IAC Wiki FAQ

How do I edit a page?

Click on the Edit icon located in the upper right corner of the page.
Move your mouse over a chapter heading. The Edit icon will appear at the end of the heading. Press on the icon to edit the chapter.
Note that you have to log in to edit a page.
Don't be afraid to edit a page! You cannot destroy anything. Older versions of a page are always preserved and can be restored easily.

How do I create a new page?

There are several possibilities to create a new page (topic):

Click on Create New Topic in the left bar
Click on the New icon located in the upper right corner of the page.
If you type a WikiWord inside a page that is not yet a Topic Name, you will see a question mark behind the word. Clicking on the question mark will create a new Topic.

If you create a new page inside a Web, the new topic will belong to the same Web. Pages can be moved easily to other Webs (see this question)

How do I write Wiki pages?

The Foswiki Syntax is very easy to learn. Have a look at the following pages:

WikiSyntax - A few simple Wiki syntax rules that are already sufficient for most cases
EditingShorthand - Complete set of formatting rules

How do I move a page to another Web? How can I rename a page?

Click on the Tools icon located in the upper right corner of the page
Select Rename
If you want to move the page, choose as New location the Web you want the topic to be moved to
If you want to rename the page, choose a New topic name
Important: In case topics in other Webs are linking to your page, press Search in all Webs to find all links to your topic.
Verify whether all links to the page have to be updated. If a link should not be updated, deselect it.
Finally press Rename and your page will be moved or renamed, and all links to you page will be updated.

How do I change the "parent" of a page?

Click on the Edit icon located in the upper right corner of the page.
Instead of the Text tab select the Settings tab and change the name of Parent topic.
BTW the parent is used for the breadcrumbs path you see at the top of a topic. For example
You are here: Climphys » ProjectCMIP5 » ProjectCMIP5Data

How do I delete a page?

Click on the Delete icon located in the upper right corner of the page
Choose Delete to move the topic into the Trash.
By the way, normally it doesn't make sense to update links to your deleted topic. In contrast you should manually remove the links to your deleted topic from the other pages.
Only the Wiki administrator can restore a deleted page from the Trash.

How do I view or compare older revisions of a page?

There are several ways to do it:

Click on the History icon located in the upper right corner of the page
Click on the Diff icon located in the upper right corner of a page to view the difference between two revisions. You can then navigate with the navigation buttons at the top of the page ( )
In the browser add ?rev=X to the end of the URL, where X is the revision number. For example to see revision 6 of this document type https://wiki.iac.ethz.ch/IT/WikiFaq?rev=6

How do I restore to a previous version of a page?

Use Tools

Click on the Tools icon located in the upper right corner of the page
Scroll down to Restore topic and type in the revision number of the old version and press Restore
The old revision of the page will be open in the editor. Press Restore to save it

Use History

Click on the History icon located in the upper right corner of the page
View the revision of the page you want to restore by select it under View Previous Topic Revision
Now click on the Restore icon located in the upper right corner
The old revision of the page will be open in the editor. Press Restore to save it

Why does the topic revision not increase when I edit a page?

The same topic revision will be used when you save a topic again within a certain time frame (one hour by default). This is to prevent unnecessary topic revisions when you do several edit cycles in a row. Note that a new revision is created if another person edits the same topic, regardless of the time. You can force to create a new topic revision by selecting Force new revision at the bottom of the editor before saving the topic.

What happens if two of us try to edit the same page simultaneously?

The Wiki allows multiple simultaneous edits of the same topic, and then merges the different changes automatically. You probably won't even notice this happening unless there is a conflict that cannot be merged automatically. In this case, you may see the Wiki inserting "change marks" into the text to highlight conflicts between your edits and another person's. These change marks are only used if you edit the same part of a topic as someone else, and they indicate what the text used to look like, what the other person's edits were, and what your edits were.

The Wiki will warn if you attempt to edit a topic that someone else is editing. It will also warn if a merge was required during a save.

Is it possible to get a notification if somebody is changing a topic?

Yes, click on the Subscribe icon

located in the upper right corner of the page. You will be then added to the Notification List for this topic. Notifications are send daily by email at 11:00 am. To unsubscribe click on

You can also manually edit the Notification List for each Web. Click on the icon in the left bar of each Web.

What's the purpose of the different Webs?

Each IAC group has its own Web (Atmcirc, Atmosdyn, C2SM?, Chemie, Climphys, Hyclimm, Hymet, Landclim, S2S, Wolke). There is one Web for IT related information (IT), one Web for general IAC related information (IAC) and one Web that is visible without login (Public).

How do I create a new Web?

Just send an email to UrsBeyerle and specify the name of the Web to be created.

How to logout?

Since your browser is caching the authentication, you have to exit your browser to completely log off from Wiki.

For more information about Wiki logout and why it is not automatically working see http://twiki.org/cgi-bin/view/TWiki/HowToLogOff or http://httpd.apache.org/docs/1.3/howto/auth.html#basicfaq.

How do I make a Wiki topic visible for everybody?

Per default all Webs are only visible for users that are logged in. The exception is the Public Web.

Put your Wiki topic into the Public Web to make it readable worldwide.
If for some reason, you would like to make a topic in a "closed" Web visible for everyone, you can overwrite the default access control rule with

   * Set DENYTOPICVIEW =

For more information see WikiAccessControl.

Can external people use our Wiki?

An external user can not log into our Wiki. But he can view all pages which are accessible for the unauthorized user WikiGuest. If an external user needs to view restricted parts of the Wiki or wants to contribute to the Wiki by creating or editing topics, we can give him a temporary account on NETZH. Please contact either UrsBeyerle or DanielLuethi.