Help:Incident articles

This page explains how the incident articles on this wiki are built, so you can write or edit one yourself. Every installed extension has a job in these articles; each section below names the extension and shows how it is used.

For a finished example, see Lynching of Mohammad Akhlaq and its Malayalam translation. All articles are listed on Cow-related mob violence in India (2014–2025).

Creating an article

With the form (Page Forms + Maps)

The quickest way is the form at Special:FormStart/Incident. Type the article title, for example Lynching of Firstname Lastname, and select Create or edit article. The form has:

• a field for each infobox value, with a date picker for the date and a list of states;
• a map (from the Maps extension) where you search for the village or click to place the marker, which fills in the coordinates;
• a large text box (with the WikiEditor toolbar) that is pre-filled with the article skeleton from Template:Incident article/preload.

Existing articles have an Edit with form tab because their category sets the form as the default.

With the visual editor (VisualEditor + TemplateData)

Select Edit on any page to use the visual editor. Inserting the template Incident infobox shows a dialog with labelled fields; the labels and descriptions come from the TemplateData block on Template:Incident infobox. Select Edit source to edit the wikitext with the WikiEditor toolbar instead.

Writing guidelines

• Use neutral, encyclopedic language in the past tense. Attribute claims that are disputed (Police said…, The family alleged…).
• Cite every fact to a published source: national newspapers, wire services, court-reporting sites such as LiveLaw, or human-rights organisations.
• Name accused people only if a court has convicted them. Otherwise give numbers (police arrested nine men).
• Give the latest legal status with a year (As of 2024 the trial was pending).
• Write one topic per paragraph. Each paragraph becomes one translation unit.

Citations (Cite)

Put a citation after the sentence it supports. The articles use list-defined references: the text has short named references and the full citations are listed once at the bottom.

Mohammad Akhlaq was killed on 28 September 2015.<ref name="hindu-2015" />

== References ==
<references>
<ref name="hindu-2015">{{Cite news
 |url=https://www.example.com/news/article
 |title=Exact headline as published
 |publisher=The Hindu
 |date=2015-09-30
 |access-date=2026-10-31}}</ref>
</references>

Template:Cite news formats the citation; its parameters are documented with TemplateData, so the visual editor's Cite tool can fill them in too.

The infobox and its data

Template:Incident infobox combines several extensions:

Extension	What it does in the infobox
Semantic MediaWiki	{{#set:}} stores each value as a property (for example Property:Incident date, Property:Persons killed, Property:Incident coordinates) so the index can query it.
ParserFunctions	{{#if:}} hides empty rows; {{#ifeq:}} skips data storage on the copy Translate makes of each source page.
Scribunto (Lua)	Module:Incident formats dates (with Malayalam month names), coordinates and the OpenStreetMap link, and provides every label in English and Malayalam.
TemplateStyles	Template:Incident infobox/styles.css styles the box, the navigation box and the index statistics, including a dark-mode variant.
Maps	{{#display_map:}} draws the interactive OpenStreetMap map at the top of the box.
TemplateData	Documents the parameters for the visual editor and the form.

Example:

{{Incident infobox
|title=<translate>Lynching of Firstname Lastname</translate>
|date=2018-07-20
|place=<translate>Village</translate>
|district=<translate>District</translate>
|state=<translate>Rajasthan</translate>
|lat=27.79 |lon=76.73
|victims=<translate>Firstname Lastname</translate>
|killed=1 |injured=0
|trigger=cattle transport
|allegation=<translate>What the mob alleged</translate>
|legal_status=<translate>Latest court status, with year</translate>
|short_description=<translate>One-sentence summary for the index.</translate>
}}

trigger must be one of: beef consumption, cattle transport, cattle theft, cow slaughter or other. The <translate> tags make those values translatable.

The index, map and charts (Semantic MediaWiki, Semantic Result Formats, Maps)

Cow-related mob violence in India (2014–2025) contains no hand-written lists. Every number, marker and row comes from a query over the stored properties, so a new article appears automatically:

{{#ask: [[Category:Cow-related mob violence in India]]
 |?Persons killed
 |format=sum }}                      ← total killed (Semantic Result Formats)

{{#ask: [[Category:Cow-related mob violence in India]]
 |?Incident coordinates
 |format=leaflet }}                  ← map of all incidents (Maps)

{{#ask: [[Category:Cow-related mob violence in India]]
 |?Incident year
 |format=jqplotchart |charttype=bar
 |distribution=yes }}                ← incidents per year (Semantic Result Formats)

The navigation box at the end of each article (Template:Incident navbox) is a query too. You can explore the data yourself at Special:Ask or Special:Browse.

Malayalam translation (Translate, UniversalLanguageSelector, CLDR, Babel)

Each article is a translatable page. The parts inside <translate> tags are split into units, one per paragraph, heading or infobox value.

1. After writing or changing an article, an administrator opens Special:PageTranslation and selects Mark for translation.
2. Translators open the article and select Translate this page (or go to Special:Translate), choose Malayalam, and translate unit by unit.
3. The Malayalam page is created at Article title/ml. The infobox labels, dates and the index switch to Malayalam automatically because the page language is Malayalam.
4. When the English text changes, the changed units are marked as outdated until a translator updates them.

The bar of language links at the top of each article (<languages/>) and the language selector in the page header come from UniversalLanguageSelector; CLDR supplies the language names. Translators can list their languages on their user page with Babel, for example {{#babel:en|ml-3}}. Special:LanguageStats shows translation progress.

Review and approval (Approved Revs)

Readers see the last approved revision of each article. Administrators' edits are approved automatically; edits by other users wait until an administrator approves them from the page history or from Special:ApprovedRevs.

What readers see

• Popups, with PageImages and TextExtracts, shows a preview when a reader hovers over a link to another article.
• MobileFrontend with the Minerva skin serves a phone-friendly layout; desktop readers get Vector 2022.
• Echo sends notifications (for example when someone links to your article or replies to you).

Protecting the wiki

• ConfirmEdit asks for a CAPTCHA after failed logins and before adding external links (Cloudflare Turnstile once its keys are configured).
• AbuseFilter lets administrators write rules at Special:AbuseFilter to block or flag problematic edits.
• SpamBlacklist and TitleBlacklist block listed spam domains and page titles; local lists are at MediaWiki:Spam-blacklist and MediaWiki:Titleblacklist.
• OATHAuth adds two-factor authentication at Special:OATHManage. Administrators should turn it on.
• LoginNotify alerts users about logins from new devices and repeated failed logins.