FamilySearch Wiki:FAQ/Technical

What happens if two or more people are editing the same page?

 * When the second person (and later persons) attempts to save the page, MediaWiki will attempt to merge their changes into the current version of the text. If the merge fails then the user will receive an "edit conflict" message, and the opportunity to merge their changes manually. If multiple consecutive conflicts are noticed, it will generate a slightly different message. This is similar to Concurrent Versions System (CVS), a widely used software version management system.

How do I recover a password I have forgotten?

 * If you entered your e-mail address when you signed up, you can have a new password generated. Click on the "Log in" link in the upper-right corner. Enter your user name, and click the button near the bottom of the page called "Mail me a new password". You should receive an e-mail message with a new random password; you can use it to log in, go to your preferences, and change your password to something you'll remember.

How do I change my password?

 * You can change your password via Special:ChangePassword; you can also find a link to this in your preferences.

What kind of markup language does Wikipedia use?

 * Wikipedia uses a very simple markup. For more details, see Editing a Page.

Why not use HTML?

 * The short answer is: for simplicity and security.


 * And now the longer answer. FamilySearch Wiki, and Wikis in general, are meant to be edited on the fly. HTML is not easy to use when you simply want to write an article. Creating links gives us a particularly dramatic example. To link to the HTML article using HTML, one would have to type


 * HTML


 * Using Wiki markup is much easier:


 * HTML


 * Then there's security. Different web browsers have bugs that can be exploited via HTML. Malicious users could also do things like Javascript popup windows or page redirects if they had full HTML ability on Wikipedia. Several "experimental" sites that allowed full-HTML editing have suffered such attacks, including a couple of other wikis that allowed arbitrary HTML.

So we can't use any HTML?

 * That's not true. Some HTML tags work. However, there's been some rumbling among the software developers that most HTML tags are deprecated.