Talk:Events
From Vermont Area Group of Unix Enthusiasts
Adding an event
Start a new section at the top of the page but after the <startfeed /> tag. with a level-two heading, like == Friday, December 31, 1999 ==. In the body type a paragraph about the event with an inline link like
- [[December 31, 1999 | Monthly open meeting with a presentation on MediaWiki]]. Haskell Free Library, 93 Caswell Avenue, Derby Line, Vermont. --~~~~
Finally, add your "signature" with timestamp by typing --~~~~ (2 dashes and 4 tilde characters) or insert it by hitting the MediaWiki icon that looks like:
Avoid Wiki markup and formatting in the event description--except for the single link that is required (otherwise, the feed link will be link to the section anchor in the page). For the events to show up as intended on the Wiki's front page, all the HTML elements in the feed are stripped out. This hack is unfortunate but necessary, but is a welcome side effect since it promotes the feed be text-only and makes it text-only when transcluded on the Wiki front page.
Any formatting inserted will work if the feed is syndicated to other sites, but again will not work when transcluded to the front page of the Wiki. This means elements like images are not supported. Also, other RSS feeds transcluded on the site--though, there are no plans--will also have their elements stripped as well. See Wiki:Changes to RSS extension.
Changing an event
Anyone can change an event for the feed. When you make your change, delete the existing signature and add yours. This signifies you made the change, but more importantly updates the timestamp, which might be of significance to feed reading software.
Archiving
Old events should be manually moved to Event History. Note that the formatting of entries on the Event History page is different than the Events page. Simply follow the formatting precedent that already exists to archive past events.
The feed could act as the archive, but it's unknown at this time whether items might be omitted after a certain time period. Moving events off of Future events makes the page shorter, and the feed more concise, so it's probably worth doing anyway.
