Help:Testing

Before commiting to a change, one should test it first.

changes to a page
There is a preview button near the submit button. One should check to make sure that the links are correct and the spelling is correct

spelling
linuxquestions.org appears to have a spell checker in their modified version of mediawiki, one can use Konqueror or Firefox with a spell check extention to check spelling within the browser window.

Testing features of existing software on the test project
An advantage is that is does not interfere with, or clutter, the regular projects; disadvantage is that differences in the software may interfere with the test; e.g., error messages may be shown, or the tested features work differently. Also, the project may be reset, or history may otherwise be lost, so one has to save elsewhere what one wants to keep.

Testing features of existing software on one of the regular projects
This applies anyway for tests that depend on settings which are different per project, such as:
 * interlanguage links (software feature)
 * case-sensitivity of the first character
 * character encoding
 * enabling of embedding images in other projects and images outside Wikimedia
 * MediaWiki:Monobook.css, etc.
 * any test depending on other content, which is not copied onto the test project, or on namespace prefixes, etc.

It can be done:


 * in special pages such as en:Wikipedia:Sandbox
 * on user pages and subpages
 * using Preview - this can not be used to test how a change in a page affects another page, such as when changing a template; when used to test automatic conversion of wikitext it only shows the rendered webpage, not the new wikitext itself, except for automatic conversion of special characters to their decimal numeric codes.

A test involving variable, e.g. a link to an image or another page with a name containing  , can be done on the Talk page, since the value of the variable is the same on that page.

Sysops testing the available links and how things work for ordinary logged-in users, can log in under another name, or in a project for which they are not a sysop.