Bohemia Interactive Community:Guidelines

Introduction

As with any good public forum, rules and guidelines help maintain order and sanity among readers and editors. The following rules and guidelines are designed so that people will return here to contribute and find 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 or 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 that you find offensive please report it to a Wiki Sysop who will investigate. Flaming or flame-baiting articles will not be tolerated.

No Bigotry

Racist, sexist, homophobic or any other type of bigoted posts are not tolerated on this Wiki. Such offences will result in an immediate and permanent 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 stop doing something, please follow their instructions.

Content Guidelines

The content guidelines are important to ensure that content, names and pictures remain consistent. This makes reading the articles much easier, and it also makes the job of the editors easier. Content guidelines ensure that articles and topics 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 immediately be deleted. This includes request for cracks, links to cracks or sites that host cracks, as well as 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.

Any breach of these rules will result in the poster no longer having access to the Bohemia Interactive Wiki.

No Spam

We define spam as an article or post 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 spamming, or as a link to a spam site, will also result in deletion. With spam being hard to define, that decision is left to the moderators' discretion. If in doubt ask yourself "does my reply add any constructive insight to the discussion"? If not, then this Wiki would not be the right place to post your comment.

Images

No posting of pictures containing porn, real killings, mutilations, wounds, carnage and other disgusting/explicit images. This also includes links to pages that contain such images. The only accepted images for this Wiki must be related to a product of Bohemia Interactive. Keep the following guidelines in mind when uploading and posting pictures here:

• Do not use hotlinked images in the Wiki. Use the Upload file function instead to upload images to this Wiki.
• Use a meaningful name when uploading a picture. (e.g. Instead of calling your picture "cool shots from OFP" call it "OFP:Helicopter Insertion in Malden"). Use a short game name (OFP, VBS, ArmA) in the image title to indicate which game it was taken in. Do not rely on others to rename your pictures.
• When appropriate use an image thumbnail on the article page (such as on the OFP Easter Eggs page).
• Avoid using a text link to point to an image. Display the image as thumbnail or sized appropriately for the article.

No Developer Questions

The developers are busy working hard on Armed Assault. They do not have the time to respond to each and every question. If you have questions (technical or otherwise), use the BI Forums.

• Do not post questions directly/indirectly to the developers using the Wiki.
• Do not make suggestions for the developers in the Wiki.

Discussion Pages

Every article comes with a discussion page. The purpose of those pages is to discuss the article. It is not the place to discuss technical issues or post opinions about the subject of the article. (e.g. An article may describe the use of Triggers. It would be perfectly appropriate to use the discussion page to talk about whether certain statements in the article may be incorrect or unclear. It would not be appropriate to ask how to use triggers to blow up a tank in your mission.)

The place to ask technical questions, or to discuss general issues, is the BI Forum.

Writing an Article

When writing an article do your research beforehand. Read all the relevant documentation, posts and articles on the web, test the situations your are describing, and only then start your article. If you are still in the early stages of editing, formatting, etc. keep the article in your sandbox until it is finished.

If you are unsure about certain subjects that are brought up by your article, don't guess! (or at least put a big disclaimer next to it.) It is better leave out subjects you're unsure about, than to post hear-say or false information. This is a Wiki and other users will, over time, complete the missing parts.

If there are some minor points in your article that you think someone else might be able to answer, use a link to the AnswerMe page, so that others can find open questions.

Mod Pages

You are welcome to announce your mods on this Wiki under the respective categories (OFP or ArmA), but these should be limited to an overview of your mod, rather than a full-scale documentation.
Each modder (or mod group) is allowed to have a one page description, with up to 8 images embedded. If images for this page are uploaded to this Wiki, their individual size should not exceed 100KB. (Images that are hosted elsewhere, and only linked to, do not fall under this limitation.)

Quality External Links

Use valid external links. Avoid linking to websites that don't have a permanent address.

Format Guidelines

These guidelines are here to ensure that articles are presented in a clear, understandable and consistent style.

Categorise your Article

Organisation is essential for making it easy to find information on this Wiki. Be sure to categorise your article once you have completed the writing.

Always use categories for the content. Unless you categorise your article properly people won't be able to find it.

Clearly distinguish content specific to a particular project. If the content you are creating is about Operation Flashpoint then it should be categorised in the appropriate OFP category. (e.g. not everything for OFP is applicable to ArmA, etc.)

Create/edit Sections

When starting a new subject on an article or discussion page define a section name to describe the sub-topic. (Example: ==Create/edit Sections==)

When editing only a section of a page, use the section edit button (the [edit] link on the right side) to open only that particular part of the page. This will prevent conflicts if two people are editing the same page.

Summarise your Changes

When making only small edits check the "This is a minor edit" box at the bottom. This makes the version history easier to read. Generally 90% of the edits will be minor edits for boldness, typos, etc. By default all edits are markes as "major". This can be changed to "minor" in your preferences setting.

Be sure to include a summary text of edits you have made. This makes it easy for other people to see at a glance what the edit was about. Even short text statements like "fixed typo" will be sufficient in most cases.

Use Full Names for Titles

When creating new categories or articles, consider the naming convention you are 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. Keep in mind that you can use spaces in the name of the article (e.g. [[Armed Assault: Easter Eggs]] would be better than [[Armed Assault:EasterEggs]])

Refer to the Naming Conventions page for choosing the appropriate name when writing articles.

Do not use All-Caps

Typing in all capitals is equivalent to yelling and is not permitted. It is also difficult to read articles featuring all-caps.

Use the Preview Button

When writing an article preview the changes before saving them. Saving every single revision during editing will clutter the "History" and "Recent Changes" pages, and will make it harder for others to track the actual changes.

Write in English

This Wiki's offical language is English. Articles in other languages are not currently accepted. Use the proper spelling of words and phrases, instead of abbreviations and messenging style codes (e.g. don't use "m8" instead of "mate", or "u r" instead of "you are"). Articles with good spelling and proper grammar will encourage further contributions of quality content. Proper spelling of an article name will also make it easier for other authors to link to your article.

Talk/Discussion Pages

• Sign any comments you've made with ~~~~. This adds a tag, indicating your name and submission time. Three tildes will leave just your name.
• Use colons(:) for indentation, so that your submission is easily distinguished from the preceeding one. Check how many colons the post you are reacting to used, and use one more for your own submission.