Features of the GEOS-Chem public wiki

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Here is a quick introduction to the features contained in the GEOS-Chem wiki:

Search Box

Because articles and contributions are being added to the GEOS-Chem wiki on a daily basis, the search feature is a quick way to look for specific information. This is probably the fastest way to locate information on the wiki.

Navigation menu

If you look at the navigation menu at the left of the page (i.e. just above the search box), you will see the follwing links:

Main page
This will take you to the GEOS-Chem top-level "menu" page. Links to the other wiki pages are listed here.
Community Portal
For example, on Wikipedia this page would be the place where you can go to find out what is happening with the wiki. Various projects and collaborations can be listed here. As of May 2008, we haven't yet done anything with this page but we could work on this later. See the Wikipedia Community Portal for an example.
Current Events
This page is meant to be used to post information about various upcoming events in the GEOS-Chem community (e.g. telecons, meetings, releases, etc). All users should feel free to add items to this page.
Recent changes page
This page shows which pages have been recently edited. If you set a watchlist then your watched pages will be shown as bold here. Each page listed on "Recent Changes" has two links you can click: (diff) and (hist).
  • The (diff) link will show you the changes between the current version of the wiki page and the last revision.
  • The (hist) link will show you the complete "revision history" (i.e. how many changes there have been for that page. This is a good way to check what has been added to the page recently.
Help
At present this page just contains links to the Wiki documentation.
Donations
not used.

Toolbox menu

Just below the search box, you will find the toolbox menu. This contains the following links:

What links here
This will bring up a list of all other pages in the wiki that link to page that you are currently viewing.
Related changes
This will bring up a list of recent revisions in ALL pages that link to the page that you are currently viewing.
Upload file
Allows you to upload a file (should be less than150kb) to the wiki. NOTE: In many cases it is easier to place files on the GEOS-Chem website directories and just link to them from the wiki.
Special pages
This brings up a list of system pages (e.g. statistics, broken links, most viewed pages, user preferences, etc.)
Printable version
Will render the page that you are currently viewing in a form suitable for printing (i.e. it will only show the page content and none of the navigation menus in the left-hand panel).
Permanent link
Allows you to link to the version of the page as it is now. NOTE: because the wiki is being updated frequently you should never use this option!!!

Wiki pages

At the top of each wiki page there are several tabs:

Article | Discussion | Edit | History | Move | Watch/Unwatch
Article
This is the "Article" page, i.e. the "front" page where information about the given topic is to be added. Users can edit the content here. However, as a rule, users should only edit this page if they can improve it, or have additional relevant material to add.
Discussion
Each "Article" page has a corresponding discussion page. Users can start a talk thread here. The content of the talk should relate to what is posted on the corresponding "Article" page. For example, instead of emailing individual persons, you can start a discussion on the "Discussion Page" where everyone can see it and respond.
Edit
Click on this page to edit the "Article" page. Clicking on this will allow you to edit the entire page at once. However, if you only want to edit a portion of the page you can click on the edit links corresponding to each section. NOTE: You must be logged in to edit pages.
History
Shows you the history of the revisions made to the "Article" page.
Move
This allows you to change the name of the wiki page. NOTE: In general you should not move a page without contacting Bob or Philippe first. Moving a page may result in broken links in other areas of the wiki.
Watch/Unwatch
Clicking this button will add this wiki page to your watch list. You can see your watchlist by clicking on the "My watchlist" link at the top right of the browser window. Changes to your watched pages will also be noted in the Recent Changes page. To remove a page from the watch list, click on the same tab (its name will change to "unwatch").

Let the GEOS-Chem wiki inform you of recent changes!

You can use the RSS feed option to inform you when changes are made to the site! You can subscribe to the RSS feed from one of many feed readers. Some of the more common ones are:

Microsoft Outlook

The following instructions are for MS Outlook 2007. You can probably use the same procedure for MS Outlook 2010 as well (but check the MS Outlook help pages just to be sure).

  1. Look at the Mail frame (this is usually the left-most column on the screen)
  2. Under the Mail frame, look at Mail Folders
  3. Under Mail Folders, find RSS Feeds
  4. Right click on RSS Feeds
  5. Pick Add a New RSS Feed from the dropdown menu
  6. A dialog box will pop up prompting you to enter the feed name. Type the following text into this box (you'll have to do this manually, not with cut-n-paste): http://wiki.seas.harvard.edu/geos-chem/index.php?title=Special:Recentchanges&feed=rss
  7. Once you have typed in the text, press Add
  8. Another dialog box will pop up that says Add this RSS Feed to Outlook?. Click the Yes button.
  9. After clicking Yes, you should see the RSS feed displayed as a subfolder under Mail Folders/RSS Feeds.

Mozilla Thunderbird

First, set up an RSS Feed account in Mozilla Thunderbird:

  1. Go to the File menu and select New -> Account. (Alternatively, you can go to the "Tools" menu and select Account Settings, and click on the Add Account button.)
  2. In the dialog box that pops up, select RSS News & Blogs
  3. Press the Next button.
  4. Enter an account name (e.g. RSS Feeds or whatever you like)
  5. Press the Next button
  6. Press the Finish button.

This new account will now appear in the folders pane in the main Thunderbird window.

Then, you need to subscribe to the GEOS-Chem recent pages feed through the "RSS Subscriptions" dialog:

  1. Right-click on the account name in the folders pane and select Properties.
  2. Click on Manage Subscriptions. This will bring up the RSS Subscriptions dialog.
  3. Click the Add button
  4. Type http://wiki.seas.harvard.edu/geos-chem/index.php?title=Special:Recentchanges&feed=rss into the box,
  5. DO NOT CHECK THE BOX: Show article summary instead of loading the web page! You will want to see the web pages.
  6. Click the OK button

After the feed is verified, it will then appear in the RSS Subscriptions dialog and in the folders pane under the account.

In the same way, you can add more feeds under a single RSS account. If you subscribe to numerous feeds, you may wish to create more than one RSS News & Blogs account, each with multiple subscribed feeds.

For more information, please see the Mozilla Thunderbird RSS Feed help page.

Mozilla Firefox

  • Open this page in Firefox: http://wiki.seas.harvard.edu/geos-chem/index.php/Special:Recentchanges
  • Click on RSS in the toolbox menu (in the left hand panel, below the search box)
  • A dialog box titled Add Live Bookmark will pop open.
  • You will be asked where to save the GEOS-Chem recent changes feed. Select Add to Bookmark Toolbar
  • When you click on the GEOS-Chem - recent changes tab on the toolbar, you will see a dropdown list of approximately the last 20 GEOS-Chem wiki pages that were revised. Clicking on a page name will take you to that page.
  • More information here.

Internet Explorer

Geos-chem - Recent changes [en]
You are viewing a feed that contains frequently updated content. When you subscribe to a feed, it is
added to the Common Feed List. Updated information from the feed is automatically downloaded to your
computer and can be viewed in Internet Explorer and other programs. Learn more about feeds.

Subscribe to this feed
  • Click on Subscribe to this Feed. This will add the feed to your Feeds list.
  • A list of recently-modified GEOS-Chem wiki pages will be displayed, with the differences between the most recent version and the previous version highlighted in red.
  • On the top right of the page there is a menu with the following options
    • Search Box
    • Sort by: Date / Title / Author
    • View feed properties
  • Set the feed refresh time to 1 hour. To do this:
    • Click on View feed froperties on the right side of the page
    • Click on Use Custom Schedule
    • Select 1 hour

Google Reader

NOTE: If you don't already have a Gmail account, you may need create one for yourself. See http://mail.google.com for more information. It's free!

  1. Go to http://reader.google.com
  2. Click on Add Subscription (in the green box on the left-hand panel)
  3. Type the following text into the box http://wiki.seas.harvard.edu/geos-chem/index.php?title=Special:Recentchanges&feed=rss
  4. Click Add

That's it! This will subscribe the GEOS-Chem recent changes wiki feed to Google Reader. There will be a post for each of the recent changes. There are a couple of options (see the tabs at the top left of the page):

List view
This will the list of headings corresponding to each wiki page that was recently modified. Clicking on any of the messages will show the differences (highlighted in red) between the most recent modification and the previous modification.
Expanded view
This view will show the differences (highlighted in red) between the most recent modification and the previous modification.
Feed Settings
Clicking on this tab will open a dropdown menu with options about how to sort the items (i.e. by newest, by oldest, etc.) You may also sort your feed subscriptions into different folders.

If you want to see the actual wiki page itself instead of the list of differences, you can click on the page title.

For more information about Google Reader, you can take the tour or see the Google Reader help page.

--Bob Y. 11:06, 10 January 2013 (EST)

Wiki culture

We'd like to encourage all GEOS-Chem users who have not already registered for an account on the GEOS-Chem Wiki to create a username and password. All registered users can contribute to the wiki and should feel free to do so. To create a username and password, simply click on the "Log In/Create Account" link at the top right of your browser window.

ConfirmAccount has been installed on the GEOS-Chem wiki. This allows the GEOS-Chem Support Team to manually confirm all requests for new wiki accounts. This is a measure intended to defeat spamming and unauthorized modification of wiki pages.

If you are not familiar with MediaWiki markup text, we recommend you review the following links:

When you modify wiki content please be sure to place a timestamp at the bottom of your text. This can be done with the "signature" key (second from right) in the Wiki Editor or by placing the characters --~~~~ (i.e. 2 dashes and 4 tildes) into your text. When you save the page these characters will be replaced with your user name (or nickname if you specified one in your user preferences) and a timestamp.

We'd also like to ask all GEOS-Chem users to get into the habit of checking the wiki first (or even better, let the GEOS-Chem wiki inform you about updates to the site!) before sending questions to the GEOS-Chem Support Team. Several of the most common questions about GEOS-Chem regarding met fields, compilers, bugs and fixes, system information, version information, etc. have already been posted, and new information is being added on an almost daily basis.

--Melissa Sulprizio (talk) 15:29, 23 July 2015 (UTC)