A Guide to NSWiki

A Guide to NSWiki

NOTE: As of September 2019, due to a technical issue, TEP is transitioning to https://tep.miraheze.org. An updated guide will be coming soon but the only information to disregard is the NSWiki references but the infobox and other information is valid. Please see a member of RP staff for any assistance.

You have probably heard of NSWiki- the place where a lot of us store all of our nation data, character data, and other things like business pages and the likes. It is generally overlooked because at first glance, it makes no sense. I’m here to break this down for you and make this transition from dull forum factbooks to fantastic Wikipedia style pages!

Firstly, you’re going to want to go to the site. Click http://nswiki.org for a link, or copy and paste the url here: (http://nswiki.org). This will redirect you to the main page. You’re going to be hit with a lot of information that is normally a block for most people, but sit tight, I’m going to visually show you what you need to do. Click the spoiler to see what you need to do next.

[spoiler]https://i.imgur.com/smBthGk.png
[hr]
From here, click the “Login with Nationstates” that I have highlighted in the top right corner. This will take you to the login-authentication stage, which can confuse people, because it sure confused me when I first joined. What you need to do is enter your nation name from Nationstates- but not the full name, so in my case it is “Staynes” instead of “The Cartographer Guy of Staynes”, and at the same time you need to have yourself logged in to your nationstates nation on a separate tab. This will look something like this.
[hr]
https://i.imgur.com/oMzddEg.png
[hr]
Once you press “Locate Nation”, you should find an Authentication Code displays itself below. You’re going to need to copy and paste the entire code into the authentication box, and submit. If you’ve done all of the steps right, you’ve just successfully logged into nswiki and can progress to the next stage, congrats!
[/spoiler]

Once you have progressed past the login and authentication stages, you may be wondering “well, what now?”. In the top right corner is a search bar- simply search for the page you want to create. In my case, I would want to start with my country, so I would search for “Great Morstaybishlia”. This will take you to a list of results that match your search. Most likely you will find that this page doesn’t exist, which is exactly what we want. You should find a message reading “Create the page “(searched name)” on this wiki!”. Simply click the red link. It is not a requirement to use the format “Nation/(nationname)”, as “Nation/” will always appear in the title and it is really annoying.

You’ve made it to the writing stage. It is all good having a page with your writing, but it just doesn’t feel complete without the truly-Wikipedia style info boxes. The most common info box is the nation info box. I have provided a blank info box in the spoiler below. Feel free to copy and paste it into your text box and begin filling in the blanks. Most of it is self explanatory, but if you don’t understand what some of them mean, ask a cartographer on Discord or simply google it, your answers are one search away.

[spoiler]



{{Infobox country
|conventional_long_name = 
|common_name = 
|national_motto =     
|national_anthem = 
|image_flag = 
|image_coat =         
|flag_caption =  
|image_map = 
|loctext = Map 
|alt_map =      
|map_caption = 
|image_map2 =  
|alt_map2 =
|map_caption2 = 
|capital = 
|largest_city = 
|languages_type = 
|languages = 
|languages2_type = 
|languages2 =  
|membership = 
|membership_type = 
|ethnic_groups = 
|ethnic_groups_year = 
|demonym = 
|government_type = 
|leader_title1 = 
|leader_name1 =  
|leader_title2 =  
|leader_name2 =  
|leader_title3=       
|leader_name3 =       
|legislature = 
|upper_house = 
|lower_house = 
|established_event1 = 
|established_date1 = 
|area_km2 = 
|area_sq_mi = 
|population_estimate = 
|population_estimate_year = 
|population_census = 
|population_census_year = 
|population_density_km2 = 
|population_density_sq_mi = 
|GDP_nominal = 
|GDP_nominal_year = 
|GDP_nominal_per_capita = 
|Gini = 
|Gini_year = 
|HDI_year = 
|HDI = 
|HDI_change = 
|currency = 
|currency_code = 
| time_zone = 
| utc_offset =  
| utc_offset_DST = 
| time_zone_DST = 
|date_format = 
|drives_on = 
|calling_code = 
|cctld = 
|iso3166code = 
}}

[/spoiler]

Now you’ve filled in the statistics on the info box, but you may be unsure how to attach images. There is one way to do this and its fairly simple. Click the “Upload file” on the left hand side on the main page. From here it’s simple, just upload an image from your computer. An image too large won’t be able to upload, so make sure it’s generally scaled down to 1000x1000 pixels, give or take some. Continue and “Upload file” at the bottom. The page will refresh with an image and the title for the image which is formatted to “file:(image).png/svg/jpg/etc”. Copy all of the title except the “file:” and paste it into the image_flag of the info box and voila, it’s done.

An amazing thing about nswiki is that you can link other pages on your page by formatting the other page with two square brackets on either side, so it looks like “(page)]]”. It will appear as a blue hyperlink if the page exists, or a red hyperlink if the page doesn’t exist.

I’m going to include a few examples for you if you’d like inspiration for starting an nswiki article on a nation- click Great Morstaybishlia - NSWiki for my country, click Nation/Emberwood Coast - NSWiki for [mention]Ember[/mention]'s country, click Vekaiyu - NSWiki for [mention]Todd McCloud[/mention]'s country and click Axdel - NSWiki for [mention]Pagistar[/mention]'s country.

The next post I will talk about political figures and more table examples and the like. Enjoy!

Part 2

Adding pictures via two methods

Okay, so you’ve begun your basics within NSWiki and it’s all great, but you want to know more. You want to know everything. Sure, I’ll be explaining some more things for you.

Inserting a picture outside of the Infobox

So you’re looking to have pictures embedded within the paragraphs of your emerging nswiki article. It’s very simple, I will show you in the spoiler below (just to keep the post neat and tidy :wink: ).

[spoiler]

In reading part 1 you should already know how to upload an image to NSWiki. If you do not, then please read part 1 first.


Okay, here is an example of what I’m talking about. This is an extract from one of my territories http://nswiki.org/index.php?title=New_Calth, giving an example images on both the left and right side of the article.
This is the code you’re going to use to insert a picture, I’ll explain it after:

“[image:(insert your image here.png/jpg)|(“left”, “center” or “right”)|thumb|(give a number for size here)px|(description goes here)]]”

Simply put, upload an image to NSWiki and copy all of the title except the “file:”. Paste this after “image:” and before “|”. The “|” breaks up the commands you’re putting into the code. In the next part, if you want the image to appear on the left of your NSWiki article, write “left”, and the same goes for if you want the image to appear on the right side (“right”). Alternately you could centralise the image by writing “center”. Ignore thumb because it’s just there. Within the next part is the size of the image. Choose a pixel size (pixel = px). In the photo above, the pictures are 225 pixels, so I’ve put “225px”. The last part is up to you if you want to describe what the picture shows, perhaps writing a name if the picture is a person or a place. It is an optional field that can be left blank.

If you understood what I just said, congratulations! You’ve just learnt how to insert an image within your NSWiki article.
[/spoiler]

Inserting a gallery

The picture may look more advanced than inserting a picture outside of the infobox, but it is actually very simple. I’ve put an example and the code for the gallery in seperate spoilers below.

Once you upload a picture to NSWiki, copy and paste the entire title, so “file:(imagename).png/jpg/etc” and paste it into the first part. The second part is for describing the image, and I’ve included a command to centralise the writing (<center>), otherwise it appears on the left and it’s a little messier. Feel free to add as many lines of pictures as you want, although I’ve never actually tried adding more than 4 (tell me what the maximum is if you are up for the challenge :P).

[spoiler]


[/spoiler]

[spoiler]
<gallery>
file:(imagefile.png/jpg)|<center>(describe the picture)
file:(imagefile.png/jpg)|<center>(describe the picture)
file:(imagefile.png/jpg)|<center>(describe the picture)
</gallery>
[/spoiler]

If you have managed to implement a gallery, congratulations, you’re on the road to becoming an NSWiki pro!

In my next post I will give you codes for more infoboxes that hit certain criteria. Until then, enjoy!