Microsoft KB Archive/Guidelines

From BetaArchive Wiki

General guidelines

  • Place them as a subpage of this page - so for KB article KB123456, it should be at Microsoft_KB_Archive/123456, or 123456. Do NOT include the KB or Q in the link, but include any other letters if they exist (like Z10000).
  • Maintain the Microsoft KB structure as much as possible. See 216417 for an example. Headings should be in H2 form (that is, == title == ).
  • Do not blindly copy-paste to the wiki - make sure that the formatting is correct.
  • Standard wiki rules with attribution apply - which means that you must attribute the source if you got it from, say, web.archive. Include the link in "Sources". This is not required if you imported it from HTML sources like the MSDN Archives.
  • It is fine to add links to other parts of the wiki (for example one to Windows 2000 as can be seen in the sample article).
  • Please add images if possible! Special:BatchUpload can be used to quickly upload images to the wiki. They should be categorised as Category:Microsoft KB Archive.
  • There is no need to remove links that may no longer work, like old download links. Keep them as it is. You can however improve formatting (like convert tables into native MediaWiki format).

Handling histories

There are some cases where Microsoft will regularly update the contents of the KB Archive (see 894199 for an example). In such cases, you should use the latest version of the KB article, but allow users to see previous versions using the history feature. Create a H2 History in the very top of the page, and link to all previous versions of the article. Remember that Microsoft should actually have made a large update - do not do this for merely cosmetic changes.

Also use [[Special:PermanentLink/(revision ID)]] to link - the "obvious way" of [[(articleID)&oldid=(revisionID)]] won't work.