State of the Wiki: January 2013

[zyzzyva980]

The month of January has come and gone, and what an incredible month it was. When you include userspace edits, we hit 1,000 total edits this month. We saw drastic improvements on pages marked as needing work- more on that in a little bit. And we’ve added a new member to the staff: Luo is your new Wikimod, and he’ll be responsible for typical upkeep on the wiki, making sure you don’t do dumb things, etc. Congratulations on being the newest member of the staff, Luo!

Here’s where we stood at the beginning of the year in maintenance:
January 1


And here’s where we are now:
February 1


CHANGE:
-11 Stubs
+6 Incomplete Pages
-7 Outdated Pages
-20 Dead Ends
-2 Orphaned Pages (COMPLETE)
-8 Cleanup

Don’t worry about the number of incomplete pages going up; that’s representative of the number of stubs “graduating” to incomplete page status. They still need a little work, but not as much as before.

A brief housekeeping note: Do not remove any maintenance templates from pages without a wikimod’s consent. Even if it’s abundantly clear that the page no longer needs work, contact one of us and let us check it out. We have certain things we look for when assigning pages for maintenance, and we don’t want to let anything slip through the cracks.

Now then, let’s talk about who made all of those edits:

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. I apologize for any minor mistakes (i.e. capitalization), but I didn’t have time this month to make sure every name was spelled correctly.
Note: If you do not wish to appear on graphs in the future, tell a staff member (me)

EDITS


CHARACTERS


Some shout-outs to the big editors of the month. First, to Briscon, for building up the Materials Science page from essentially nothing- quite an accomplishment. Next, to foreverphysics, for converting most of the test exchange to PDF. knittingfrenzy deserves recognition as well for the volume of edits she completed (a good 30% this month). Many medals were awarded this month, and we expect to award a few more. If you’ve made substantial contributions but haven’t yet been recognized, don’t worry. There have been a lot of edits this month and it takes a lot of time to go through and determine which ones have been most helpful. Keep contributing and you’ll get your due recognition.

If you’re looking for things to work on in January, here are some suggestions:
February brings about the first state competitions of the year (besides, of course, Montana), as well as numerous regional competitions. It should be our goal, then, to update the most important incomplete pages by the end of the month: Current event pages. Specific pages in need include:

• Chem Lab Wiki (and subpages)
• Dynamic Planet Wiki (That’s glaciers)
• Forensics Wiki
• [wiki]Forestry/Tree List[/wiki]
• Rotor Egg Drop Wiki
• Technical Problem Solving Wiki

On the bright side, however, many of these pages have seen significant growth, and many of the goals I hit on last month have been, for the most part, achieved. Keeping plugging away on the Invitationals Wiki, and if you don’t have experience or expertise in any of the events above, you can always check out what’s going on in the Needs Work Wiki section for ideas.

Keep up the good work!

[Skink]

Have we lost momentum yet?
I will make it a goal to try and further populate Egg Drop with something by the end of next week. I have the rules and a couple pictures I took which should be alright to slap on a page. I can work on chem lab if someone *ahem* could hit me with what the rules say the topics are specifically. I don't know if there are subtopics or not.

[A Person]

I know that this discusses the wiki, but can any moderators clean up the Mission Possible forum? No one created a thread for each task, so people created a new one for every question they had. This makes it impossible to transfer any information efficiently.

[fozendog]

If anyone can help me, I want to add pictures to the macroinvertebrate list, but I'm not sure how.

[zyzzyva980]

If anyone can help me, I want to add pictures to the macroinvertebrate list, but I'm not sure how.

Here's how to upload pictures (and other files) to the Wiki:

1. Go to the Special:Upload page (here)
2. Follow the instructions on the page to upload the file (Source file is what you're uploading, file description is information about it)
3. Next, go to the page you want to edit. If you want to use the full size picture, put

   Code: Select all

   [[File:YourFile.jpg]]

   in the page (with the correct file type, of course)
4. You may want to condense the picture, in which case you can put

   Code: Select all

   [[File:YourFile.png|200px]]

   (Or whatever other size... this should work, there might be another parameter in there)
5. Be sure to hit preview before saving the page to check for errors

I know that this discusses the wiki, but can any moderators clean up the Mission Possible forum? No one created a thread for each task, so people created a new one for every question they had. This makes it impossible to transfer any information efficiently.

We'll take a look at it as soon as we can.

[fozendog]

Alright thanks! All of the macros have pictures now.

[harryk]

I was bored, so I renovated the Robot Arm page and cleaned up Fermi Questions a bit. I'll try to do some stuff on Sumobots tomorrow.

[geminicross]

I have a question regarding team numbers: If we know the team numbers for the 2013 season, do we edit them? Or is it better to wait till soinc releases them to prevent confusion?

[zyzzyva980]

It would probably be best to wait until soinc releases them, although it depends on your source (e.g., did you just hear it through someone else, etc).

[geminicross]

It would probably be best to wait until soinc releases them, although it depends on your source (e.g., did you just hear it through someone else, etc).

It's from the official state directors/scioly state websites.