Feed The Beast Wiki:Getting started

Welcome to the Feed The Beast Wiki! If you are interested in contributing to this wiki, you are in the right place; this guide is meant to get you up and editing like a pro.

This guide doesn't go over translation! If you want to translate content to other languages, please view the Translation Guide!

Why help?
Why should I help the Feed The Beast Wiki? A fine question.

In truth, the FTB Wiki has a lot of mod documentation. We have thousands of pages covering hundreds of mods... but there's actually still a ton to do. According to OpenEye, there are 12,883 (as of this date) total Minecraft mods. However, the actual number is much higher; although many of the mods in OpenEye are repeats and test mods, OpenEye doesn't take in account the thousands of older mods, and not everyone (or even most users) use OpenEye for that matter. With tens of thousands of mods, there are hundreds of thousands of items and potential pages that are missing documentation. And, unfortunately, mod authors release new features and new mods much faster than they are documented here. We aren't going to ask you to sink all of your time into documentation, because you really could.

Since there is such an infinitely growing amount of gameplay, FTB Wiki Staff and other editors focus on documenting particular mods of their choosing, usually based off of popularity, inclusion in FTB packs and user preference. This means that the mod you like or may use may be late in the ever-growing "ultimate documentation TODO list". But if you ever wished a mod could be properly documented, the best way to satisfy that wish is to start documenting it. You might even find help along the way.

We will be honest to you; documenting mods isn't a ton of fun. It really isn't; especially for beginners unfamiliar with the technical aspects of the wiki. However, contributing to something, helping other users and working hard are all very rewarding. There's a lot to do, and a lot of benefit that can come from helping crack the documentation of the mod ecosystem.

A few myths

 * The Feed The Beast Wiki is for FTB mods only. This is not true! At one point in time, this was true, but that is something that changed long ago. Mods like The Mists of RioV, MoreDimensions, Aether II and RotaryCraft have all enjoyed documentation here.
 * Only FTB Wiki Staff can edit the FTB Wiki. This is not true! However, this was true in the very early stages of the wiki, when the wiki was still being formed, but it is a clause that was changed quite a long time ago.
 * It is true, however, that most of the documentation on this wiki was created by staff or former staff. As it happens, most users that stick around and contribute quality information become staff at some point.

Basic wiki help
At the Feed The Beast Wiki, we expect our users to at least have a basic understanding of MediaWiki and "wikitext". However, don't worry if you don't! Several resources exist to help, including MediaWiki and Gamepedia's Help Wiki.

Your first item/block page
On this wiki, about 90% of the articles are copied from existing pages. Why? It's quite simple- the formatting on 90% of the articles are structured the same. Below is a boilerplate of the wikitext in an "average" page.

Dirt is a block added by the Vanilla mod.

Recipe
(this will produce this, although note the navigation box and categories are cut out)

Components
This simple page is made of only a few parts:
 * The infobox (Infobox). An infobox gives basic information on the block or item. You may notice another template being used in this section- Gc. More will be expanded about grids later.
 * The lead section. This may, in fact, be the only section, but it is almost always the most important. According to the Article creation guideline, the lead section should describe almost all of the info described in the initial infobox.
 * The recipe section. Rather than using screenshots, this wiki has many special templates for displaying crafting recipes. Again, more will be expanded about grids later.
 * The footer. This includes the navbox ("navigation box"), categories and a language bar.

Variantions
As it happens, different editors have different formatting styles. The more notable variations are listed here.
 * Section headers: two spaces are often used inside of no spaces, like in  as verse  . This called "2space style", with no spaces being called "wiktionary style".
 * The footer- various components of the footer are often scrunched together, as in below.


 * "Stacked" categories- as in below.

It is encouraged you use whatever variations you find to be more aesthetically pleasing, and to experiment.