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Help:Maintenance: Difference between revisions
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4th contrib - done, but some images could lighten it
m (→Checking user entry points: meta * meta ... http://forum.flightgear.org/viewtopic.php?f=8&t=22728&hilit=Thorsten+aside+of+all+willingness+to+help+is+too+valuable&start=15#p206724) |
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Another valuable tool, that you might already know if you were a good contributor, is [[Special:CategoryTree]]. It provides you with an overview of the categories and their organization. This is possibly the most discussed aspect of the wiki, so you might feel the urge of just changing everything as if that was your <tt>/home</tt> dir. Chill down, you can't do that: a) [[#Editing categories is cumbersome|it's technically almost impossible]]; b) it needs to be discussed with the more experienced maintainers. | Another valuable tool, that you might already know if you were a good contributor, is [[Special:CategoryTree]]. It provides you with an overview of the categories and their organization. This is possibly the most discussed aspect of the wiki, so you might feel the urge of just changing everything as if that was your <tt>/home</tt> dir. Chill down, you can't do that: a) [[#Editing categories is cumbersome|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 | 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 for now) and take some time to see how it's structured. | ||
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. | 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. | ||
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;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. | ;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. | ||
== | == Organization of the categories == | ||
[[:Category:FlightGear wiki|FlightGear wiki]] is the root category. From there, you can easily browse all the categories. Note that existing category pages have a short description at the top, which might need to be maintained as well as other pages, but is intended to be a guide for working with them. | [[:Category:FlightGear wiki|FlightGear wiki]] is the root category. From there, you can easily browse all the categories. Note that existing category pages have a short description at the top, which might need to be maintained as well as other pages, but is intended to be a guide for working with them. | ||
Although in | Although in MediaWiki the category hierarchy might seem to be shaped like an actual tree (and could be so), more often it is structured like a web. In fact, every article - and every category - can be in more than one parent. This means that there's often more than one path from the root to an article. This feature can be leveraged to make a certain article better reachable by users that come from different areas. An example is given by 3D modeling related articles, that are useful to both scenery and aircraft developers. In the case of [[:Category:Aircraft]], this feature is used to classify by various aspects the planes. | ||
=== | === Keeping the tree sane === | ||
However, this can also make things messy sometimes. There are for instance cases where you might find loops, and those should be avoided. This is definitely not an easy subject, even choosing the name of a new category is not trivial at all. You might find some guidelines on categorization at [[wikipedia:Wikipedia:Categorization#Category tree organization|]], and a thorough analysis of pros and cons (and alternatives) at [[wikipedia:Wikipedia:Categories, lists, and navigation templates|Wikipedia:Categories]]. These things, however, should be handled only when you have a sufficient knowledge of the whole wiki, and after discussing it with other maintainers. | |||
== Limitations of MediaWiki == | == Limitations of MediaWiki == | ||