Help:Getting Started

This page covers the basics of setting up and editing a page, for more detailed information, see the list of useful links below. If you have any other questions or suggestions, please add them to the Community portal, where one of us will be happy to help.

If you'd like to just try your hand at transcribing, we suggest you start with an SGU 5x5 as these are much shorter, or a single segment from an episode.

Adding pages to episode lists
By adding your page to the episode list templates, they will appear on both the Main Page, and the individual SGU Episodes pages. Currently, all SGU 5X5 episodes have been added to the 5X5 Episodes list, for information on how to edit entries in the Template:5X5 episode list, see Template:5X5 list entry.

It's easy to add your transcript of choice to Template:SGU episode list. Click "Edit" on the top right and you will see the wiki markup for that page. Don't worry, it's quite simple. Find the spot where your transcript belongs chronologically, and add the episode link, date and status template.

Adding a status template indicates what stage the transcription is at by including a linked icon.

Putting the page name between double square brackets inserts the link to the page (see the links section below). Click "Show preview" to make sure everything looks right. Add a summary to describe your edit, something like "added link to episode 355", and hit "Save page".

Now, if you go to the Main Page, or SGU Episodes, you will see your new edit in place. If you click on the link, you will be taken to an edit box for your new page, and you're good to go.

Reserving episodes/segments
To indicate that you are working on the transcript for a whole episode, add the transcribing all template at the top of the page, and insert your user name (optional):

This will appear on your page like this:

If you would like to work on a single section of the transcription, then you can use the transcribing template instead, placed in the relevant section on the page:

Editing pages
If you want to get transcribing right away, we are more than happy for you to do a text-only transcript, as this is really the lion's share of the work.

You can edit any page by clicking the "Edit" tab at the top of the page, which allows you to edit the whole page. If you just want to edit one section, you can click on the "Edit" link to the right of the section heading.

After entering your content into the edit box, enter a description of what you did in the summary field, then click 'preview' to ensure that your work is being displayed as intended.

It's generally best to check the preview before saving a page in order to avoid excessive entries in the Recent changes log. This log shows all changes made to the website, and is useful for checking for new additions, such as messages in the Community portal. However, be careful not to lose your work by navigating away from the edit page.

When you're happy with the page, or want to save your progress and come back to it later, click 'save page', which will show your newly edited page in all its glory.

Edit summary
When saving a page, it is considered good practice to add a brief summary of the edit in the field above the save and preview buttons. For example, "Interview segment transcribed", "transcript completed", or "proof-read to 45:30".

Adding a summary helps us quickly see what's been done on a page, and distinguishes between different revisions of the page should users wish to compare edits or return to an earlier version. All versions of a page are automatically saved in their revision history, and can be viewed by clicking on the 'View history' tab of the page itself, or from the link in the Recent changes log.

You can set your user preferences to show an alert if you try to save a page without entering a summary. When you are logged in, a 'My preferences' link appears at the top of the screen. If you click on this, and go to the 'Editing' tab, you will see a list of check-boxes, including one stating "Prompt me when entering a blank edit summary".

Adding comments
If you would like someone to look over your transcription to help with distinguishing between Rogues, or to help with any parts of the transcription, it is helpful if you can insert a comment stating the time in the podcast at that point, and post a message on the Community portal. Comments are entered between  in the editing box and do not appear on the saved page. For example: makes that text visible only in the editing box, not the page itself. This means that any user that tries to help with this problem will be able to get to the root of the issue quickly.

Comments can also be very useful when you want to come back to a section later, for example to add to the Today I Learned... list, or to add links.

Wiki mark-up
Here, we briefly describe the most commonly used wikitext markup and HTML tags for pages on this site. HTML tags take the form  to start, and   to end, encompassing the text that the tag applies to. Most require a closing tag, but not all of them (e.g  and  ).

For more detail, see Meta-Wiki: Advanced editing


 * &otimes; If you would like to leave the mark-up to someone else, or if you have any questions or suggestions, just put a note in the Community portal, and someone will be happy to help out. (see notes on the Community portal below)

Headers
These are used to mark the different podcast segments, and are automatically incorporated into a table of contents that appears at the top of the page.

An example of the different headers used in transcription pages can be found at the Episode skeleton page

There are a couple of guidelines to follow on these:
 * Quickies with Bob should be second level headers
 * If these occur between news items, then they should be followed by a second level header "News items continued" without a time stamp, and a third level header with time stampsfor the next news items. (e.g. SGU Episode 349)
 * Questions and Emails use a second level header for the section title, and third level headers for each question/email (e.g. SGU Episode 357)

Links
The default source for links used here is Wikipedia, unless there is good reason to use an alternative source. This helps to keep things uniform across transcript pages, and also means that you don't have to search for the ultimate website to explain the subject.

Tips for Transcription
You should use whatever method of transcription you find suits you best. So far, we don't know of any speech recognition software available to do the task for us, so the following is for manual transcription only. Here's some quick info on what we've found useful so far.

Please let us know if you have any suggestions to add.

Audio software
ExpressScribe is a free program that allows you a lot of control over the audio playback, whilst using the text editor of your choice. You can assign hot-keys to actions such as play, pause, speed up, skip back etc. that are system-wide (i.e. they work no matter what other program you're in at the time). You can also use this program with a foot pedal. You can find an overview of ExpressScribe functions in this article

VLC media player can be also used, by using the playback speed function. Dialling down the speed until you can type comfortably in your favourite text editor, a quick alt-tab to switch to vlc, then shift-left a couple of times will skip back a few seconds if you missed something. Alt-left and alt-right skips larger chunks of time. With a little practice these commands become second nature.

Text editing software
Ultimately, it doesn't matter what program you use for writing your transcription, but most have their advantages and disadvantages.

Here are some things you might want to consider:
 * Spell-checking – the editing box on this site underlines unrecognized and/or misspelled words with a dotted red line, but is relatively limited.
 * Automatic correction – some text editors (e.g. MS Word) automatically correct common typos, e.g. 'taht', 'beleive' and 'sicence'. This can be very handy, however, it can sometimes cause problems if a false correction is made and not noticed.
 * Grammar checking – not for the podcast content itself, but for errors such as lower case letters after full-stops and two spaces in a row etc.
 * Formatting – e.g. only 'straight' (or 'typewriter') apostrophes are recognised in wiki-markup for bold and italics etc., 'curly' (or typographic) apostrophes, as often used in MS Word, are not.
 * To change this in MS Word 2010, go to File>Options>Proofing and click AutoCorrect Options. In the pop-up window, deselect the checkbox for replacing "Straight quotes" with "smart quotes", in both the AutoFormat and AutoFormat As You Type tabs.
 * To change this in older versions of MS Word, go to Tools>AutoCorrect Options>AutoFormat As You Type and deselect the checkbox for replacing ''"Straight quotes" with "smart quotes".

Community Portal
The Community portal is a page where you can post messages about the website. This is the place to ask for help, make suggestions etc.

You can post a message here by editing and saving the page like any other, entering new topics at the top, and adding to threads within them at the bottom of the thread.

If you are replying to a post, or adding a new post within a current topic, click on the "edie" link to the righ of that topic's header. This means that it will be clear what your comment is about when others see it on the Recent changes page, or the Community Portal history page. If you are replying to a post, you should indent your text by including one or more colons, ":"

Automatically insert your user name and the time of the post by using 4 tildes "~", or by clicking the signature button at the top of your editing box.

Useful links

 * Consult the User's Guide for information on using the wiki software.
 * Configuration settings list
 * MediaWiki FAQ
 * MediaWiki release mailing list
 * Wikimedia Help:Advanced editing