Keep it simple[]
Generally, only simple tips are useful. A tip should not explain all details like a reference manual.
A tip may deal with a complex topic. However, the tip should merely illustrate the concepts and provide an example. It should not cover all possibilities.
If a tip is only useful in an obsolete version of Vim, the tip should be deleted. Vim version 7.0 was released in May 2006 and the best tip for people using older versions is please update!
See deleting a tip, or the template guidelines to flag a tip as Deprecated or Dodgy.
Tips should be informative and self-contained[]
More details in the text for the VimTip category and our tip creation guidelines, but in general a tip should NOT depend on external links for content, it should be useful on its own. Additionally, a script with no explanation is useless to most people, and a tip that does not even explain the problem it tries to solve is useless to pretty much everyone.
Merge similar tips[]
Tips which cover the same material should be merged. You can simply flag duplicate tips to notify others that the tips need to be merged. Or, you can merge the material into one tip. See the merge guidelines.
Useful templates[]
Several templates are available to simplify and standardize common tasks. For example, you could use the Help template by entering {{help|pattern}}
into a tip. The result looks like this :help pattern.
See the template guidelines for an overview of the templates used for Vim tips.