Guidelines – Bohemia Interactive Community
Bohemia Interactive Community Wiki Guidelines
Introduction
With any good public forums, rules and guidelines help maintain order and sanity among readers and editors, the following rules and guidelines in this article are important in keeping people returning to the wiki for contributions and reading quality information. Respecting these rules will help in providing a positive experience for both editors and readers alike.
Rules of Conduct
The Rules of Conduct regulate the interaction between Wiki members, these are in place to ensure that the Wiki remains a civilised place where people can share information freely without being harassed and abused.
No Flaming/Flame-baiting
Abusive comments, personal attacks and name calling are not allowed. If you find an article or discussion that is abusive or you find offensive please report it to a Wiki Sysop who will investigate. Flame-baiting articles will not be tolerated
No Bigotry
Racists, sexists, homophobes or any other type of bigots are not welcome on this 'wiki, such offences will result in an immediate and permanent IP block.
No Duplicate Accounts
Having several accounts is strictly forbidden. If you wish to change your name for any reason you can do so in your user options.
Follow the instructions of the Wiki Sysops
When a Wiki Sysop asks you to do stop doing something, please follow their instructions.
Content Guidelines
The content guidelines are important to ensure that content, names, pictures remain consisent. This makes reading the content that much easier, and as bonus it make the editors job also easier. Content guidelines ensure that articles and topics that are created do not violate the Rules of Conduct or violate the law.
No discussion about illegally obtained software
All discussions about warez, piracy or leaked software are strictly forbidden, such articles will be deleted. This includes request for cracks, links to cracks or sites that host cracks, requests for CD Keys/serials.
Discussions about copy protection or copying, backing-up, hacking, cracking or reverse engineering of any of Bohemia Interactive's Products will not be tolerated and such discussions will be deleted immediately.
Any breach of these rules will result in the poster no longer having access to the Bohemia Interactive wiki.
No Spam
We deem spam as making an article or posting a reply that has no real worth, is irrelevant, useless and offers nothing to a discussion. Spam is not limited to text, posting an image as a means of spam or a spam'esque URL will also result in the same response from a moderator. With spam being hard to define, it is another example of something left to moderator's discretion, if in doubt ask yourself "does my reply add to the discussion in a way for the discussion to continue further"? If not then think of something "meatier" to add to the article.
Images
No posting of pictures containing porn, real killing, mutilations, wounds, carnage, and other disgusting/explicit images. This also includes links to pages that contain such images. The only accepted images you will find in the BI wiki must be related to a product of Bohemia Interactive. The following bullets cover some basic guidelines:
- Do not use hotlinked images in the Wiki, use the upload function when using images within the Wiki.
- Use a sensible name when uploading a pictures. (example needed) Do not rely on others to rename your pictures.
- When appropriate use an image thumb such as the examples in the Armed Assault page.
- Avoid using an image text link. Display the image as thumb or sized appropriately, this is MediaWiki!
No Developer Questions
The developers are busy working hard on Armed Assault, they don't have the time to respond to each and every question. There are many fans who can answer a wide range of questions if you require assistance in writing your article. Use the AnswerMe page for these types of questions and answers. In case you've decided to skip over this bit of text, here is summary in bullet form:
- Do not post questions directly/indirectly to the developers using the Wiki.
- Do not make suggestions for the developers in the wiki.
Use the appropriate offical forums for questions or suggestions.
VBS Policy
VBS is to be integrated into the wiki in the same manner as all other BI products. When writing articles though, it has to be clearly stated which product screen shots, links and resources are referring to, in order to avoid confusion.
- Pictures/screen shots must be clearly identifed as a VBS product and must follow wiki images guidelines for content.
- Links for VBS resources are allowed.
- Articles describing technical topics specific to VBS are allowed.
If there is any doubt in posting VBS content queries should be directed to vbs@bistudio.com or the VBS Resources forum.
Quality External Links
Use valid external links. Avoid linking the Wiki to web sites that don't have a permanent home.
Format Guidelines
These guidelines are here to provide assistance in ensuring the appearance of articles are clear, understandable and consistent.
Categorising
Organisation is essential for making it easy to find information contained in the wiki. Be sure to categorise you article once you have completed the writing.
- Always use categories for the content, if you make a new page it needs to be categorised so other people can find it.
- Clearly distinguish content specific for a particular project, if the content you are creating is about Operation FlashPoint then it should be catergorised in the appropriate OFP catergory. (e.g. not everything for OFP makes sense for ArmA etc.)
Summarise your changes
- Mark small edits as small edits to keep version history easy to read. As the wiki default major edits are enabled for every submission. Generally 90% of the edits will be minor edits for boldness, etc. You can change this behaviour in your preferences setting to make all edits minor edits.
- Be sure to include some summary text of edits you have made, this make it easy for other people to understand what changes were made. Even use short text statements like fixed typo make it clear what changes have been made to an article.
Use Full Names when appropriate
When creating new categories or articles, consider the naming convention your going to use.
[[Operation Flashpoint: Elite]] is more acceptable than [[OFP:Elite]]. The new category or article should almost always be [[Game Title: something]] such as [[Operation Flashpoint: Addons]]
Your choice should always be clear and concise for the reader and easy for the editor to link back to.
Refer to the Naming Conventions page for choosing the appropriate name when writing articles about BI products.
Avoid capital letters
Typing in all capital letters is equivalent to yelling and is not permitted. It is also difficult to reading articles featuring all-caps.
Templates
To be concise, easily used and easily remebered.
- Templates should include an example of usage.
- Templates should be linked to category:Templates so they are easy to find for other users. Use the <noinclude>[[category:Templates]] </noinclude> tags around the category to prevent all articles using this template to be categorised automagically.
Use the section edit button
Use the section edit button if you are editing only a section. This will help prevent having to revert changes when someone is editing the entire article.
Write in English
This Wiki's offical language is English. Avoid writing in any other languages and avoid using short forms of words e.g. "m8" instead of mate, "u r" instead of you are or your. Articles with good spelling and proper grammar will encourage further contributions of good content. Proper spelling of an article name will also make it easier for other authors to link their articles to your article.
Talk Pages
- Talk or discussion pages are supposed to be for discussions about the project page, and not for discussing the technical issues related to the subject, or ask technical questions. Use the appropriate offical BI forums for this type of discussion.
- Sign any comments you've made with ~~~~. This adds a nice little tag indicating who left the message and when. Three tildes will just leave your name.
- Use colons, double colons, triple colons :: to indent replies, so that the discussion is easy to follow.
- Use a section name to describe the topic of discussion. (Example: =SectionName==)