ChurchWikiForBeginners

A brief introduction to the Psalter, also known as The Wiki, for first-time users.

What is the Wiki?

You may well be asking what exactly is the wiki? Basically, the wiki is a collection of web pages organized around a common theme - in our case, church life. But they differ from most web page collections in that they are setup to be created and editable by anyone - meaning that all people interested in church life may contribute to the collection.

Unfortunately, many people ignore the Tragedy of the Commons, and do not respect others rights. Accordingly, the wiki comes with a set of Access Control Lists (aka ACLs), one list for each page, which sets our who can do what and how to each page. Some pages have read permission for everyone (yes, even the baddies of the web world), some pages can only be read by people who have a wiki account, and yet further, some pages are restricted to groups within the church. Similarly constraints apply to who may write to a given page. We try to make these lists as open as possible in the spirit of the wiki, but you will understand that some pages must be kept confidential within a group (such as the COP projects selection committee, before they announce who the COP recipients might be).

If you see a message such as You do not have permission to edit this page, it is because you are not include in the access control list. Access Control Lists can only be created by people who - guess what - have access control list permission, so most of the time, the ACL will be created by a superuser.

Superusers are people who can access the entire wiki, and can change anything in the wiki. This is a great help if you find that you have painted yourself into a cyber security corner - just send a message explaining your problem to [email protected], and they will do their best to help you.

But a caveat - before including confidential information on the wiki, ask yourself if it is really necessary. You should not rely on absolute security on the wiki.

Lastly - just have a go! You cannot break anything. If anything does go wrong, sing out for help, and likely as not, we can fix it. If you do make a horrendous mistake, bear in mind that we can always recover the old version of the page on which you were working

Changing (or Losing) your Password

Once you have a wiki account, you will need to change your password from time to time. In any case, you should change the default password straight away. Here's how you do it:

1. Click on the "Settings" link you will see at the top of the page (when you are logged in).
2. Then click the "Change password" link that appears on the new page.
3. Enter your new password (twice), click the "Change password" button, and you are done!

If you ever forget your password (and/or your user name), simply send an email to JohnHurst or DavidMorgan stating your problem, and we will fix it for you. Incidentally, clicking either of those names in the previous sentence (or indeed, anywhere you see a person's name in wiki format throughout the wiki) will take you to that person's home page. If they have an email, clicking on the email address will take you straight to your mailer, with that person's email address pre-filled for you. Isn't that convenient?

Browser Issues

Not all browsers work equally well on this wiki. Indosyncracies in both browser and wiki design can lead to inconsistent behaviour, and even incompatibilities. Here are some details of known behaviours

A more comprehensive analysis is provided at ComputerWikiBrowserIssues.

Where to from here?

Please make sure you read the WikiGuidelines, which sets out various protocols of style and format, together with helpful hints on how to do certain things. Also please bear in mind that pages that do not conform to these WikiGuidelines may be edited for reasons of style and format, so that everyone has a consistent and unsurprising experience of the wiki. (See also The Principle of Least Astonishment.)