When I'm processing processing peoples' submissions to our archives, by far the most common reason for rejection is that uploaders haven't followed the guidelines that are right there on the upload page. Currently, they read as such:
I find it's the first two points that are usually problematic. Many times this may be because uploaders don't believe their programs are complex enough to require any documentation, but I suspect it's also common that people simply haven't paid any attention to the guidelines. People frequently upload bare .8xp files, and even after they're rejected and I paste the guidelines from the upload page into the rejection message they sometimes still just put the file into a zip archive without any documentation!
One person did recently reach out after one of their files was rejected because it didn't include a README and asked for the reasoning behind that rule. I justified it by stating that we'd like downloaded files to be self-descriptive: once you've downloaded something it should be possible to understand what it is and how to use it, even if you don't know it originally came from Cemetech. It's also useful for newbies if you provide basic instructions on how to do things like send programs to a calculator, but I generally don't expect anybody to spend much effort on that because it's so tedious-feeling. For more complex programs, it's not reasonable to put all of the documentation in the file description on the web site so those really need a README or more in-depth documentation.
Since I'd like to provide that kind of reasoning in a more public place, that's one purpose of this post. But I'm also interested in ideas for ways to make it easier for uploaders to follow the rules with their uploads. I've got a few thoughts which would be various degrees of annoying:
To support the "providing documentation for newbies" case I noted above, I'm also willing to explore ways to add help to file pages so people can discover how to use files without depending on the file author to write it. I imagine some kind of help link to a "how to send files to your calculator" page for whichever kind of calculator a file is for would be nice, but writing that from scratch is enough work that I'm unlikely to be bothered to do it myself anytime soon. If anybody wants to have a go at that or has resources in mind that we could copy or link to, I'm interested to see what you've got.
Quote:
Thanks for contributing to the archives! Please review these guidelines for your submission to ensure it meets our standards:
- Files should be compressed archives in a common format, such as zip or gzipped tar.
- Include appropriate documentation in an easily-read format, such as a plain-text README file.
- Minimize file size, within reason. In particular, don't include unnecessary data and reduce the size of images or video that may be included; original quality is rarely necessary.
- Ensure you have permission to redistribute the files. Note that unless you created it yourself or received explicit permission to share (possibly in the form of a written license provided with the item) you are probably not allowed to redistribute.
I find it's the first two points that are usually problematic. Many times this may be because uploaders don't believe their programs are complex enough to require any documentation, but I suspect it's also common that people simply haven't paid any attention to the guidelines. People frequently upload bare .8xp files, and even after they're rejected and I paste the guidelines from the upload page into the rejection message they sometimes still just put the file into a zip archive without any documentation!
One person did recently reach out after one of their files was rejected because it didn't include a README and asked for the reasoning behind that rule. I justified it by stating that we'd like downloaded files to be self-descriptive: once you've downloaded something it should be possible to understand what it is and how to use it, even if you don't know it originally came from Cemetech. It's also useful for newbies if you provide basic instructions on how to do things like send programs to a calculator, but I generally don't expect anybody to spend much effort on that because it's so tedious-feeling. For more complex programs, it's not reasonable to put all of the documentation in the file description on the web site so those really need a README or more in-depth documentation.
Since I'd like to provide that kind of reasoning in a more public place, that's one purpose of this post. But I'm also interested in ideas for ways to make it easier for uploaders to follow the rules with their uploads. I've got a few thoughts which would be various degrees of annoying:
- When validating upload form submission, check that the file is a recognized archive format and contains a file named README of any type. If either of those is not satisfied, require the user to affirm that the upload does meet the guidelines (just check a box).
- Automatically add some kind of metadata file to archives when uploaded ("Downloaded from cemetech.net.txt"?) that links to the file page. I don't really like this, but it's not a terrible solution to providing context to downloaders.
- Require uploaders to check a box for each of the guidelines to affirm their upload follows the guidelines. This would make it harder to ignore, and isn't very difficult to implement.
- Revise the wording of the guidelines to be clearer? I wrote them as they are now so they seem clear to me, but maybe they don't make so much sense to others. I'm open to suggestions here.
To support the "providing documentation for newbies" case I noted above, I'm also willing to explore ways to add help to file pages so people can discover how to use files without depending on the file author to write it. I imagine some kind of help link to a "how to send files to your calculator" page for whichever kind of calculator a file is for would be nice, but writing that from scratch is enough work that I'm unlikely to be bothered to do it myself anytime soon. If anybody wants to have a go at that or has resources in mind that we could copy or link to, I'm interested to see what you've got.
