Guide to contributing to the wiki: Difference between revisions

== Foreword ==

Welcome to contributing to the Yogstation Wiki - we're happy to have you here. This wiki would not be possible to maintain without the help and dedication of players and staff alike. In a game as complex as Space Station 13, having an up to date wiki is critical to properly enjoy it. Thank you for taking your time.

== Getting Started ==

=== Your account ===

We welcome all contributors and assume good faith for all edits made, so there are very few protected pages. Wiki Administrators do however patrol changelogs to correct small errors and combat intentional misinforming edits, so please be mindful and be ready to explain your edits if it raises a red flag. The best way to prevent misunderstandings is adding proper summaries for all your edits. Once you've received your account, don't be afraid to jump in and start correcting and adding to pages.

=== [[Wikicode]] ===

{| class="wikitable mw-collapsible mw-collapsed" width="800"

! colspan="3"| Most used wikicodes

! Link (External)

| <pre><nowiki>http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Help:Wiki_markup</nowiki></pre>

|-

! Link (External, Custom)

| <pre><nowiki>[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Help:Wiki_markup click me]</nowiki></pre>

|-

! List (Unordered)

# Roll

|}

Wikicode is what salt is for food. Of course you can cook without salt, but well-prepared foods and texts are clearly more enjoyable. Instead of having a page be a long meandering paragraph, Wikicode allows information to be broken up and changed in appearance for greater clarity, such as the section headings shown in this guide.

It is allright if you really don't want to deal with wikicode. You can still help by writing and correcting texts and have the wiki staffers add the formatting later. Just add something like <code>TODO - NEEDS FORMATTING</code> in your edit-summary to make it easier to detect.

=== Questions? ===

There are a few concepts that drive Wiki functionality, and this guide will attempt to touch on the very basics that you'll need to get in and get going. If you have questions regarding more advanced topics, you are allways welcome to ask in the above mentioned [{{Constant/Discordurl}} #wiki-public].

== What needs doing? ==

The Yogstation Wiki is an utterly massive project, and the [[Administrators#Wiki_Staff|active wiki staff team]] is small, comparatively. Most everywhere you look there is out-of-date information, duplicate guides, broken links, unintelligible references. The Wiki Team attempts to keep core pages up to date and patrolled, but there are many pages on the periphery in dire need of attention.

=== Content revisions ===

As a recommendation, if you wish to work on a page uninterrupted and not worry about other users editing the same thing while you are working, you can mirror the page in to your personal [[Special:MyPage/Sandbox|sandbox]] area or anywhere in your own pages. This will create a "localized" copy that you can change unfettered by interference by others.

'''Additionally, if you are revising a page, PLEASE put a summary in the Summary section of your editing window towards the bottom of the page. This will help Wiki Administrators immensely when patrolling new page edits.'''

=== Mark articles ===

Whenever you find a page that needs some work you can't do / you want to do later, make sure to mark it. Marking an article will not only insert a nice obvious note, it will temporarily add the page to a category. These categories serve as todo-lists, which is very convenient. As long as you don't mark every single page in existence, this alone will be helpful.

When tagging articles, make sure to use <code><nowiki>~~~~</nowiki></code> wherever possible, since this will automatically insert your post-details like this: '''[[User:Helpful Herbert|Helpful Herbert]] ([[User talk:Helpful Herbert|talk]]) 23:30, 24 April 2020 (UTC)'''.

!Category

!When to mark

|<code><nowiki>{{Outdated}}</nowiki></code>

|}

{| class="wikitable mw-collapsible mw-collapsed" width="100%"

! Example: Needs revision

|{{Needs revision|reason=REASON}}

|}

{| class="wikitable mw-collapsible mw-collapsed" width="100%"

! Example: Flag for deletion

|}

|}

=== New pages ===

New content is constantly being added to Space Station 13, which requires new tutorials and guides and information. Before you begin a new page, '''please search thoroughly and completely for an existing or similar page to avoid creating duplicate guides or pages'''. If you can't find it or anything related to it, you are clear to start a page yourself! This can be done simply by plugging in the title of the page you would like to create in the Search Bar in the top right - if nothing is found in the Wiki databanks, you will be prompted to create a new page under that title; this will generate a blank page that you can begin formatting and filling in with your information. It is highly recommended that you first assess the type of page you are trying to make, i.e. is it a new guide? is it a new job? and then navigate to pages that exist within that same familial typing and copy the formatting over to your new page. This will save you a lot of work in the end, as well as standardize the formatting across your new page and existing ones of the same type.

=== Give Me Moar ===

Still not enough huh? Well here we go: [[:Category:WikiCoordination]] is a used as an internal starting-point for coordinating things in need of doing. At this point you might want to have a talk with the wiki staff about coordinating your efforts with them.

* '''Files:''' [[Special%3AListFiles|All]], [[Special:UnusedFiles|unused]] and [[Special:WantedFiles|wanted]]

* '''All pages:''' [[Special:AllPages|All existing pages]] and [[Special:WantedPages|Wanted pages]]

== [[Styleguide|Guidelines]] ==

As often in life, ''what'' you do is as important as ''how'' you do it. These are not ''enforced'' rules, but use your best judgment (or preferably just ask) when to divert from these suggestions.

Really, '''[[Styleguide|READ THEM]]'''

== Advanced Topics ==

The following guides should eventually be moved to separate articles to not overload this guide.

=== Guide to Writing and Revising a Guide ===

Always keep in mind what the guide pages on this Wiki are for. They are so new players can quickly glean relevant information about the role they have chosen, or been chosen for, or about mechanics of the game on the whole.

* Reference links or further reading material to give a grasp of content adjacent or connected to the topic at hand - for example, the Cook job page has links to the Guide to Food and Guide to Drinks, as these are relevant.

* A conclusion which ties together all the above information and seeks to reiterate the material covered prior.

Poorly formatted or written guides can make it hard to convey relevant information and may be discouraging to newer players.

* If you are writing a basic guide, '''keep it basic''', and put the advanced topics on a separate page.

* Make use of formatting, tables, white space, headings, and other methods to draw attention and give direction to critical points of information

=== Images ===

What would articles be without proper icons of things like ingame-items.

For most ingame assets, the easiest way to add images of them is to download the [[Downloading the source code#Downloading|source code]], open the icons .dmi files and export images as .gif's or .png's from there.

[[File:DreamMaker_opened_environment.png|thumb|alt=Dream Maker with opened yogstation.dme|Dream Maker with opened yogstation.dme]]

==== Simple Icons ====

# Write down the name of your uploaded file. In this example File:Firemelon.png

# Go to the article you want to edit and insert your image with <nowiki>[[File:Firemelon.png]]</nowiki>

==== Animations of combined icons ====

Some icons are used together to create animations. Do this to combine them into an animated gif:

## Make and download the gif

## View it to make sure it works as needed

==== Auto extraction of icons ====

You can extract all icons of a *.dmi (as png) with this little python-tool: https://github.com/alexkar598/DMIExport/releases/tag/1.0.0

'''Beware:''' Make sure to review the results, as icon names can get mismatched.

==== Images of locations / maps ====

There are multiple ways to make proper images of locations and maps:

** Go places or spawn in your maps / locations with '''Tab Debug > Map template - Place'''

** Take screenshots (Shortcut <kbd>F2</kbd>)

==== Images of people ====

Getting images of people is more difficult than for objects, since people consist of all kinds of parts. This means you need ingame-screenshots:

** '''Tab Admin > Secrets > Make all areas powered'''

* Take screenshots (Shortcut F2)

=== Checking the game-code ===

So somebody told you to ''"RTFM"'' or ''"do a code-dive"''? Congratulations, you managed to either ask a rude person a really obvious question, or you breached into advanced territory. It is hard to find someone knowledgable of everything in the game, and even skilled players might have outdated information. The only way to be sure is to read the game-code. Yes code, like in programming. You don't need to be able to program yourself, but it '''really''' helps.  

The easiest way to read the code is using the searchbar on [{{Constant/Giturl}} github].  

[[Category:Guides]] [[Category:Game Resources]]

{{Contribution guides}}