How to contribute

There are several ways of helping the site develop:

1. Email. Feel free to email jonathan at mentalhealthlaw.co.uk if you need any help (replace 'at' with the @ symbol). Also please email if you have any ideas for the site, or resources such as case transcripts which aren't on Bailii yet.
2. Discussion pages. Each main page has a 'discussion page' for comments and questions. You do not require to be logged in to edit these pages (but if you want your username to appear you should log in). Click on the page's 'discussion' link to go to the discussion page, e.g. see the Legislation page and its discussion page. If you are logged in, you can add your username and the date by typing ~~~~.
3. Edit the site. To edit or add 'main pages' (as opposed to discussion pages) you must be registered as a contributor: please email jonathan at mentalhealthlaw.co.uk if you are interested in this.

Click on log in/create account at the top of the screen if you want to create a user account. The only required information is a username and password so the process takes a matter of seconds.

Conventions on this site

Legislation with a highlighted background cannot be edited. This is to promote confidence in its reliability.

Red links are to pages which don't exist yet.

The software won't allow the following characters in page titles: & ? [ ] (So case citations need round brackets even where this is technically incorrect.)

Change the layout

If you prefer the classic Wikipedia layout then log in and select the following options: "My preferences" (top of the screen), "Skin", "MonoBook", then click "Save".

It is also possible to increase or decrease the size of the text. On Internet Explorer 7, change the font size by clicking "Page" then "Text size", or "zoom in" by clicking the "100%" at the bottom right of the window. On Firefox 3, change the font size or zoom in by clicking "View" then "Zoom".

How to edit pages

Where you see "edit this page" or "+" symbols you can click on them to edit or add text to pages. The following notes explain how to make more complicated edits.

To make a link to an internet site:

• just type the address including the initial 'http://', e.g. type http://www.bailii.org to display http://www.bailii.org.
• or enter the address in square brackets followed by a description, e.g. [http://www.mhrt.org.uk Tribunal website] to display Tribunal website

To make a link to a page on this site:

• Use double square brackets around its name: type [[MHA 1983]] into the page to display MHA 1983.
• To link to a MHA 1983 section, use a page name like [[s10]] to display s10
• For Tribunal rules, use [[Tribunal rule 10]] (English rules), [[Welsh Tribunal rule 10]] or [[Upper Tribunal rule 10]] as appropriate - e.g. Tribunal rule 10.

To add a new page, either:

• use the text boxes on the three main pages (Mental health case law, Legislation, General information) or
• make a link to the page you intend to create (see above) and click "save" - the link will be red. Click on it to write the page.

To categorise a page, type - at the bottom of the page - [[Category:Miscellaneous]] to add a case to Category:Miscellaneous.

Surround text with two ' marks to make it italic: type ''word'' to display word.

Sourround text with three ' marks to make it bold: type '''word''' to display word.

Begin a line with a colon to indent it.

Surround a line with two = marks to make a main heading: e.g. ==How to contribute==

Surround a line with three = marks to make a sub-heading: e.g. ===4. Get stuck in===

See Wikipedia's "cheatsheat" on editing pages for further details.