Instructions for contributors

General Instructions
1. For ease in reading, italicize the commenter name and date/time stamps on each comment. To do this in the Visual editor, simply highlight the line you want to italicize, then click the "i" button at the top. To do this in the Source editor, put < i > in front of the line you want to italicize and < / i > after the line. Close all the spaces.

2. Asterisks have a very specific purpose in Wikia formatting. Any asterisks in the text you're posting will mess up your formatting. Before creating your wiki post, be sure there are no asterisks in the text. If there are any, replace them with an _underscore_. For hugs { { { } } }, you will need to put a space between each bracket; otherwise, Wikia will read it as a failed attempt at coding.

3. I recommend you copy-and-paste the comments into a text editor, such as Notepad or Wordpad, before putting them into the Wiki editor, to make putting in the italics and checking for asterisks easier. For contributions with many nested comments, you'll definitely need to copy-and-paste into a text editor first and work in that before posting them to the Wiki.

To create a new page:
1. On the main page, select the index section your contribution should go under (for example, Songs or Stories) and go to that page.

2. On the index section page, click Edit.

3. In the Editing window, type the title of your contribution in the list. It would help keep things findable if you list your contribution in the correct alphabetical position.

4. Highlight the title of your contribution, then click the Link button above.

5. A window will pop up to confirm the name of the page you're creating and the link. To keep things simple, make sure you leave the name of the page and the link text the same. Click ok.

6. In the Editing window, click Publish.

7. The index section page will come back up with the new page link you just added. The link should be red to indicate that you have not actually created the page yet.

8. If your contribution would fit into more than one section, you can add a link to it on any other section index page. Be sure to keep the wording/spelling exactly the same every time.

9. To add your new page to the Alphabeticlol Index, go to that page, click Edit, then go to Source view and follow the formatting that's already there as an example.

For smaller items, without a lot of comment nesting, you can just copy-and-paste your selection into the Visual Editing window.
1. Click your new link.

2. This brings up your new page, empty for now. Click Edit.

3. Copy your prepared contribution (make sure you checked for asterisks!) and paste it into the Visual Editing window.

4. To nest comments down one level, highlight the comment (including commenter name and time/date stamp), then click the "bullet list" button at the top. (This is the one with lines with little squares next to them.) To undo this action, click the bullet list button again.

4. Italicize the commenter names and the time/date stamps. For top-level comments, select the name then click the i button at the top. Then select the time/date stamp and click the i button. For nested comments, you can select both name and time/date at the same time and italicize.

5. Check to make sure everything is correct (click the Preview button to the right), then click Publish.

Instructions for posting longer items with comment nesting at more than one level:
Note: This is easiest if you can keep your text editor window and the window with the actual ICHC comments both open, side by side.

1. Copy all the comments you want to include in the post from your ICHC/Wayback Machine save, and paste them into a text editor (Notepad or Wordpad work fine.) If you are going to include the LOL in the post, make a note to yourself at the top of which LOL it is. Be sure you have the image saved to your computer as a separate file from the comments post.

2. If the comments paste with indents, go through and remove all the indents so that everything is aligned to the left. Indents will show up as separate indented text boxes on the wiki, which would be nice for getting the nesting except that once you're more than two or three levels in the comments boxes you have the scroll the boxes horizontally to read the comments, which is inconvenient.

3. If "Reply," asterisks (the little star thing above the 8), or numbers show up between the comments, remove these.

4. Asterisks serve a very specific purpose in Wikia formatting. Stray asterisks, such as those use to indicate action in comments, will mess up your formatting. Do a "find and replace" to replace all remaining asterisks with an underscore _.

5. For top-level comments: Put after each line except the last (remove the extra spaces). this will keep the whole think from running together in one line.

6. For reply/nested-level comments: Use asterisks to move these in to the right position, one asterisk per level of nesting. One asterisk for the first level, two asterisks, for the next, etc. This is where it's useful to be able to see the original comment thread as you post, to see what level each comment is.

To see an example, on any post with multiple-level nested comments, click Edit, then click on the Source tab. This will show you what I typed.

7. Do not leave any line spaces between replies to the same top-level comment. Leaving a line space will cause extra bullet-points to appear.

8. Leave two line spaces between the end of one set of comments and the next top-level comment.

9. Save frequently as you do this, especially on long posts.

10. When all the comments are formatted for nesting, copy the whole thing.

11. Go to the wiki, and follow the instructions to create a new page and italicize the commenter names and date/time stamps.

12. To add the LOL, put the cursor at the top of the page, select Photo from Add features and media at the right, then follow the instructions to upload the image. Select "full size" when given image size options, then click "Add photo."

13. If you want to see an example of long formatting with lots of comment nesting, go to Acme Rocket Lawn Chair, 1st and 2nd Launching, click Edit, then look at the Source view.