MyWiki:WikiProject Spaceflight/Downlink/Downlink shell/doc

Usage

This is an outline (shell) for The Downlink, WikiProject Spaceflight's monthly newsletter. It should always be substituted, otherwise subsequent edits made to the shell will impact already-published issues, unnecessarily cluttering readers' notifications (see WP:MMS#Fixing mistakes for details). In addition, transcluding the shell will allow predefined parameters to change with the months and years.

Although the shell provides most of the structure of the newsletter, the vast majority of the content needs to be added manually. Of particular note:

• The previous and following issue buttons are in a noinclude wrap, and need to be added manually. In addition, they use magic words for the months in the links, so be aware that those will need to be replace (substituting them should be fine).
• Similarly to the above, the categorization is not included in this shell, and needs to be added manually in a noinclude wrap.
• The "Featured Content" section may need to be removed altogether, as content under WikiProject Spaceflight's purview is infrequently recognized. It is included to make it easier for the creator(s) should any articles and/or media files be promoted.
• The Article of the Month should be excerpted. Only 2-3 paragraphs should be included. The hatnote and references parameters should be set to "no."
• After substituting the article statistics table from User:WP 1.0 bot/Tables/Project/Spaceflight, the WikiWork factors row should be removed, as should all links on numbers (but links to row and column headers should be left). This is primarily to save on issue byte size, as otherwise the table alone would exceed the limit.
• Even if all parameters are given arguments, the creator will still need to change three things:

1. The final date in the header from {{#time: t}} to the appropriate date (should be the same as the displayed date);
2. The date under "Article Statistics" (in small font) is displayed with {{#time: t}}. Deal with as above; and
3. The month in "Monthly Changes" is displayed with {{LASTMONTHNAME}}. Change to the previous month (I. E. for the April issue replace with March).

Parameters

• year= Defaults to the current year. Be aware that, if left to default, the page will display the current year, but the actual code will display {{CURRENTYEAR}}. If you're not sure of the year, {{subst:CURRENTYEAR}} should work.
• month= Defaults to the current month. Same issue as above.
• volume= and issue= No defaults. Current volume is 3, issue corresponds to month number (I. E., January is 1, February 2, etc.). Use Arabic numerals for both.
• article and image= Default to TBA. Article is linked.
• active_members and total_members No defaults. Active members is the number of members listed as active as of the issue month's latest revision of WikiProject Spaceflight's member list, total members is that number and the number of inactive members of that month added together.