How this site works

Everything here is a page. A page has a title, an address, and its text — written in Markdown (the guide: headings, lists, tables, cards of facts, pictures at a chosen size, and a few text effects), linked to other pages with double brackets (linking), and sorted by the tags written in it (tags and tag groups). Every published page is open to anybody to read.

Pages and their addresses

An address looks like /p/47/china-airlines. The number is the page; the words after it are only there to be readable. If a page is renamed, its number stays the same and old links still arrive — an old spelling in the address simply redirects to the new one. Two pages may have the same title; the number is what tells them apart.

Starting a page

Press New page and give it a title. Unless the site lets anyone start pages, you need a verified account to start one (see Accounts below). If a page with a similar name already exists you will be warned first, because there is no way to merge two pages later.

When the page is created you are shown its edit code — once, with a Copy button beside it. Put it somewhere safe. It is never shown again and it cannot be recovered. Whoever holds the code owns the page.

Edit codes

The edit code is the whole of a page's ownership. To change a page, open it and press Edit this page at the top; you will be asked for the code the first time, and this browser then holds the page open for a while so you are not asked on every save. Back to the page sits in the same place in the editor.

Handing the code to somebody does not lend them the page: it makes them an equal owner, and they can lock you out by regenerating it. Only share a code with people you would trust to own the page.

If you think a code has leaked, open the page's editor and regenerate the code. Everyone holding the old one — including you — is out until they have the new one; anything they had waiting for review is withdrawn, and they are told so.

Staff can regenerate a page's code too, and an administrator can deliver the new one to whoever created the page. Nothing else about a code can be looked up, by anyone.

Accounts

An account is a keyring, not a deed. It remembers which pages you have unlocked so you are not asked for their codes again, and it is where you are told what happened to work you submitted for review. It never owns a page. Staff can see which account created a page and from which address, and which accounts have unlocked it with its current code.

You need a verified account to upload images, and to start pages unless the site lets anyone. Verification is a link sent to your address (or handed to you by an administrator if the site sends no mail). You can change your password under Settings on your account page — it asks for your current one first, signs out every other device, and your address is told. If you have forgotten it, Forgot your password? on the sign-in page sends a reset link. You can close your account at any time: your address and details are erased, and the pages you made stay exactly as they were.

Writing a page

A page's text is one box, written in Markdown (the Markdown guide). It holds up to 20,000 characters; the count under the box shows how many you have used, and staff can give one page more room. A long subject reads best as one page with headings (## Fleet, ## History), and a line reading __TOC__ puts a Contents box listing them wherever you write it.

Above the box, Insert a template puts a ready-made piece of Markdown where your cursor is: an infobox the site's administrators have written, or the table of contents. It is a copy, yours to fill in, and nothing on the page changes until you press Save.

Grouping pages

Pages that belong together — an airline group and its carriers, an airport and its terminals — are grouped with a tag: write #group:china-northern on every page in the group, and the tag's own page lists all of them. Every page also shows, at its foot, which pages link to it, so a hub page that links to its members and members that link back are already a group a reader can walk. There is no page-under-a-page: one page is one address.

Review

Depending on how the site is set up, some things wait for staff before they show:

• a new page may need approval before readers can see it;
• a change to a page may be queued for review instead of going live at once — while a change is waiting, the page is frozen and nobody else can edit it until it is decided;
• an uploaded image may wait for approval before it can be placed.

Whatever the outcome, you are told on your account page (and by mail if you take it): approved, not accepted, or — if nobody got to it within the review window — expired. An expired change, image or request to publish was not judged; you can submit it again. A page that has never been published is different: once it has gone untouched for the whole review window with nothing waiting for review, it is removed, along with everything written on it.

Staff can also freeze a page (readers still see it; nobody can edit it) or hide one (it disappears from the site until it is unhidden). Every staff act is recorded.