NSIS Wiki:Tips & Rules

Articles edition rules

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 I used for describing "original names"). I wouldn't like details on titles, because that's the job of the page!

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.
• "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.
• More to come...

Talk pages

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

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. I don't know why the summary box for file uploads is so big and why it makes the information specified part of the file page and the summaries of both the page and file.
• "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 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 called "Examples" in list form.

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. I'm coming up with alternative ways to organize wiki pages, so don't worry if your specific category doesn't exist yet.
• More to come...

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 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 here 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.