Wikipedia:Maintenance
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Maintenance departments |
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As well as editing, many people at Wikipedia are involved in maintenance tasks. Most of these tasks can be done by any user, not just administrators. For other useful directories, see the navigation bar above. Maintenance work is a vital part of keeping Wikipedia running optimally. Be careful to avoid creating more maintenance work through instruction creep. Organize when you can, but always keep the big picture in sight: we are here to create an encyclopedia. If you wish to contribute to Wikipedia in ways other than maintenance, please see Wikipedia:Contributing to Wikipedia. Tasks of the most pressing importance can be found at Wikipedia:Backlog. [edit] Things to watch
[edit] ReportsSpecial pages are updated either automatically or on request by the developers. Offline reports are generated from an offline copy of the Wikipedia database. These reports are always a bit out of date and should not be considered authoritative, but may provide useful guidance as to which articles may benefit from attention in particular areas. They need people with enough hard drive space and expertise to update them occasionally. Many of these reports cannot be updated in the same way that they were in the past, due to changes in the format of the database downloads. Regular editors are also needed to prune already-fixed listings. Currently updated reports are listed on Template:Active Wiki Fixup Projects (displayed to the right) and are most in need of editors to fix individual pages that are listed on them.
More:
May no longer be necessary: [edit] Link Analysis DatabaseA Link Analysis Database is created by running a set of scripts on a MySQL database into which a Wikipedia database dump has been loaded. It can be used to generate among others the reports dealing with articles and links to and from them below. Instructions on how to construct a Link Analysis Database can be found here. [edit] DeletionNon-admins can help keep deletion pages clean by resolving discussions. Administrators are needed to actually delete pages. Anyone can nominate pages for deletion. See:
[edit] Possible copyright violationsWikipedia:Copyright problems lists articles which will be deleted if it can not be proven that we have permission to use them under the terms of the GFDL. For pages listed there, you could replace the infringing article's text with new (re-written) content of your own. This must be done on a temp page, so that the original "copyvio version" may be deleted by a sysop. Temp versions should be written at a page like: [[Talk:PAGE NAME/temp]]. If the original turns out not to be a copyvio, these two can be merged. Alternatively, you can write to the copyright owner and check whether they gave permission. You can also ask for permission using the boilerplate request for permission. If someone claims to have permission, but this has not been verified, you can send the confirmation of permission letter to check. If images have been listed, you may want to consider whether these constitute fair use and write the appropriate disclaimers on the image description page. See Wikipedia:Image description page#Fair use rationale for guidance on this. [edit] Maintaining portalsSee Wikipedia:Portal for a list of existing portals and associated projects and maintainers. [edit] Foreign language pagesFor pages listed on Wikipedia:Pages needing translation into English, the Wikipedia:Embassy member of the Wikipedia that relates to the language the article is in should be contacted and invited to move the page to their own Wikipedia or to help translate it. There is also a list of translators at Wikipedia:translation. If you don't know what language the article is in you could use Language recognition chart and if that fails some language recognition web site to find out. If a page remains untranslated after two weeks, or if someone who speaks the language it is written in states that it is not worth translating, then article should be moved from pages needing translation to articles for deletion. The boilerplate text on the article should be changed from {{notenglish}} to {{subst:afd}}. [edit] Welcoming newcomersWelcome people using one of the standard user greetings or make up your own. Use {{Opentask}} to leave an automatically updated task list on a new user's page. New users can be found by looking for red talk page links on recent changes or by querying the database. Efforts to co-ordinate the activities of welcomers are being made at Wikipedia:Welcoming committee. The {{Opentask}} message gives newcomers some ideas of articles to work on. The tasks listed in this template can be changed at Template:Opentask. [edit] Main pageThe Main Page needs regular updating. Only sysops can edit the page itself. See Wikipedia:Editing the main page for links to the relevant templates and further guidance. [edit] VandalismAnyone can revert vandalism. See Wikipedia:revert for instructions. If you see any recurrent vandalism, you can list it at Wikipedia:Administrator intervention against vandalism. You can also check other listings on that page and follow them up by seeing if the users listed there have made any further vandalism since the listing. Do this typing the url http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Contributions/ followed by the username. Unreverted edits will still have (top) next to them. Sysops may choose to block recurrent vandals, following a warning on the user's talk page using Special:Blockip, or for unlogged-in users clicking the block link next to their IP on recent changes. The pages linked to from the main page often see the most vandalism, so checking those pages via the links on Editing the Main Page can be a good place to look if you feel like vandal spotting. See also: Wikipedia:How to spot vandalism [edit] Current eventsNot maintenance as such, but Portal:Current events is a page that needs to be updated daily. Please read Wikipedia:How the Current events page works before working on this. [edit] Request and maintenance queuesHere are some tasks you can do:
For each queue listed below, editors are needed to:
Instructions are given on each page.
[edit] DisputesThere are many pages in Category:Wikipedia dispute resolution which could use help in resolving various kinds of disputes. Some disputes are easy to resolve - someone needs to propose or implement a compromise (check out the appropriate talk page), or the dispute is over and someone just needs to declare the problem solved. Many disputes between parties can be resolved after uninvolved strangers wander in, read the article in question and the debate so far, and just give common-sense opinions. In rare cases, delicate negotiating skills are needed to bring warring parties to a satisfactory agreement, or administrative powers are needed to ban vandals or uncooperative editors. The main page to list disputes is Wikipedia:Requests for comment. This is a static listing, and your help is needed to remove old requests, in addition to commenting on current requests. There are lists of articles in dispute in: [edit] Initial categorization efforts
See also: Wikipedia:Categorization projects (current) [edit] Images with missing articlesSeveral pages on the web offer their public domain images in a long list. To avoid checking these lists again and again for matching Wikipedia articles, Wikipedia:Images with missing articles has a list of specific images with missing articles. If you see that one of these articles exists, please add the image from the external link, and remove it from the list. [edit] Discussions[edit] SurveysThere is a list of current surveys that needs to be maintained by adding any current polls, moving closed polls to the closed polls section, and updating the results of polls once they are closed. [edit] Peer reviewWikipedia:Peer review is designed to solicit comments on articles that have had major work by a single author, or which are going to be submitted to Wikipedia:Featured article candidates. Articles that don't successfully become featured are often referred back to this step. Editors are needed to:
[edit] Make a donationWikipedia is in constant need of more server capacity, bandwidth and other technical services to keep it running and fast enough to be useful. Financial contributions to our non-profit parent, the Wikimedia Foundation, are greatly appreciated. Please see http://wikimediafoundation.org/fundraising [edit] Publicize WikipediaSee Wikipedia:Building Wikipedia membership for ideas. [edit] Help other usersEven new users can help answer factual questions on the Wikipedia:Reference desk, which serves the same purpose as a reference desk you might find in your local library. (You might also think of it as the Wikipedia version of Yahoo Answers or Windows Live QnA.) You do not have to be an expert on Wikipedia because:
If you already have some experience, your assistance in one of the many Wikipedia help forums, including Wikipedia:Help desk, would be a valuable contribution. You can help Wikipedia grow by helping other people share what they know. [edit] Programmers wantedProgramming skills are especially valuable, to help write useful standalone scripts, or to improve the software that runs Wikipedia.
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