FOSS:Contributing

The contributing guide for the FOSS namespace: how to add a program, what lives where, and the FOSS conventions. General wiki rules live in Help:Contributing — this page only covers what is specific to FOSS pages.

The shape of a FOSS page

A FOSS page is a thin template over its item: the banner and infobox read the item's statements at view time; the prose lives on the page. A fact changes in one place — the item — and every page that renders it updates.

Live example — FOSS:Flameshot ↔ Item Q191:

What you want	What you type	What you get
Official website	{{#statements:official website}}	https://flameshot.org
Source code repository	{{#statements:source code repository}}	https://github.com/flameshot-org/flameshot
Category	{{#statements:instance of}}	free and open-source software

How this works: Help:Contributing/semanticDynamicContent.

Adding a FOSS, step by step

You need an account — see who can do what.

1. Search first. The program may already have a page or an item under another name. Check the hub list and the search box before creating anything (search before creating is the house rule).
2. Create with Special:AddSoftware. It searches Wikidata and GitHub, you pick a candidate, and it creates three things in one flow: the item, the FOSS:<Name> page and the page↔item link.
3. Review the record before creating. The harvested data (name, website, repository, license, version) is editable — correct what is wrong before saving.
4. Link item-typed facts. Developer, license, operating system and friends are links to other items. When the matching item does not exist locally, create it first (Special:AddCollective for organizations, Special:AddPerson for people) and pick it in the form. Each of these fields accepts several values — separate the item ids with a comma (e.g. Q5, Q179).
5. Write the prose. The created page comes with an Overview, Features, Alternatives and See also skeleton. Replace the stubs with real content (style guide).
6. Verify. The page should render the infobox with the statements you wrote. A wrong fact is fixed in the item — not on the page.

No authority record? Create from blank: Special:AddSoftware/manual.

What goes where

In the item	On the page
Facts that can move or change: website, repository, license, developer, version, category	Prose: what the software does, how to use it, features, alternatives
References and provenance for those facts	Links to related pages (cheatsheets, other FOSS pages)

The split exists so that a moving project is fixed in one place — the item.

Good to know

• An empty infobox row is not an error — the item simply has no statement for it yet.
• Facts are read live: update the item, not the page.
• Licence, operating-system and developer items are created deliberately, not by the wizard. No match in the form? Create the item first (step 4).
• Several values are allowed in a field — separate the item ids with a comma (e.g. Q5, Q179); the created item gets one statement per id.

See also

• FOSS:Main — the hub
• Template:FOSS — the page template
• Help:Contributing — general contributing guide
• Help:Contributing/semanticDynamicContent — rendering item data on pages
• Help:Contributing/entities — the data model
• Help:Contributing/styleGuide — writing style