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Help:Maintenance: Difference between revisions
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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. | 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 | 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 [[FlightGear wiki|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! | But cheer up: despite the above, this wiki gets every day better and better. Ask a maintainer if you don't believe it! | ||
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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]]! | 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.) | 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. When you see something you'd like to know better, you can safely "edit" the article to see the source, closing the page or going back will prevent any actual editing.) | ||
=== Category Tree === | === Category Tree === | ||
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== Ordinary maintenance tasks == | == Ordinary maintenance tasks == | ||
With only few hours of the above, you should be up and running. Here's briefly explained what you can already do. Note that you're ''by no means'' asked to do all the following. Any help will be appreciated. | |||
=== Checking new articles and edits === | === Checking new articles and edits === | ||
Checking [[Special:RecentChanges|Recent Changes]] you might find an entry marked with an '''N''', meaning that a new article has been created. Go and see if it fits the wiki (e.g. doesn't talk about the user's dog), if the title could be made clearer, or formatting could be improved... in brief, check its quality. There are no guidelines about it | |||
Moreover, check if it is [[Help:Categories|categorized]] in the most specific category available, especially if it is ''not'' categorized at all! This one, though, might be a task that needs a bit more expertise, particularly for development related articles. | |||
If the new article was made by a new contributor, you might want to leave some hints on his/her talk page to avoid the repeating of any mistake (like forgetting the summary). Needless to say, remember to be nice: that contributor probably did the best he/she could. In fact, you might also consider just thanking them for their addition. | |||
If you change anything, ''remember to leave a proper summary''. | |||
=== Checking user entry points === | |||
Due to its high impact on the wiki quality perception, '''this is possibly the most important maintenance task available'''. | |||
You might have heard of the [[wikipedia:Pareto principle|Pareto principle]]. Briefly, it says that 80% of the results are due to 20% of the causes. Applied to the wiki, it could sound like "20% of the wiki pages affect 80% of the wiki quality perception" (''numbers may vary''). | |||
It's not hard to see that those higher importance articles are of course the most visited ones, that is, of course the [[:Category:Portals]] and all the pages linked there. Try to use them as a user, see if some topics are missing or if it is out of date. If the topic is suitable for you, try to fix that even by searching and asking on the forum about latest updates. Do you see why maintaining documentation is the best way to get into a project? | |||
Other than the portals, another page that needs to stay up to date is [[Frequently asked questions]]. Try to remove, or at least [[Help:Templates#Different types of templates|signal with a template]], questions that you presume asked no more that frequently. Also, by following the forum you should be able to know what really are the FAQs, so consider adding them if missing. In the answers, try to point to existing articles instead of duplicating information (see [[#Some guiding principles|below]]). | |||
Then, if you're out of "most visited pages", just check [[Special:PopularPages]], which has (at the time of writing) about 1,900 of them. | |||
=== Maintenance reports === | |||
Although when seeing a problem it's better to fix it immediately, you might really not have the time/will/knowledge for that. When this happens, you should however add a [[:Category:Maintenance templates|maintenance template]]. These are those message boxes that appear on top of articles or sections that need some attention. The articles that contain them are listed in some subcategories of [[:Category:Wiki maintenance]]. The ones you'll most be interested in are: | |||
* [[:Category:Cleanup]] - these are also good candidates for the quality checks we talked about earlier. | |||
* [[:Category:Articles to be expanded]] - like above. | |||
* [[:Category:Considered for deletion]] - these should have a discussion ongoing, you may give your opinion. | |||
Every now and then, you should really go back to these lists, and see if you can do anything to empty them. Maybe with time you'll even be able to fix a page that you signaled yourself some time before! | |||
=== More random checking === | === More random checking === | ||
Sometimes you should just go in the streets and take a look around, just to be sure everything's fine. | Sometimes you should just go out in the streets and take a look around, just to be sure everything's fine. A lot of stuff, in fact tend to be forgotten and slowly grow out of date. Some pages you might want to visit are in [[Special:PopularPages]], [[Special:SpecialPages#Maintenance reports|Maintenance reports]] you don't usually check, [[Special:SpecialPages#High use pages|High use pages]]. | ||
== Some guiding principles == | |||
Maintenance can become a real chore sometimes. To avoid that, maintainers try to keep their work simple. Here are some hints. | |||
;Avoid duplication: Writing something in multiple places means that it has to be kept up to date in multiple places. A good categorization will help in finding similar articles, that should be merged. Also, you should strive to keep different topics separated, which you can do by splitting articles or moving sections to more appropriate places. Templates, to some extent, can help too. | |||
;Write for the posterity: What you're writing now should aim at being valid for the longest time possible. So try to keep things as generic as possible, and to link to existing articles that will be updated on their own (this of course also to avoid duplication.) | |||
;Keep the quality perception high: A non maintained wiki will keep away both users and contributors. However, their judgement is only based on the ''perception'' of the wiki quality. Keep this one up by maintaining entry points, and people will be happier to contribute. | |||
== Current organization of the categories == | == Current organization of the categories == | ||
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== Limitations of MediaWiki == | == Limitations of MediaWiki == | ||
=== Categorizing like tagging doesn't work === | === Categorizing like tagging doesn't work === | ||
MediaWiki doesn't support (at least natively) the use of categories like tags, that is, the use of two or more unrelated categories that combine to make a particular one. This happens because ''when browsing'' the categories you can't combine them. So one should always use the most particular category that is possible. | |||
An example: if an article is about creating airport layouts, it shouldn't be "tagged" with Scenery and Development (they're both into [[:Category:FlightGear]]), but classified into Scenery enhancement (which is another way of saying "scenery development"). | |||
=== Editing categories is cumbersome === | === Editing categories is cumbersome === | ||
There is no other manual way to edit the category tree (e.g. moving articles, renaming categories...) than ''editing one by one each categorized page'', be it an article or a category page (and thus, the category itself). To some extent, such work can be done by bots (automated software editors), but they're pretty dangerous and their usage must be very carefully planned and tested with maintainers and admins. | |||
== Promoting your ideas == | == Promoting your ideas == | ||
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<references/> | <references/> | ||
[[Category:Help]] | |||