Esolang:Help
This page is split into two parts: how to achieve certain effects, and style guidelines regarding use of those effects.
How to do stuff
Use two apostrophes for italics: ''fun'' produces fun.
Use three apostrophes for bold: '''Brainfuck''' produces Brainfuck. This should only be used for titles of pages, the first time they appear in the article.
Use two equals signs for sections: ==Computational class==. Three for subsections: ===Turing equivalence===. Use subsections sparingly, in general.
Use two brackets for links within the wiki: [[Brainfuck]] produces Brainfuck.
We use the singular form for all nouns for article names (except in the Esolang: namespace). MediaWiki is smart, so this is pretty easy: just do [[esoteric programming language]]s and you get esoteric programming languages. Notice how the s is outside the brackets, but it appears to be within the link anyway.
Sometimes you have to be more creative, like this: Such languages are similar to [[cellular automaton|cellular automata]], which produces: Such languages are similar to cellular automata. Article names are case sensitive (so don't link to "BrainFuck"), but MediaWiki automatically uppercases the first letter for you.
For an external link, do [http://whatever.the/urlis.html Description of page]. External links should mostly only be used at the bottom of an article in the "External resources" (or "External resource" if we only have one link) section.
For textual code snippets, start lines with spaces. They will magically get set off like this:
[-] empty cell >+++++ set next cell to 5 [-<++>] multiply by 2 . print a newline
You can click on "edit" for this page if any of the above is unclear. Finally, bulleted lists are made by starting successive lines with asterisks. For example, "* One thing" followed by "* Another thing" then "* The last thing" produces this:
- One thing
- Another thing
- The last thing
For numbered lists, do the same, but start the line with an octothorpe (#). For example, the three most commercially successful esoteric programming languages are:
You add something to a category by linking to it, usually at the end of a page. So if you want to put an article in the "Low-level" category, add [[Category:Low-level]] to the end of it.
When to do stuff
Only use bold for the title of an article, and only the first time it appears. Important terms can be set off with italics the first time they appear (unless they're important enough to have a separate article, in which case just link to it). Try to use subsections sparingly in general.
Most articles that are named after nouns should be in the singular form. So we have an article called cellular automaton that discusses cellular automata, for instance.
Try to keep external links only in the section "External resources" (or "External resource" if we only have one). There may be occasional times to break this rule.
Whether to link to user pages (stuff like "The Kipple language was designed by User:Rune") is being discussed over at Esolang:Authors. Several notable contributors don't like it, so it may be best avoided.
Categories are discussed at Esolang:Categorization. Please don't make a new category without discussing it at that category's talk page first.
That's about it for now.