Template:Editing advice
Some general editing advice
Hello and thank you for contributing to Wikipedia!
- I noticed your recent work on a page required multiple edits.
- Are you aware that you can see a preview of the work you're doing (to check everything looks good, and check spellings and punctuation etc.) before submitting the work to the public?
- Just to the right of the Publish changes button, you'll see the Show preview button. By using this to check our work before saving the page, we can keep the page history easier to understand and reduce the possibility of edit conflicts and misunderstandings.
- It's good practice to always leave a short comment about what work we did in the edit summary (the text entry field just above the Publish changes and Show preview buttons).
- This helps other editors tell at a glance what you have done. Sometimes, without an edit summary, your work may be considered thoughtless or belligerent, and be undone.
- Summaries are also especially useful when reviewing page histories, to see without the need to load and visually parse each diff, what each of possibly thousands of edits changed.
- If you're going to be doing a lot of editing here (all efforts are greatly appreciated), you might like to LINK TO PUBLIC SANDBOX FOR IPs or LINK TO REGISTERED USERS OWN SANDBOX WITH PRELOAD IF IT DOESN'T ALREADY EXIST.
- A sandbox is the perfect place to test and develop work that might require a lot of changes over a period of hours or days. And you needn't worry about making any mistakes there, so it's perfect for practising more complicated editing.
Whatever you choose, happy editing! 
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 | This template should always be substituted (i.e., use {{subst:Editing advice}}). Any accidental transclusions will be automatically substituted by a bot. |
Usage[edit]
Use {{subst:Editing advice}}
- The use of the Show preview button.
- The use of the summary editing form field.
- The use of sandboxes.
Parameters[edit]
- Specifically calling for or omitting advice
- All the above mentioned advice will be provided by default, but specifying particular advice is possible. In this use case, omitted parameters will not be provided i.e.
{{subst:Editing advice|about=sandbox}}previewandsummary.{{subst:Editing advice|about=preview summary}}sandbox.- The order in which these params are written is not important, but using lower case is.
- Inserting links to specific pages
- If
previewadvice is being given, up to 3 pipe separated ( e.g. this is separated from | this ) pages may be mentioned as examples of where this feature seems like it might have been useful.{{subst:Editing advice|Example|Foobar}}summaryandsandbox.{{subst:Editing advice|about=preview|Example}}summaryandsandboxadvice, and link to Example.- The order in which these params are written is not important, but using The correct case is i.e.
{{subst:Editing advice|Foobar|about=preview sandbox|Example}}{{subst:Editing advice|Foobar|Example|about=preview sandbox}}
- The order in which the pages are given is the order they will appear in the advice i.e.
{{subst:Editing advice|Foobar|Example}}{{subst:Editing advice|Example|Foobar}}
- The order in which these params are written is not important, but using The correct case is i.e.
- The talk page section heading
- By default, the template will create a level 2 ( e.g. == This == ) section heading of "Some general editing advice", which can be disabled or changed i.e.
{{subst:Editing advice|section=no}}{{subst:Editing advice|section=Some things you might like to know}}{{subst:Editing advice|section=Some things you might like to know|Example|about=preview sandbox}}- create a level 2 section heading of "Some things you might like to know",
- show advice about the use of sandboxes and the Show preview button and link to Example.
- The order in which the params are written is not important.
- Different advice for registered vs. IP editors
sandboxadvice will automatically change depending on the use case.- IP editors will be guided to Wikipedia:Sandbox, whilst registered editors will be advised to create their own, or if they already have, they'll be guided to it.
- Automatic signature
- The template will automatically sign for you. The template must always be substituted, and is specifically for use on user talk pages and may give unexpected results ( by design ) in other namespaces.
See also[edit]
- {{subst:PleaseCite}} - Advice about the importance of citations.
- {{subst:Warn}} - Advice about when, why and how to warn vandals.
- {{subst:Welcome to Wikipedia}} - A cornucopia of welcoming advice for registered or IP editors, in a friendly layout.
- {{subst:Sofixit}} - Advice to be bold.
- Wikipedia:Template messages/User talk namespace - Tables of templates for the User talk namespace.