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Help:Maintenance: Difference between revisions
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Do you want to get into documentation maintenance because you've read it's the best way into an open project? Do you believe that this wiki can be improved? (We do, too.) [[Help:Maintenance]] explains to the willing contributor what can be done and how. | |||
''Note: this article expects you to be already capable of generally adding contents to a wiki. If you're not sure, please check that at'' [[Help:Your first article]]. | |||
== To who's not happy with this wiki == | |||
You probably approached this corner of the wiki after consulting it for a while and not finding it suiting your needs. Maybe with some frustration too. And some revolutionary plans. We've all been there. | |||
There's something you need to know: the organization of this wiki has been already discussed a lot, and "a lot" here means since its early years, and will also be in the future. The critiques go from the mild suggestions to the tearing to shreds, and even non-constructive comments (ahem) were given. This is in all likelihood due to the ''bazaar'' nature of the FlightGear project. What is actually needed, though, is lacking: time spent ''doing'' something, instead of discussing it. This is because the number of regular maintainers/contributors is way, way smaller than you think. To verify that, skim through [[Special:RecentChanges]] and count the most common usernames. So, before suggesting something, you'd better be ready to ''realize'' that. | |||
But cheer up: despite the above, this wiki gets every day better and better. Ask a maintainer if you don't believe it! | |||
This document was originally written by someone like you, who thought it could save you some time to get to full speed (like the time you'd use to write your detailed, well thought and argumented plan - too late?). | |||
== Working your way up == | |||
To become a full grown maintainer it is fundamental to get acquainted with [[how the FlightGear project works]]. It's probably less obvious to do than it seems, it'll take time and time spent [[Forum communication|living the community]]. | |||
While reading those documents, it's a good idea getting in the mood of checking if anything can be changed, fixed, made clearer. This is a good exercise. Doing some random maintenance while exploring the wiki will help in gaining confidence with both the project and how the wiki is organized. Mistakes are around the corners, but maintainers will keep an (hopeful) eye on you, so don't be too shy, and if in doubt better to ask than forget. | |||
=== The summary === | |||
But please, always remember to add a meaningful comment to your edit. It is the "Summary" textfield you can see below the editor textbox. Your common sense should be enough to make up an appropriate description of what you're doing, but if you need examples the [[Special:RecentChanges]] page is a copious source of them. | |||
This message is important not just as a reference for the future - actually, most of them won't be read anymore - as much as a message to let other maintainers know what you're doing ''now''. | |||
=== Recent Changes and Watchlist === | |||
[[Special:RecentChanges]] is the primary maintenance tool of the FlightGear wiki. It is messy at first sight and will require a couple hours of work to get used to it, so it's better to start early. There you can see what's going on, who has been working lately and what was done. | |||
It's a lot of condensed data, and at first you might want to concentrate only on few articles that you're following. You can do that by putting it into your [[Special:Watchlist]], by clicking the star at the top right, next to the search textfield. Not only any edit on such articles will appear in that list, but it will appear in '''bold''' in RecentChanges. | |||
However, it's unlikely that you're following a very busy article. Those tend to be quite messy and usually regard development stuff that, we'll see later, have their own rules. So you might just "star" your own talk page, to be sure not to lose any message directed to you. Oh, and the [[FlightGear wiki:Village pump|Village pump]]! | |||
More on tracking changes at [[mw:Help:Tracking changes]]. (In case you're curious, that was an ''interwiki'' link, i.e. a link to another wiki project.) | |||
=== Category Tree === | |||
Another valuable tool, that you might already know if you were a good contributor, is [[Special:CategoryTree]]. It will allow you to have an overview of the categories and their organization. This is possibly the most discussed aspect of the wiki, so once you see it, you might feel the urge of just changing everything as if that was your home directory in your computer. | |||
Chill down, you can't do that: a) [[#Limitations of MediaWiki|it's technically almost impossible]]; b) it needs to be discussed with the more experienced maintainers. | |||
However, you can still take a look. You'll see that the FlightGear wiki has a root category, called, with no much surprise, [[:Category:FlightGear wiki]]. You can tell that by looking at [[Special:UncategorizedCategories]], which lists categories that have no parent. So use the CategoryTree tool on that (you may ignore the namespace option, more on [[#Use of namespaces|namespaces]] later) and take some time to see how it's structured. Again, try to repulse the need of moving stuff. | |||
The current structure is described in detail below, but in general there should be an Articles category, where all the text content is available, and Files, where the binaries are (probably just images). The other are technical categories, for which the use should be self-explanatory. | |||
=== Communication with other maintainers === | |||
Talking about discussing with the other maintainers, let's spend some words on that. Communicating through the wiki requires some adaptation. It is cumbersome at first, still annoying having to care about the indentation and remembering to sign your comments, but you'll get used in a couple days. | |||
One thing you should be aware of, though, is that '''you won't be warned of replies to your messages'''. As a surrogate to that, you can "star" the page where you left your message, but you'd have to remember to "unstar" them, or your watchlist will soon become unmaintainable (if that's a problem). As a maintainer though, you'll probably leave around so many messages that it will be easier to just check the RecentChanges as you should already be doing. | |||
More on communicating at [[mw:Help:Talk pages]]. | |||
== Ordinary maintenance tasks == | |||
{{stub}} | |||
Now you should be up and running. Here's briefly explained what you can already do. | |||
=== Checking new articles and edits === | |||
=== Checking maintenance reports === | |||
=== More random checking === | |||
Sometimes you should just go in the streets and take a look around, just to be sure everything's fine. This, of course, should be done even if you're deeply involved in reorganizing a 100.000 bytes long article, a lot of stuff, in fact | |||
[[Special:PopularPages]], [[Special:SpecialPages#Maintenance reports|Maintenance reports]] you don't usually check, [[Special:SpecialPages#High use pages|High use pages]] | |||
== Current organization of the categories == | |||
{{stub}} | {{stub}} | ||
this should be a guide for categorizing articles, and possibly explain particular uses of the particular ones. | |||
=== Use of namespaces === | |||
== Limitations of MediaWiki == | |||
{{stub}} | |||
=== Categorizing like tagging doesn't work === | |||
=== Editing categories is cumbersome === | |||
== Advanced tools == | |||
{{stub}} | |||
=== Extensions === | |||
=== Bots === | |||
== Promoting your ideas == | |||
You've read this paper, you've done a few days of maintenance and still are convinced that your idea is worth to be discussed, and you're intending to support it. Great! Write about it at the Village Pump! Tell about it to some maintainer! Don't be afraid, it ''will'' be discussed. You might even find that it was already proposed, but that nobody ever put it in practice. If you think you were not understood, insist. If in the end you get no support, well, you have tried. That's [[how the FlightGear project works]]. | |||
== References == | |||
The source for most of the "historical" notes in this wiki article was [[User talk:Bigstones/Essay:A plan for a reorganization of the wiki]]. | |||
<references/> | |||