From AFSWiki

Use Preview and Help put the Wiki on a diet

As more and more people begin to use the Wiki, it is growing in size. Growing so much that it might soon be too big for the space we have available. Wiki administrators are working to delete files that are no longer in use and to re-size graphics files to make them smaller.

What can an ordinary user do to help?

Don't stop using the Wiki. Don't stop making pages. We want the Wiki to reflect the valuable knowledge of all staff and volunteers in the organization. But, there is something you can change in HOW you edit pages that can help. That something is to use the "Show Preview" button.

Every time you click the "Save Page" button, the Wiki does exactly that. It saves the page.

With some pages there are literally a hundred or more copies of the page stored on the Wiki. Sometimes the only difference between two copies is a misspelled word is corrected in the second version.

You can look at the history of a page by clicking on the History Tab. If you do, you see something like this:

Notice that this page was changed 6 times on October 18th in a mere 24 minutes. It was first changed at 6:47 p.m., then changed again 20 minutes later, then changed a third time 2 minutes later, then changed a fourth time a minute later, then changed a fifth time 16 seconds later, then changed a seventh time 25 seconds later.

That resulted in 7 different (but only slightly different) versions of this page being stored on the Wiki. It also resulted in more space being occupied.

Fortunately, there is an alternative. It is the "Show Preview" button and it can be found just to the right of the "Save Page" button.

If you edit a page and want to see what the edit looks like, you can click the "Show Preview" button. This will show what the page would look like if you saved it at that moment. It doesn't save the page and it doesn't take up more space in the Wiki.

It gives you the chance to look the page over and decide if there are any other changes that you want to make. If so, you can scroll down to the editing window (which remains open), make your changes, and click "Show Preview" again to get an updated Preview.

Once you are sure that all the changes you want to make have been made, then you click the "Save Page" button.

The result of using the Preview is that only one new copy of the page has been put into the Wiki and less space is eaten up by the editing process.