DSiBrew:Contributing

If you want to contribute to DSi Homebrew-community this would be the page to start.

Help with reverse engineering

If you are familiar with reverse engineering software/hardware or have a background in decompiling, C/C++, and ASM, join the channel #dsidev at EFNet. Lurk for a while to see what are the topics and goals of the day. Be sure to report any and all substantial findings on the wiki.

You can also help out new users in IRC by linking them to wiki articles that answer their questions, or this article and the Channel FAQ to get new users more quickly acquainted with how we do things and what we've accomplished.

Become a wiki editor

Help is always needed here on the wiki!

1. You should register. It's not absolutely necessary to interact with the wiki, but it helps identifying you and with building your reputation in the community. Please use the same (or similar to the) nick you use in IRC.
2. Go through the Wikipedia Editing tutorial. It's not that long, added up it's less than two pages. Go through the entire thing, make sure you are familiar.
3. Read this entire page twice. Thoroughly (Especially the Rules).
4. Dive into the To Do below. If you want to practice you can use our Sandbox page
5. Look below for some very useful Wiki documentation. (Such as this page which searching will reveal how to do something, such as adding an article to a Category)

To do

The most benefit comes from the things detailed below. The articles here are good but could be much better. We must make them great.

Editors should use the Contributing discussion section for proposing changes and keeping track of cleanup/improvement progress.

General improvement

Formatting / Organizing

• Organize and format all articles that need it
• Make sure editing an article for this will make information EASIER to read/find. That said, just about every article could do with a heavy dose of this. Function should come at the sake of looks.

Categories

See: Categories and List of pages without category.

The goal is to have *every* article in some category.

• Make sure the categories are proper and actually apply.
• Go through all articles and make categories as necessary.
• Add an article to as many categories that it fits in.
• Use categories to make pages drastically easier to find.
• Add Development Category

Linking

• Inter-wiki linking, aka linking together (i.e. [[ Link ]] stuff). Make sure people know there's an article for something.
• Linking to relevant websites, articles on other sites, YouTube or other video site videos in articles they're relevant to are needed.
• See Also sections would definitely make finding related information much easier for users (an example). After just a few hours of reading about progress in the Wiibrew scene, it should be obvious what articles are related.

Vandalism

• Vandalism most often comes in the form of nonsense and gibberish added to articles here.
• If you are sure an edit to an article constitutes vandalism (e.g. intentionally false, disruptive, or crude information is added), please use the "undo" function from the article's "diff" page or undo the edit manually.
• Check who made the edit, and add them to List of Vandals along with a short description of what they did wrong and a link to their contributions page.

Needed articles

Believe it or not, over at Wiibrew it was over a week after Starlet was announced before there was an article. One of our primary goals is to make sure articles are written quickly and, ideally, cleanly.

Big new developments

Keep an eye out for new developments (These tend to happen frequently) and things relevant to them. Watch the latest videos and lurk IRC for new developments.

Copied articles

Re-copy or write from scratch recently deleted and other articles that are copied from WiiLi or other sites. If copied, be sure to adhere with the license of the original document, to the letter. If the document has been released under the GFDL, such as WiiLi articles, provide a citation in the form of a link on the bottom of the page and a statement saying the document was released under the terms of the GNU Free Documentation License.

All wanted pages

The list of Wanted pages is short enough for just a few people to at least give a small article's worth of info on every one. If you know something, please take it upon yourself to add even a tiny bit of info! Any user can request a page by inter-linking (([[Page]])) to a page that doesn't exist yet. Be sure to link to pages that you want to see or think we should have!

Rules

Needs to be said, just to be clear. The point of this wiki is to be a definitive source for information about the hardware and software that has to do with running homebrew on the Dsi.

The same rules for IRC along with some other wiki-specific rules apply to the IRC. Some of the other rules are loose, some aren't.

Definite Rules

Break these and bad things will happen to you.

• Never copy and paste articles or do any act of verbatim copying from WiiLi or any other source without following its licensing terms to the letter. If an article exists on a site that has a non-free license that should be here also, start from scratch. Illegally copied articles will be deleted as soon as they are noticed.
  • In the case of WiiLi, the GNU Free Documentation License applies.
    • Verbatim copying requires that a citation must be given (linking to the original article) and a statement that the original document was released under the terms of the GNU Free Documentation License.
    • Modifying a copied article requirements can be found on the GNU Free Documentation License page under section 4
• Always follow the Principles of Wikipedia etiquette
• All IRC rules

Loose Rules

These are best described as "guidelines".

• Make a clear effort to find where something fits before making a new article. (Chances are there's a place to put something unless it's *really* new.)
• Follow the suggestions set forth in the Wikipedia Editing Tutorial. (Adding a description of each edit in the Summary box, etc.)
• Proper spelling / grammar. (The latest browsers have spellchecking built in or there are plugins available to add such functionality.)
• Organize and format your writing

There is no reason to break the rules, everything we are trying to accomplish easily fits within them. Just please don't, you waste both of our time. Offending users will be swiftly dealt with.

Closing

The chance of someone able to make use of the information but didn't know it existed goes from 0% to 100% thanks to a well-placed link or piece of info. Every edit you make page you change to add more info, format info easier to read and absorb, and everything you link to could potentially speed up homebrew development drastically.

Don't be afraid to edit — anyone can edit almost any page, and we encourage you to be bold! Find something that can be improved, whether content, grammar or formatting, and make it better.

You can't break the wiki. Anything can be fixed or improved later. Follow the rules and contribute good edits and you'll be making friends in no time.

So go ahead, edit an article and help make Wii homebrew possible! Welcome. :)

Useful links

DSiBrew Recent changes (Useful to see what the site has been up to and if anything needs reviewing. Also found on in the navigation on the left.)
Wikipedia Editing Cheatsheet (Very handy)
Wikipedia Editing tutorial (Required reading)
How to edit a page (To learn how to do something, search this page)
General Wiki Usage Info (For the curious ones)

Parts paraphrased from Wikipedia. They were originally released under the GNU Free Documentation License.