State of the Wiki: December 2012

[zyzzyva980]

Over the past month we’ve seen a good amount of growth on several wiki pages, but there are still many pages that need work.

December 1


January 1


Change:
-2 Outdated Pages

We’ve seen a drop in the number of outdated pages, which is good, but there’s still a number of pages that need work in this area. Regional competitions will begin soon, and just over a month from now the state competition season will commence. There are still several pages that appear to need updating to reflect new rules, and others that are also outdated for other reasons.

Here is our list of editors from December. Note that administrative and similar edits are not included on the list. Also, some edits (such as minor reformatting after a major edit) have been lumped together.
Note: If you do not wish to appear on graphs in the future, tell a staff member (me) or stop editing the wiki. (We’d prefer the first option).







If you’re looking for things to work on in January, here are some suggestions:

• The Chem Lab Wiki, Mission Possible B Wiki, Robot Arm Wiki, Technical Problem Solving Wiki, and Thermodynamics Wiki all appear to need updates, and should be a priority for us to finish by the end of the month.
• If you don’t have expertise in those events, you can always put more information into other event pages, especially those in our Incomplete Pages category and our Stubs category.
• A brief plug for the new Invitationals Wiki page, a project being spearheaded by kentuckyfan1001: There’s a lot of good information already on the page, but it’s far from comprehensive. If your team goes to an invitational that is not already listed on the page, please add it.
• Finally, if you don’t have much time this month but would still like to contribute, look into "building the web" by increasing our number of internal links. 25+ pages on the wiki do not have links either to or from other pages, which makes some things difficult to find on the wiki. Check out those pages here and here.

[knittingfrenzy18]

I did a quick plug and update for Mission Possible. Someone say what you think of it now...I've removed the outdated and needs work things, but if needed so, put them back.

I like helping with wikis

[foreverphysics]

I think the Thermodynamics wiki is mostly good now...
I'm not good with LaTeX, though, so if anyone would add the equations that I didn't, that would be great.

[knittingfrenzy18]

I consider myself pretty good with LaTeX...could you say where you need them?

EDIT: Okay just stuck in a whole lotta fractions: tell me if there's anything else I can do. If I take time to read it more closely, I can help make it nice and mathy looking, so you don't have to keep saying "which simplifies to" "which is equal to" etc. Maybe later. Just tell me if there's anything else needed, and if I messed up anything, just revert my changes.

[foreverphysics]

I (kind of) figured out TeX now...
Now I just feel the need to stab it.

[zyzzyva980]

The Mission Possible B Wiki looks better but it still doesn't explain the rules very well. A more specific overview of the event's objective would be nice.

Thermo looks pretty good now, keep up the good work.

[silverheart7]

I just added to the Ginkgo "stub." I feel that I have included as much general information about that family as I can. Can a wikimod look at the page, and possible remove its "stub" status? Thanks

[knittingfrenzy18]

The Mission Possible B Wiki looks better but it still doesn't explain the rules very well. A more specific overview of the event's objective would be nice.

Thermo looks pretty good now, keep up the good work.

Something to add the the objective? I'm not sure what to add, really.

[knittingfrenzy18]

Made an update on Food Science which actually should have been counted as "outdated" but it was not a lot.

[zyzzyva980]

At present the overview only says that teams need to build a Rube Goldberg device which involves certain tasks- it doesn't elaborate on what the tasks are or how they fit together. The simple machines sections are helpful, but I wouldn't quite understand what I'm supposed to do with them.

The objective of the overviews and introductions on event pages are to give the reader a clear, concise idea of what they have to do in the event. After that first paragraph or two someone who has never done Science Olympiad before should be able to tell you what the event entails beyond what is suggested by the title (i.e., clearly Astronomy is about Astronomy- but after the first paragraphs of the Astro wiki I could tell you it is focused on Stellar Evolution and a certain type of supernova, and I'll probably have to learn a lot of math)