- This page is part of the Guided tour.
The content below is from Community Portal on this wiki.
The Community link in the left-hand nav-bar takes you to this community portal but also provides access to the various boats, skins and tracks that have been uploaded by community members. Skippers who frequently host races are listed under the Hosts sub-menu item and eventually there will be a sub-menu item that takes you to a query page where you can access race result data however that feature might be a few months away yet.
Back to the Community Portal shown below.
This is loaded with useful references for new and experienced wiki users. If you are not sure what to do at the wiki then check this page before asking for help at the forums. The Customize your experience section is essential reading if you are put off by the embedded/intrusive advertising found at Wikia hosted communities.
This Community Portal is where the wiki community comes together to organize and discuss projects for the wiki.
About the Virtual Skipper Wiki
Make your first edit here[]
You've just created an account ... so what now?
- Some housekeeping tasks (e.g. create a user-page and a user_talk page) are triggered by the first edit you make.
So please, click here to get started with a simple "hello" message at the forum. Even a terse "Hello world" will do.
- You cannot do any harm or break anything with a bad edit. So go ahead right now!
New to wikis?[]
- If you are new to wikis, you should start with the tutorial on the Central Wikia.
- A list of most help pages can be found on Help:Contents and in Category:Help.
- Contact Wikia staff
How to help out[]
- Manual of Style is a valuable collection of best known methods to guide your creation and editing of articles.
- If you want to help but you're not sure where to start, try improving the various article stubs by adding content.
- Another helpful activity would be to check the list of wanted pages for any frequently linked-to articles that don't exist yet.
- Almost every ISAF Racing Rules of Sailing article needs image(s) to illustrate each rule. Review WantedFiles for a comprehensive list.
- To see which page needs each redlink file click on the link labeled (1 link), (2 links), etc. in that list to understand the context for each image. While viewing any wiki article with a redlink to a wanted file clicking on that redlink will take you to a file upload interface page.
- To follow the changes to this wiki, and to look out for new users and edits use recent changes.
- You can find a list of useful templates on Category:Templates, some of which are documented on Virtual Skipper Wiki:Templates.
- Preferably each template will have it's own documentation page. Read about how this works here.
- If you need help editing, you could start with Help:Editing or this tutorial.
Want to discuss stuff?[]
- If you want to discuss anything specific to an article, you can use the talk page for that article.
- For more general discussion, use the forum.
- Via your personal user page you can write a blog. You can enable or disable user comments and voting on a per-blog basis. The blog composition is unique in this regard because any other wiki article or forum post can be freely edited by another wiki visitor. So now you have a soap box .. use it wisely!
- Assume good faith
Things to do[]
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Can't upload files?[]
This wiki has special permission to allow for .ZIP files to be uploaded. As you know this is the expected format for boat models and boat skins but it is also a format that can allow unscrupulous people to upload potentially nasty executable files or maybe use a ZIP archive to camouflage copyright protected files.
For these reasons your user account must belong to the "emailconfirmed" group before you can upload files to Virtual Skipper Wiki. Membership in that group is automatic if you provided an email address upon registration and then looked for the incoming email and followed the link specified in that message. Visit Special:Preferences to check whether or not you are a member of this group. (Do not use Special:ListUsers because that information is misleading for this specific group.)
- If you registered weeks ago and cannot locate that email verification message then visit Special:ConfirmEmail and follow instructions for a new verification code to be emailed to your email address on record. The change of user rights takes effect once you have verified your email address.
ZIP files may also be used for uploading multiple Track.GBX files as each GBX file is only a few hundred bytes it would be silly to upload one track file at a time.
Customize your experience[]
- Users are free to specify the familiar, WikiPedia-like, Monobook skin via the preferences link.
- Be sure to clear the check-box labeled Let the admins override my skin choice.
- If you do not appreciate being redirected to My Home when you enter the vsk.wikia.com URL then you can disable my redirect to My Home.
- The Wikia-wide default skin has been mandated to be Monaco. Monaco is not completely without merit but it is chunkier than Monobook. If you wish to customize the Monaco skin then read this article. It will guide your editing of these three customization files that affect only your browsing experience:
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| Easily filter advertising |
Advertising has always been a part of free hosting services and ads are also a part of Wikia. If advertising annoys you then you have at least a couple of easy options:
- by far the easiest (one-click) solution is to enable the myContent gadget via the Gadgets tab at Special:Preferences. Out of respect for Wikia's advertising policy, this filtering feature is deliberately made an opt-in feature as opposed to being the default for this community. Remember that you can easily disable the filter via the same myContent checkbox in your preferences.
- install a browser add-in or intelligent DNS filtering method to filter undesirable content.
Many effective tools are free and include: Stylish, NoScript, AdBlock Pro, your local hosts file, OpenDNS, etc. - customize your personal monaco.css to display no ads at all:
.WidgetCommunity, /* a.k.a. "Latest activity" and previously labeled: "Community" */
.WidgetMagCloud, /* a.k.a. Magazine Creator */
.wikia_spotlight, /* a.k.a. Wikia Spotlight */
.WidgetAnswers, /* a.k.a. WikiaNSWERS or wikianswers */
.WidgetRelatedCommunities, /* a.k.a. Related Communities */
#spotlight_container, /* a special type of ad promoting other Wikia hosted communities rather than vendors */
.gamingfooter, /* same as above but only uses plain text links */
#user_masthead_scorecard, /* the super-sized font at top-right displaying the total number of edits by you */
#HOME_LEFT_SKYSCRAPER_1,
#HOME_LEFT_SKYSCRAPER_2,
#HOME_LEFT_SKYSCRAPER_3,
#LEFT_SKYSCRAPER_1,
#LEFT_SKYSCRAPER_2,
#LEFT_SKYSCRAPER_3,
#HOME_TOP_LEADERBOARD,
#HOME_TOP_LEADERBOARD_iframe,
#HOME_TOP_RIGHT_BOXAD,
#TOP_LEADERBOARD,
#TOP_LEADERBOARD_iframe,
#TOP_RIGHT_BOXAD,
#PREFOOTER_LEFT_BOXAD,
#INCONTENT_BOXAD_1_load,
#INCONTENT_BOXAD_2_load,
#INCONTENT_BOXAD_3_load,
#spotlight_footer,
#column-google-right,
.wikia_ad,
.wikia_ad_placeholder,
.WidgetAdvertiser { display: none !important; }
Add handy page-focus links to your navigation side-bar
Go to Special:Widgets and find:
- Click the green (+) icon to add that widget (rendered in page here on the right)
- You may then drag that widget up or down to your preferred location in the navigation sidebar
- The links within the Wiki Page widget in your sidebar are now accessible from any page at the Virtual Skipper Wiki
Some other interesting pages[]
- Want to find out what you've done so far? Visit your contributions page.
- Find out more about the wiki on Special:ListUsers, Special:WikiaStats, Special:Statistics and Special:Version!