A formal letter to you, prospective editor!
Dear ,
Hello! And welcome to the Wiki. I and all the other active staff and editors hope you enjoy your stay.
Here's the deal: I was thinking of writing a big page full of rules and guidelines and such to make sure that the Wiki pages are always in order, just the way I like them. I can safely say now that I have touched and rewritten every single page on this Wiki. Everything is the way I want it to be.
But then I thought to myself...why try to write down all the guidelines I have edited by? Why bog you down with trying to make every page formatted perfectly, with nothing out of line?
That would be way too much. I don't want to impose my OCD for this wiki on you. Besides, now that everything's relatively cleaned up, it will be easy enough to maintain.
Enough banter. Let me tell you what I think you should know. Let's make some basic guidelines for you to edit by, in order of importance:
- 1. Don't be afraid!
This is probably the most important guideline I can think of for you. If you're not sure whether an edit you want to make is a good one, do it anyway! Odds are, unless you're trolling, we'll welcome your editing voice. So give it a go! Also, if you don't know how to go about something, ask an admin by leaving a message on our walls, or talk to someone else who edits the wiki frequently. The best way to learn and feel confident in your editing skills is by asking questions. We welcome them all!
- 2. Take a peek at similar pages to be inspired!
If you're not sure how to go about making an edit and you don't want to ask for help, or you want to create a new page, look at pages similar to the one you want to create. Look at how they're set up. You can learn a lot just by adapting the "monkey see, monkey do" attitude.
- 3. Start a discussion!
Not sure how to go about something, or just want to talk about Submachine? Leave a topic on the talk pages for the subject you're interested in, or start a discussion on a user's board. We want to hear your input!
That being said, you'll hear our input as well. If admins think that your edits can fit a little better with the Wiki, we'll tell you what to do to improve your editing skills. Sometimes we'll go ahead and tweak your edits to make them fit better, so don't worry about making a perfect edit 100% of the time! If we feel something big about your edit needs to be changed, we'll discuss it with you first. If you think there's something that needs to be changed on a page too, let us know!
- 4. Use the standard conventions of English.
It might sound like a commonplace guideline, but we understand that many people who visit the Wiki sometimes don't have English as their first language. If you're one of these people, try your best, and we'll take care of the rest without criticizing you. So don't worry about spelling and grammar; I make mistakes too and I've been speaking the language for my whole life.
Also keep in mind that the Submachine Wiki is available in several other languages, so feel free to edit those too if you know another language really well!
- 5. Don't troll or spam pages.
While this wiki is open to anyone who can make meaningful contributions, we do take organization very seriously. If you're here to mess with us and not care about the content, we will have no problem keeping you out for however long we feel you need a time-out. Our spamming tolerance is extremely low. Sometimes we'll let you know that we're watching; other times we'll take the initiative sooner. Be here to contribute or discuss, not show off and be a goof.
Other than that, I don't think there's much else to say. Hopefully if you stay for a while, you'll get to explore a lot of information about our pages and media and eventually grow to be a great editor yourself!
- 6. Less can be more.
It might be fun to go down the rabbit hole and read about your favorite series of games forever (Submachine is your favorite game series, right? :D) but don't overload people with so much information on a page that it gets difficult to pick through. Ask yourself: What do people really need to know about a certain object or location? What words can you use to convey as much information with as little words as possible? How can you make something interesting without throwing a wall of text at the reader?
As always leave us a message if you need or help or want to talk about Submachine! Our lines are open!
Happy editing!
Jatsko (ADMIN) (talk) 19:35, March 7, 2017 (UTC)
Admin
Notes on images
Some hard rules for uploading and formatting images:
- 1. Upload images from the games in .PNG format, not .JPG.
This is to ensure that the images look clean and sharp and don't lose quality.
- 2. Title your images appropriately.
A naming system that attempts to apply a universal formatting to image titles does in fact exist on this Wiki. I can't explain it all here, but you can get a good feeling for it by looking at other images similar to what you're adding (for example, every image of a location's portal has the same xxx.png format where xxx is the coordinate of the location). Some images might be labeled up to your discretion without breaking formatting; however at the very least you shouldn't Capitalize All the Words in The Image Title; this leads to the image being harder to search for (the same applies to page titles). And never, ever leave your images with default titles like IMG_0983 or 2011-01-01-0343 or anything like that. They all deserve specific names.
- 3. Do not upload rips of image assets from the games.
Mateusz Skutnik does not approve of assets of his games being redistributed without his permission, and no one automatically has permission to do this. Some game developers are more lenient with this than others, and they will tell you if they are, but the rule of thumb that you should follow is not to publish someone else's stuff ripped from their game; it's copyright infringement to do so.
That being said,
- 4. Use the Permission template when uploading screenshots of the games.
Screenshots of the games are of course allowed (the Wiki couldn't function otherwise). Mateusz has given us permission to upload almost any screenshot of his games that we want, but it's good to recognize this by adding {{Permission}} in the image's description. Most images already have this, so you can look at them for reference.
- A common question: "What should the dimensions of an image be?"
The answer on this is subject to change pending the release of Submachine: Legacy, as well as updated opinions from the developer.
Currently the Wiki precedent for image size of a basic Submachine room is 300px by 300px. This is based on an interpretation of this post by Mateusz Skutnik. However, this does not mean that HD images of the games (which are based off of a screen size of 650px square) cannot be added. If you are looking to add an image that focuses on a specific object on a screen, then a cropped HD image is fine. Please try to crop it well. For consistency's sake, full 650px square images of screens should not be added at this time, especially if they're maps of locations.
Any of the mods and admins can be reached for questions just by dropping a message on our messages page. Happy editing!
Apocryphactor (admin) 15:35, February 24, 2019 (UTC)