Contribution Guidelines

Documentation

Overview

Wikis work best when information is stylistically similar across the entire wiki. This is done for the users more than the benefit of the contributors. Imagine if every time you reloaded google.com it came up with a different color scheme (flashing yellow background, then dark green with red text, then black with gray text, etc); this would be extremely annoying would it not?

The goal of stylistic similarity should never be so highhandedly enforced that it stifles contribution, but it should be maintained to a degree which allows for maximum usability and functionality.

The goal of this wiki is fairly simple. Provide a familiar UI (this is Wikipedia with a couple of images changed out, from a usability perspective), and fill in information not readily obtainable from other sources. Things like mission walk-throughs or documentation, mob spawns, farming areas, mining areas, exploration and trade routes, optimal setups for various purposes, documentation of game mechanics.

The remainder of this page will go into specifics.

Also see the Main Page#Guidelines.

In the event that additional assistance is required to rename or delete pages, e.g.:

to remove sensitive or rule-breaking content
to maintain history on the correct page when the desired page already exists with less content in preparation for a rename (depending on the situation merging the history is also possible)
without a redirect (because the original name was a typo, incorrect, or potentially misleading)

you can contact one of the wiki maintainers, or in the event of malicious activity or technical issues, one of the wiki admins (sysops).

Input Standards

In general, try to follow the format of existing pages. For item drop locations, that means checking out how, for example, Energy Sink Quinque is created. If you want to document a mission, see Terran Promotion Notification 2 for a template to use on that.

Templates

Templates can be created by any user and are a great way to enforce uniformity across a given set of data. Templates should be documented by adding {{subst:doc}} at the very end, saving the template, and then using the documentation "create" link. This will create the documentation as a /doc subpage which gets transcluded inside <noinclude /> tags which allow for the template and its documentation to occupy the same page, but the documentation to only be displayed on the template page itself.

By using <noinclude /> tags in a template you can do the same thing with categories, to apply template-specific categories to only the template itself (i.e. Category:Utility Template). In turn by using <includeonly /> tags within the template you can include the pages it produces in other, more useful categories. An example of this is {{MissionDesc}}.

See Category:Utility Template for a list.

Disambiguation Pages

The template {{DisambiguationPage}} (doc and usage example) should be used for all Disambiguation Pages; it ensures a consistent format and that they are both added to Category:Disambiguation and that they have the __DISAMBIG__ magic word from Extension:Disambiguator.

You can see a list of all current Disambiguation Pages here Special:DisambiguationPages.

Bugs

The template {{Bug}} (doc and usage example) should be used whenever you find a bug in the game. This will automatically add "Boger" the derpy bug icon and put the page in Category:Bugged. There is currently no concept of severity or priority so all bugs are welcome (from typos to game breaking functionality, "Boger" will note them all!

If we ever have a functioning bug tracker again we can then use this page to generate bug reports.

Redirects

Historically this wiki has had a fairly large number of redirects for its size; a wiki of roughly 4000 articles, there are over 500 redirects, or roughly 1 for every 8 pages. This is largely due to long periods of little to no moderation/maintenance where there was no other option than to create a bunch of redirects as no one could remove them.

There is a Wikimedia Essay called Don't delete redirects but largely the reasoning presented there doesn't really apply to a wiki this size and where we're strictly adhering to the in-game representations of things. Wikipedia has a vastly superior search function powered by CirrusSearch and an army of admins and editors to cleanup incorrect redirects before they can do any damage. Here we just need to settle for cleaning them up after the fact.

In general we've agreed to avoid redirects which are minor variations that would show up in the same search / autocomplete list anyway. This would include any redirect that is just a suffix, a capitalization change, or any redirect where the first 4-5 letters are identical to the actual page. Redirects of these varieties should not be created if at all possible, and when they are they should be removed. If you end up creating such a redirect you can add it to the category Category:Meta/Page which needs sysop attention and we will "take care" of it.

On the other hand there are some redirects which add value that should still be created. These are generally redirects where two very different names should still link to the same content, e.g. any V'rix names and their translation.

Inter-document Links

Wikipedia got its level of popularity by allowing for inter-document links (IDL). What is an inter-document link? Something like this link to Combat Trance. IDLs should occur once per unique occurrence on a page. For example, if Combat Trance were to be repeated, it would not be linked the second time on this page, because it has already been linked once. This is done both for maintainability and readability.

IDLs can be created without creating their subsequent child pages, for example A page that doesn't exist. These articles will show up on Special:Wantedpages. In general, unless you are importing from another wiki source which already has a large number of broken links, articles which contain large numbers of red links and which are not resolved within a few days with meaningful child pages will be deleted or edited.

Create IDLs once content exists, or when you plan to create the content they link too within a few days. It is easier on the eyes, and less depressing to the average user, if the articles contain all, or almost all blue-links, and those links go to pages with useful and meaningful data to the user. This user-emotion situation is the sole reason for these rules about IDLs.

Internationalization

There are differences in how numbers and dates are represented and how words are spelled across the world, even among English-speaking countries.

In order to make things as unambiguous as possible use the following guidelines.

Thousand Separators

In some places around the world a period (.) is used as a thousand separator and in others a comma (,) is used. For example, the number two-thousand (2K) may be written as 2.000 in some places, and 2,000 in others. Generally each form is confusing to people that are used to seeing the other. To avoid this ambiguity format numbers without thousand separators, so two-thousand should simply be written as 2000. Alternatively, use the magic word {{formatnum:unformatted number}}.

Date Formatting

In cases where a date is to be used, e.g. to indicate when a questionable or otherwise time-sensitive piece of information was noted, consider simply using the MediaWiki five-tilde syntax ~~~~~ which will generate only a timestamp (as opposed to the four-tilde which also includes your username).

Alternatively, use the magic word {{#formatdate:date|format}}.

The above options are ideal because they will format dates appropriately based on the users locale.

If neither of those options can be used for some reason then use an unambiguous date format such as YYYY-MM-DD, e.g. 2023-10-12 or spelling it out as Oct 12, 2023. Dates formatted as DD-MM-YYYY or MM-DD-YYYY can be confusing to an international audience.

Spelling / Vocabulary

This is an English-language wiki and one of the primary goals is for the content of the wiki to reflect the game as closely as possible (see #Page Names below). Given that the language of the game itself is American English, the content of the wiki follows that as well.

There are many differences even between American, Australian, British, and Canadian English and different countries use different subsets of these words. The following table summarizes the details in the link above:

Spellings of Common Words
American English	instead of	Others	Notes
analyze	instead of	analyse
center	instead of	centre
device	instead of	devise
color	instead of	colour
organize	instead of	organise
program	instead of	programme
meter	instead of	metre
connection	instead of	connexion
eon	instead of	aeon
pry	instead of	prise
analog	instead of	analogue
traveling	instead of	travelling
routing	instead of	routeing
sizable	instead of	sizeable
skeptic	instead of	sceptic
metric ton	instead of	tonne
aluminum	instead of	aluminium	Well, this aged poorly: Aluminium Ore vs. Vortex Aluminum Shell Casing `(╯°. °)╯︵ ┻━┻`
artifact	instead of	artefact
nearby	instead of	near by
NASA	instead of	Nasa
Mr.	instead of	Mr
"	instead of	'

Page Names

For pages relating to items, the page name should exactly match the name of the item in game, including any and all punctuation. DV-WP-X4 "Roadrunner Plus" Mk. VII isn't easy to type, but it allows for someone to search for any part of the item name and probably find the correct page. It also allows that user to go to the net-7.org item database and search for build information, station sellers, and various other info available from that resource.

The same guideline applies to other in-game assets as well, NPCs, Missions, Sectors, Gates, Navs, everything. In the event that an in-game item is misspelled, two things should happen:

A bug submitted to net-7 staff for correction See this forum section (you'll need to sign into the forums to see it)
The page name should use the correct spelling, and include the misspelling with a (sic) next to the misspelled word, at least once on the page.

There are cases where it will be difficult to decide which spelling is correct. In these cases, just pick one, submit a bug, and wait for N7 staff to tell you which one is correct, then update your work accordingly.

Name Conflicts

There are some instances where in-game objects in two different categories (say a mission and a skill, or a planet nav and the sector it's accessed from and which it provides access to) appear to share the exact same name. Some solutions to these cases are as follows:

One example of this is the case of a conflicting mission and skill name such as the mission Critical Targeting [Version 1.2.P] for the Progen Privateer (see #Game Objects with Invalid Characters below) and the general skill Critical Targeting of effectively the same name which is shared by the classes Jenquai Defender, Progen Privateer, Progen Sentinel, Progen Warrior, and Terran Enforcer. The solution here is to include the "Version 1.2.P" suffix on the mission page that is often excluded from Progen mission names, but with parenthesis instead of square brackets (which are invalid in wiki page names).
Another example of this are planet navs, the sectors accessible from them, and the sectors the planet nav itself are located in (which typically match the name of the planet nav). The undifferentiated name is typically the page for the sector (as most navs don't have their own pages). Historically many of the sectors accessed via the planet nav were differentiated by the suffix "Planet" but there are no in-game objects with that name so that is a violation of the general rule described on this page. The sectors accessible via the planet navs typically have unique names and that is the name that should be used for the planet sector page names, e.g. Dahin Mining Interest is the sector accessible via the Dahin planet nav in the Dahin sector of the Capella system. In this case a redirect page is also created for [[Dahin Planet]] which redirects via
```
#REDIRECT [[Dahin Mining Interest]]
```

In all such cases a disambiguation page should be created to help guide people to the correct page, e.g. Critical Targeting (Disambiguation Page) and Dahin (Disambiguation Page).

Name Conflicts and Inter-document Links

In some cases there may be in-game text (especially mission text) which contains a reference such as e.g. "Dahin Planet". In these cases the link should be created to preserve the original mission text, but link to the appropriate page, e.g.

[[Dahin Mining Interest|Dahin Planet]]

so the original mission text reads Dahin Planet but still links to the correct page directly without a redirect.

Game Objects with Invalid Characters

Some in-game objects have names which contain characters that can not be included in page names, most notoriously many Progen missions which include square brackets, e.g. [Version 1.2.S]. The Progen missions of this type generally omit the versions in the page names which is perhaps a questionable choice to the alternative of using parenthesis in place of them, but this has been done pretty consistently.

When linking to such an object you can include the square-bracketed portion on the right hand side of the pipe/bar to show the actual in-game name in the text of the link even though it can't be in the page name, e.g.

[[Critical Targeting (Version 1.2.P)|Critical Targeting [Version 1.2.P]]]

which yields the IDL Critical Targeting [Version 1.2.P].

How do I format pages?

If you are unfamiliar with how to edit mediawiki please visit Help:Contents. There are pages for every single thing you can do in wiki formatting. Scaling images, making tables, colorizing specific cells in tables, etc. It is a long read on its own, so the best way to tackle it might be to keep it as a bookmark, and only look up what you need to know right then.

I'd like to comment on a high-level topic about a page, where do I do that?

If you look to the left of the "Net-7" logo on the top-left of this page, you'll see the word "Page", and a tab next to it which says "Discussion". For example, this page's is Talk:Contribution Guidelines. There are two formatting rules to follow on talk pages to keep everyone from going insane trying to read them:

Always sign what you write by placing four tildes (~) in a row behind your text block. An example can be found on the aforementioned talk page.
When replying to someone, look in the wiki markup at how many indents they have on their text block (unless it isn't indented at all, their paragraphs will start with the : character). Place one more : in front of your text block so it is obvious that a reply is being made. An example of this can also be seen on the talk page for this page.

Once a decision has been made, the relevant comments can be removed from the talk page and a summary archive link to them created.

Great, so how do I contribute?

I'm glad you asked!

Create one of the Special:WantedPages
Cleanup issues flagged by one of the Category:MaintenanceCategory pages
Check the maintainers' profiles for ideas: User:Codemonkeyx, User:Winlander