NSIS Wiki:Tips & Rules

• The administrators need people to try to make pages better, by following the rules below. They can't always verify everything needed.

Rules enforcement

Administrators don't really like to enforce a lot of rules, but if they have extra time to verify, they'll certainly do that. They tend to give more importance to the "Very Important Rules" section.

Major Rules (always verified)

• "Spam will not be tolerated in wiki" rule: this might be a little rude, but if you post spam in here, it will be deleted without questions asked. You post it, you are blocked, and the page is eliminated. Don't waste your time spamming wiki pages. It would be a lot better if you would just create more good contributions to be included here instead...
• "Advertisements are not allowed in the wiki" rule: Going along with the rule above, advertisements shouldn't be here in the wiki. This is not a marketplace or a mall. Principally, if the ad is not for a NSIS project at all.
• "Do not ask for warez" rule: Asking for "warez", "gamez", and "crackz" is not allowed here, nor in the forums. If you ask, we might block you from using the wiki.

Minor Rules (still verified)

Articles edition

Pages

Content

• "Pages relationship with NSIS" rule: Always post something related to NSIS. Pages that are not NSIS related will be deleted.
• "NSIS discussion banning in wiki" rule: Don't create NSIS discussions here. That's the job for the NSIS Forums. Exceptions are how the articles look and wiki services (i.e. Uploading files).
• "Blank pages deletion" rule: Any blank pages in this wiki will be deleted. If a blank page has a history, it will be examined and then, by decisions, it could be deleted, the last change could be reverted, or it could be protected if the page is changed and blanked often. Blank pages are just to trick users into thinking there is useful content.
• "Page authors have better preference in disputes, except against wiki admins" rule: The {{p-author}} template is used to identify the author who created the page or who is actually maintaning the page. Authors of pages have a better say when there are disputes over content with normal or guest users as the author generally has more knowledge of his contribution than other people would. That does not mean that a sysop user cannot interfere and give better preference to a normal or guest user. Guest users are the least favored in disputes over the content of the pages.

Talk pages

• "Author identification in talk pages" rule: Always put the "~~~~" (for talk pages) or "~~~" (all other pages) whenever you are making a new comment. It is annoying to have to search for page changes just to find who is the author of a comment.

Consentious rules

These below are some rules you might want to follow if you want the wiki to be clean and neat. They are not generally enforced by administrators. It's totally ok to do not follow them. But still, it would be a lot better if you carried the rules on your on.

Articles edition

Pages

Title

• "Version usage in page titles" rule: Don't put the version of your script on page titles. Pages with this will be renamed to their names without their version numbers. One exception to this case is relating to scripts that work only in specified versions of another contribution or the NSIS itself (like "MyPlugin for NSIS 2.02").
• "Parenthesis usage in page titles" rule: Don't put parenthesis on titles except for pages which have their original names (without parenthesis) already occupied with the same name or if the plugin or program has one in their names. Parenthesis are used for extra details that are not needed but explain better the situation (like the "without parenthesis" term used for describing "original names"). I wouldn't like details on titles, because that's the job of the page!

Content

• "Pages should be created only for contributions with description of usage" rule: Pages should only be created when the documentation for using the contribution is present (the How To Use section in the docs or page), or when the contribution is not an example of usage for another contribution. For the rest, files descriptions should be used.
• "Major edits are changes to contributions" rule: A minor edit for contribution pages should only be used if a contribution did not change since the last revision of the page. Major edits should contain the new version of the contribution in the summary only and only if the contribution went through changes. The "minor edit" rule cannot be followed by guest users, because they can't use the "minor edit" feature. For pages that are not for contributions, this rule don't need to be followed.
• "Basic contribution submission to wiki" rule: All NSIS contributions except help pages should have a name, a version, some kind of description, and a link to a downloadable file or a piece of code. It is recommended to put its original thread from NSIS Forums as well.
• "No page copies are allowed" rule: Please, do not create a copy of the same page only with a different title. Moving the page, or creating a redirection page are the best solutions in this case.
• "Do not write everything in upper case" rule: Please, do not scream in the wiki by writing everything in UPPER CASE. THIS IS VERY ANNOYING, PRINCIPALLY FOR A WIKI ADMINISTRATOR, WHO WILL BE PLEASURED TO REMOVE IT OR TO PUT IT ALL IN lower case.

Files

Summary

• "No file description in file upload summaries" rule: Wiki bug: For file summaries, don't add the file description to the summary! Instead, create the file page with the details. It is not known why the summary box for file uploads is so big and why it makes that information specified as a part of the file page text and the for both page and file summaries.
• "Specify version of files in their summaries" rule: Also, with the rule above, put the version number or the date the file was launched as the summary. That's important because the wiki allows to have a versions history of the files, thus saving older versions of files, and the date of upload is not enough for saying which version that file has. For the file dates to don't create any confusion (principally if you know other languages besides English), the date format recommended is "dd mmm yyyy" where "dd" = 2-digit day, "mmm" = month name with 3 letters, and "yyyy" = 4-digit year. Separators don't need to be spaces (" "), they could be slashes ("/") or dashes ("-") for example.

Content

• "Examples should be ready for use and easily referenced" rule: All examples should be in "ready to use" form: for NSIS scripts, for example, they should be in .nsi or .nsh files, inside .zip files. Also, if they are examples for other contributions, the files should be linked directly from the page of the contributions it uses. In those contributions pages, the examples links should be in a section in list form showing which examples are related to that contribution.
• "Files from external websites should be uploaded here" rule: Always host your downloads here, in the forums, or in the sourceforge.net domain. You might want people to visit your website to download the contributions directly from there, but this download file should also be uploaded here. I (deguix) saw websites going down with many useful contributions for other communities, and I don't want that to repeat with NSIS. Even if you are sure the website will stay for long, this "long" is not long enough: it should be permanent and with backups.

Categories

• "Categories aren't for just few articles" rule: Don't create new categories for just your product or other few products. Instead, discuss them on Category talk:Browse. Administrators are coming up with alternative ways to organize wiki pages, so don't worry if your specific category doesn't exist yet.

Tips

• You can watch your pages by clicking on "Watch" tab at the top of the page of your choice, or by checking "Watch this page" when editing the page of your choice. Every change that happens on the page will appear on "my watchlist" link on the top of any page.
• Before clicking on Save page button, always consider to Preview the page. Every change you do to the page will be marked in the History tab.
• Please, create an account here on NSIS Wiki before editing articles. If you don't, you'll be easily confused with spammers, trolls, and etc. that are out there and you could be banned even if you didn't intend on doing such things. That's because it's difficult to interpret if something is spam or not if you don't know how to contact the author.
• Put summaries explaining simply what you done. If you can't explain as simple as possible, just mention what is the most important thing you have done, but put something. A blank summary means no details, and thus could be a small suspicion that the user messed up the page.... This goes mostly to those who didn't follow the tip about creating an account here.
• The web space may not be unlimited, but always consider reserving the older versions of your files. Those old files might help others solving problems that are fixed in latest versions, or might enable users to have some qualities of older versions like file size and speed.
• Try always to create pages for scripts that are updated to the latest version of NSIS. If a script only works for a version of NSIS, and this is not the latest, you should mention that it won't work for the current NSIS version.
• Put some reference to your contribution in the wiki when you release your contribution or you might lose it in the forums. Don't leave the job to search the forums and retrieve information about the contribution for us, wiki administrators.
• Try to use conformidity to your pages with the other pages from the same category, like for functions in the category Functions & Macros. This is necessary because this is a wiki showing a database of different information, and so they need the same setup for making them better looking to users. This should be also applied to names for the pages of the functions.