WikiQueer:Maintenance

{| cellspacing="0" cellpadding="0" style="width:100%; border:1px #D9CEB8 solid;"  Maintenance departments
 * colspan="2" style="border-bottom:1px #D9CEB8 solid; padding-left:5px; background:#F2E6CE;text-align:left;" |
 * colspan="2" style="border-bottom:1px #D9CEB8 solid; padding-left:5px; background:#F2E6CE;text-align:left;" |
 * valign="top" style="background:#FFFCF5; padding:1.2em;" |
 * valign="top" style="background:#FFFCF5; padding:1.2em;" |

As well as editing, many people at WikiQueer are involved in maintenance tasks. Most of these tasks can be done by any user. For other useful directories, see the navigation bar above.

Maintenance work is a vital part of keeping WikiQueer 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 WikiQueer in ways other than maintenance, please see WikiQueer:Contributing to WikiQueer. Tasks of the most pressing importance can be found at WikiQueer:Backlog.

Things to watch

 * WikiQueer:Cleanup - Articles needing cleanup
 * WikiQueer:As of – Information that may be out of date
 * Special:Recentchanges – Patrol for vandals and other bad edits
 * New pages – Patrol for vandals and redundancy with existing articles
 * WikiQueer:List of controversial issues – A simple list of pages on controversial subjects, not a place to argue about them. Patrol for vandals, POV pushers, and disputes in progress
 * WikiQueer:Bots/Requests for approval and WikiQueer:Bot requests – to ask for permission to run a bot

Deletion
Non-admins can help keep deletion pages clean by resolving discussions. Administrators are needed to actually delete pages. Anyone can nominate pages for deletion. See:


 * WikiQueer:Articles for deletion and WikiQueer:Miscellany for deletion - Instructions at WikiQueer:Deletion process
 * WikiQueer:Categories for discussion
 * WikiQueer:Templates for discussion
 * WikiQueer:Redirects for discussion
 * WikiQueer:Images and media for deletion
 * WikiQueer:Stub types for deletion
 * WikiQueer:Criteria for speedy deletion

Possible copyright violations
WikiQueer: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 WikiQueer:Image description page for guidance on this.

Maintaining portals
See WikiQueer:Portal for a list of existing portals and associated projects and maintainers.

Welcoming newcomers
Welcome people using one of the standard user greetings or make up your own. Use 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 WikiQueer:Welcoming committee. The message gives newcomers some ideas of articles to work on. The tasks listed in this template can be changed at Template:Opentask.

Main page
The Main Page needs regular updating. Only sysops can edit the page itself. See WikiQueer:Editing the main page for links to the relevant templates and further guidance.

Vandalism
Anyone can revert vandalism. See WikiQueer:revert for instructions. If you see any recurrent vandalism, you can list it at WikiQueer: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://www.wikiqueer.org/w/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: WikiQueer:How to spot vandalism

Current events
Not maintenance as such, but Portal:Current events is a page that needs to be updated daily. Please read WikiQueer:How the Current events page works before working on this.

Request and maintenance queues
For each queue listed below, editors are needed to:
 * Rotate individual articles and projects onto Template:Opentasks (shown above) as they are fixed or become stale.
 * Publicize neglected lists or consolidate them with active pages
 * Remove articles from the listings as they are fixed.
 * Actually fix the individual articles that are listed.

Instructions are given on each page.


 * WikiQueer:Requested articles
 * WikiQueer:Cleanup
 * Category:Articles that need to be wikified
 * WikiQueer:Duplicate articles and Category:Articles to be merged
 * WikiQueer:Requests for expansion - Articles longer than stubs, but which are still missing substantial material
 * WikiQueer:Requests for summaries - No new requests are being taken, but old ones need to be filled. This page is not well-publicized.
 * Articles to be moved off-site: WikiQueer:Transwiki log ...

Disputes
There are many pages in Category:WikiQueer 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 WikiQueer: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:
 * Category:Accuracy disputes
 * Category:NPOV disputes

Initial categorization efforts

 * WikiQueer:Auto-categorization is a collaboration page for articles that need to be put in an appropriate category. Articles are automatically pre-sorted to help speed the process.
 * Special:Uncategorizedpages shows all articles that need to be categorized.
 * Special:UncategorizedCategories shows categories that need to be categorized.

See also: WikiQueer:Categorization projects (current)

Images with missing articles
Several pages on the web offer their public domain images in a long list. To avoid checking these lists again and again for matching WikiQueer articles, WikiQueer: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.

Peer review
WikiQueer: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 WikiQueer:Featured article candidates. Articles that don't successfully become featured are often referred back to this step.

Editors are needed to:
 * Comment on articles listed
 * Remove old requests (instructions are on the page itself)

Make a donation
WikiQueer is in constant need of more server capacity, bandwidth and other technical services to keep it running and keep it fast enough to be useful. Financial contributions to our non-profit parent, The Aequalitas Project, are greatly appreciated. Please see http://donate.aequalitasproject.org/

Publicize WikiQueer
See Category:WikiQueer publicity.

Help other users
Even new users can help answer factual questions on the WikiQueer:Reference desk, which serves the same purpose as a reference desk you might find in your local library. You do not have to be an expert on WikiQueer because:
 * You can help people find answers in existing WikiQueer articles.
 * If you know the answer to a question not answered by WikiQueer, you can assist the questioner and at the same time, add that information to WikiQueer for the benefit of future readers.
 * If you do not know the answer to an interesting question, you can research it in non-WikiQueer sources, and then improve WikiQueer for the benefit of the questioner and future readers.

If you already have some experience, your assistance in one of the many WikiQueer help forums, including WikiQueer:Help desk, would be a valuable contribution. You can help WikiQueer grow by helping other people share what they know.

Programmers wanted
Programming skills are especially valuable, to help write useful standalone scripts, or to improve the software that runs WikiQueer.
 * WikiQueer:Bot requests