Vim Tips Wiki:Create a new tip

We welcome all contributions. Relax – if we don't like a new tip, we'll change it or delete it!

Quick guidelines

• Please edit a similar tip, if any, rather than creating a new one.
• A tip should provide useful information and not depend on another site for the main content.
• A tip should not just describe a script; see how to list scripts here.
• A tip on fangling should start with a brief introduction. What is it? Who needs it?
• Briefly explain how the tip works, perhaps with an example.
• No links to personal web sites or blogs.
• No email addresses (obfuscated or not).
• Review the general guidelines and how-to information.

Choosing a title for a new tip

• Titles should be short and simple.
• Avoid all punctuation (it makes an ugly URL).
• Vim is spelt "Vim" not "vim" (but you probably don't need that in the title).
• Use lowercase except for first word and proper nouns (this page is "Create a new tip", not "Create a New Tip").

Enter a title, check for typos, then click 'Create tip'

<createbox> buttonlabel=Create tip editintro=Vim_Tips_Wiki:Golden Rules break=no width=50 bgcolor=#ffffff </createbox>

Guidelines for creating a tip

Please search for tips that might be similar to your topic, before starting. Otherwise, we will have extra work because we will have to delete your tip after copying any unique material to the older, similar tip. Don't worry too much about this – do what you think is best and we'll worry (proposed new tips are discussed on the New tips page, where we decide whether to keep, merge or delete new pages).

A tip should be a helpful tip (not a question). Start by describing what problem the tip solves. The tip should be largely self-contained, and should briefly explain how it works. Where possible, give an example.

A tip should contain material that will be helpful for the foreseeable future. For example, if you have a patch to fix a tool used by Vim, please email it to the appropriate maintainer – a patch won't be helpful here, and would quickly become out-of-date.

When you create a new tip, please fill in the summary line (below the main area where you enter the tip). Put a very brief statement of what the tip is about, for example, "Using tags effectively", or "Using Vim for email".

Before saving your new tip, click the Show Preview button to see how the tip will appear. Edit the tip to correct any problems, then click Show Preview again. When satisfied, click the Save button. Older-but-wiser users will occasionally copy the text into Vim, where it can be saved to a local file in case problems occur.

If you are new to wikitext, you should read the guidelines to at least learn about the use of <pre>...</pre> tags around code. Remember that content is more important than presentation, so don't worry about the wikitext too much. You don't need the {{TipProposed}} template at the top – we will add that later.

A tip should be self contained

A tip needs to do more than announce external content – a reader should learn something from the tip itself. We are all tired of finding content-free web pages that simply link to other sites.

There is no problem with a tip that has half a page of informative content, and then says that more details can be seen in a script on vim.org or other useful site (however, the content has to be more than a rehash of the script documentation – see how to describe scripts here). External links should be to well-known pages of interest to Vim users. We will remove any links to personal web sites or blogs (a web site is not personal if it has a substantial amount of information of interest to Vim users, with a comparatively small amount of personal information about the author).

You are welcome to make a user page and put one or two personal links on that page. However, any link on a tip should be to a well-known page of interest to Vim users. Some tips do have links to personal web sites, however, if you investigate, you will probably find that the user is well known to the Vim community, with valuable contributions on the linked web site, or this wiki, or the Vim mailing lists. In some cases, the linked web site is particularly helpful, and its content would not easily be transferred to this wiki – that's fine. But as a rule, a tip should be self-contained, and should refer to external sites only for extra information that is genuinely useful for Vimmers.

Email

We recommend that you do not display your email address. We can't be sure that you are aware of the risks of attracting spam, so we might edit out an address. Also, we don't want the tips cluttered with obfuscated addresses. On the wiki, the best way to allow people to contact you is to create a user page, and to specify an email address as part of your account. Then, if someone changes a page you are watching (such as the Talk of your user page), you will receive a brief email notification from Wikia.

If necessary, you could include wikitext like one of the following in the tip (use your Wikia log-in name, and show whatever name you want people to use when talking to you):

Please [[User_talk:YourUserName|provide feedback to the author (Your Name)]] on this tip.

Please [[Special:Emailuser/YourUserName|email the author (Your Name)]] to provide feedback on this tip.

We don't encourage messages like this because tips really belong to the Vim Community, however you are welcome to include something like the above if you want. Be aware that such requests are often deleted by other wiki editors, however, especially if significant modifications are made to the tip.