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See also the FAQ.

How to use a Wiki

Hit “edit page” to see how pages are coded. Use the Sandbox to warm up.

Creating a new page is done by

• first creating a preliminary link (represented by a question mark) by entering double square brackets;

• then clicking on the question mark and following the instructions.

Watch out: the name of a page is case sensitive, so make your link lowercase if it comes at the beginning of a sentence. ([[like this|Like this]].) We loosely agreed to try to follow that and some other naming conventions; see below.

Note to new contributors

When you edit a page, you can (and should) put your name (with normal capitalisation and spacing) in the box after ‘Submit as’. If you don't, then your contribution will be credited to the AnonymousCoward.

Once you edit a page for the first time, your name will appear at the bottom, grayed out with a question mark since there is no page with your name yet. You may take this as an invitation to create a user page and tell us about yourself. But if you don’t want to or don’t have the time right now, you can forget about this. If you just want to show up on category: people, then you make a page containing only ‘category: people’ (or someone else may do this for you).

To create your user page, simply click the question mark that appears next to your name at the bottom of the page after making a modification and add content to the edit box that appears. If you’d like to make a user page prior to modifying an existing page, you can do so by making some trivial modification to the Sandbox, which will put your name at the bottom of the page where you can click the question mark. (Or hack the URL.)

Naming conventions

These are not set in stone, but we're following them for now. Most days, Toby Bartels goes around and corrects any violations (while reading the new material). But changing page titles results in unnecessary kruft (in category: redirect), so you should try to follow these if possible (or dispute them if not!).

• Page titles should contain only ASCII characters.

  • Examples: [[omega-category]] instead of [[$\omega$-category]].
  • Tricks: To produce ‘$\omega$-category’, try $\omega$-[[omega-category|category]]. Unfortunately, $\omega$-category does not work.
  • Reason: It's possible to put non-ASCII characters in a name, but not ones generated by iTeX or &…; character entities, so this can be difficult, depending on your browser. To keep things easy, therefore, use only ASCII characters in links.

• Page titles should be singular nouns.

  • Examples: Use [[category]] instead of [[categories]], [[faithful functor]] instead of [[faithful]], and [[categorification]] instead of [[categorify]] or [[categorified]].
  • Tricks: To produce ‘categories’, try [[category|categories]]. To produce ‘faithful endofunctor’, try [[faithful functor|faithful]] [[endofunctor]].
  • Reason: We want only one page on a given concept, regardless of variations in grammar.

• Page titles should be uncapitalised, except for word words that are always capitalised.

  • Examples: Use [[homotopy theory]] instead of [[Homotopy Theory]], but use [[Lie algebra]].
  • Tricks: To produce ‘Homotopy theory is important!’, try [[homotopy theory|Homotopy theory]] is important!.
  • Reason: We want only one page on a given concept, regardless of variations in grammar.

• Except as contradicted above, use standard American English spelling conventions.

  • Examples: Use [[internalization]] instead of [[internalisation]] and hyphens as shown in the ASCII-only requirement.
  • Tricks: To produce ‘internalisation’, try [[internalization|internalisation]].
  • Reason: Most of this is written by Urs Schreiber and John Baez, who use American English spelling.

• Regardless of the above, pages named after specific categories should use the capitalised singular abbreviated form.

  • Examples: Use [[Set]] instead [[Sets]] and [[Cat]] instead of [[Category]].
  • Tricks: Although things like ‘$\Disc: \Set \to \Cat$’ work best in math mode and even ‘$\Set$’ alone looks most consistent that way, you have to make the link ‘Set’ outside math mode.

How to leave comments and questions

If you want to make a comment or question about a page without changing its main content, then edit the page and put your comment or question in a query block as shown in this example:

+-- {: .query}
How do I ask a question?
=--

produces

Note that a query block should be less permanent than the rest of the page; once your comment is addressed or your question is answered, you can probably remove your query block.

If you want to ask a question of a specific person, then you can place a query block on their user page (which is just a page whose title is their name). You should be able to find all user pages here.

If your comment or question is more general than a specific page or person, then try the n-Forum. Previous discussions have been on the General Discussion page and on an entry at the n-Cafe. These previous discussions should not be added to but you may find your question answered there. Important answers are being migrated to this How To and the FAQ. As this is a Wiki, if you find an answer to your question and feel it should be added to one of those then do so.

Instiki HowTo

For general information and help with Instiki, see the Instiki wiki.

Here are some useful specifics: * Use basic Markdown syntax * Make tables, footnotes, etc * Add definitions and theorems * Add metadata to your markup * Type itex equations * Use wiki syntax * Embed SVG in equations * Upload files * Use keyboard shortcuts * Make slideshows