duration! Skrai is always willing to help out if you just Private Message him.
History
Schola 1.0
Originally the Schola Draíochta was a forum built up amongst friends with the sole administrator being Mistress Procellifer. Hosted on a free-forums site, the forum was confined by many restrictions. It was also difficult to draw attention with a web-address longer than your arm.
Schola 2.0
When RaH became involved in the project, the site moved to the new web domain and got a whole new layout. Two new administrators were also added, Skrai and Garrick Keigwin.
Etc etc TBA.
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