General guidelines for newcomer editors to the wiki:
- we don't use the discussion pages, we use the forum
- we don't usually make pages for dumped games unless they already had a undumped page. Ex. No making a page for "Q*Bert" unless there's some new known undumped revision. Even then, you'd include the revision in the description and name of the new page.:
http://www.emulab.it/forum/index.php?topic=33.0- corollary: different revisions of dumps get listed separately unless more than one for the same game are known to be needed:
http://www.emulab.it/forum/index.php?topic=35.0- try to list citations as often as possible, when uploading photos, etc.
- give thanks to whoever in the comments when you make a new page if needed
- games get moved from Category:Undumped to Dumped when they've been completely dumped - AND put in MAME. Dumped but not yet in MAME generally does not count as Dumped. We sometimes change this status as late as MAME release, or as early as submission to the git. Removal from the list of Undumped is manually done, so take care of that when possible.
- if only one region for a game has been dumped, game has not yet been fully dumped (this is inconsistently done across the wiki) and thus the category is not changed.
- if game has been partially dumped (ex. ROMs are missing from the PCB) but put into MAME, this is equivalent to being Dumped and the Category is changed to Dumped. :
http://www.emulab.it/forum/index.php?topic=34.0 (They will appear in the Bad Dump page once they're put into MAME:
http://mamedev.emulab.it/undumped/index.php?title=Bad_dump )
- when Category is changed to Dumped, all other categories are removed so that selecting categories does not cause dumped games to be listed.:
http://www.emulab.it/forum/index.php?topic=41.0Exceptions: discrete logic (TTL-based) games, usage of language templates.
- website "shortnames" are preferable to listing such-and-such.com in the External links description:
http://www.emulab.it/forum/index.php?topic=3798.0- if a game uses analog media (tapes, laserdiscs) this is not currently included in whether the ROMs are dumped or undumped, only the ROMs are included. (For now at least):
http://www.emulab.it/forum/index.php?topic=37.0- if a game uses analog media (film, filmstrips), are electromechanical in nature, do not use a video screen and use NO ROMs they are more-or-less not include-able on the wiki. (For now at least)
- we are not (probably, ever) prioritizing some games over other games as "Most Wanted"
- we're starting to upload more photos when we feel likely the source may disappear (ex. auction photos)
- if you have time, try to alphabetize the External links by source as you go along
- https: links use a very ugly icon in my opinion, so until the icon can be changed please stick to http links (this is probably just me being weird)
- there's plenty to do in general, including creating pages for each game on the new list of undocumented discrete logic games
- we're not going crazy in ensuring the infoboxes are all filled, listing Developers versus Manufacturers, etc. We're mostly a link farm, linking to other sources of info (Arcade-History, unMAMEd, etc.)
- try not to list anything from KLOV UNLESS you can find agreeing info from another source that does not obviously draw upon KLOV as a source.
- Thus far, when it comes to things like auction photos and photos from mfg. websites, we've been out-and-out thieves, not asking permission nor submitting licensing info. On the other hand, we choose to have honor when it comes to places like unMAMEd, System 16 and such so we'll typically only link to those places and not borrow things from them. Occasionally we'll put the original link to the photo in the comments when we upload one. But it's not a huge focus because our main interest is in linking elsewhere for content, preferably reliable websites. This helps keep the wiki's data usage and bandwidth down, among other things.
- when in doubt follow the pattern set by another page... such as embedded images should be set to 250px by default.
- I'm very particular about how the various elements in a progettoemma.net link are arranged, ideally if something better comes along I want to search&replace through the wiki database, so I make sure the MAME romset name goes at the end. (Replacing all the arcadeflyers.com links with flyers.arcade-museum.com links was tough enough the first time...)
I think that covers just about everything.