Wikiversity:Maintenance



Welcome to the Wikiversity Maintenance Hub!

Maintenance is one of the most important things that anyone can do at Wikiversity, along with teaching, learning and researching. Wikiversity constantly needs people to maintain the site, and anyone can get involved in maintaining Wikiversity. You don't have to ask - you can just pick some open tasks and get on with the job! Below you can find plenty of information and links to start you off with your maintenance "career" here. When you become better at maintenance tasks, you can start to identify new tasks that need doing and add them to the lists and categories.

If you stay around Wikiversity for long, and especially if you take part in maintenance, you'll soon come across the term custodian, which is what we call an "admin" or someone with "sysop privileges". Custodians have access to a few extra options on the MediaWiki interface, which enable them to do some maintenance operations faster, and do other maintenance operations which might have more radical effects on Wikiversity. For example, custodians can delete pages and block disruptive users. These operations are things which it is generally felt that not everyone should have access to. If you find a job which needs a custodian, then feel welcome to ask one!

Sometimes people decide it might be a nice idea to become a "custodian" themselves. If you want to: here's a quick how-to. First, realise that custodians (or admins) do a lot of pretty unpleasant boring jobs and end up sacrificing a lot of their family/holiday time. It's hardly a prestigious job. Secondly, before you even think of applying, get experience with a lot of the maintenance jobs below which anyone can do. This is a good way to show that you are suitable material for doing chores! But remember: if you enjoy making Wikiversity a better place by maintaining it, you don't have to be a custodian. Quite the opposite: ordinary users are especially welcome at the maintenance hub, and we hope the majority of people who come here will be ordinary users who just enjoy taking a few minutes to make Wikiversity a better place for everyone.

Oh - and finally, an especially big thank you to everyone who participates at the maintenance hub:

Thank you!

Ongoing tasks and taskforces
These are things that anyone can help with.


 * Opentask - this is a template of open tasks which some users keep on their user pages; update it to keep users informed of ongoing activity.
 * Category Maintenance Taskforce - maintaining and updating Categories from the down through the CategoryTree
 * Template Taskforce - Checking, improving, creating, testing and implementing templates used at Wikiversity
 * Main page learning project - a project to keep the main page active and useful.
 * Introduction Overhaul Taskforce - a task force which deals with introducing Wikiversity to newcomers.
 * Welcoming committee: an informal group of contributors who welcome new users and help them get started.
 * Candidates for Custodianship - view and comment on recent candidacies
 * Custodian feedback - are existing custodians doing a good job?
 * Participants - the participants list will need updating regularly - at least once a month - with recently very active editors and other significant information about participants.

Cleanup and maintenance categories
These are more things that anyone can help with.


 * Cleanup double redirects (note: see User:Mu301Bot for automated cleanup test)
 * Cleanup double redirects (note: see User:Mu301Bot for automated cleanup test)
 * Cleanup double redirects (note: see User:Mu301Bot for automated cleanup test)
 * Cleanup double redirects (note: see User:Mu301Bot for automated cleanup test)
 * Cleanup double redirects (note: see User:Mu301Bot for automated cleanup test)
 * Cleanup double redirects (note: see User:Mu301Bot for automated cleanup test)
 * Cleanup double redirects (note: see User:Mu301Bot for automated cleanup test)
 * Cleanup double redirects (note: see User:Mu301Bot for automated cleanup test)
 * Cleanup double redirects (note: see User:Mu301Bot for automated cleanup test)

Ongoing tasks for custodians
Many of these tasks depend on some degree of involvement by ordinary Wikiversity participants, such as proposing items for addition to these lists, and commenting on them.


 * Requests for deletion: custodians normally only delete if user discussion favors it.
 * : users can track down possible copyright problems and ask uploaders to clarify copyright status where a problem may exist. Pages can be added to this category with copyrighted so that custodians know action is requested.
 * Requests for custodian action
 * Notices for custodians: very much like "requests for custodian action", except that it gets overlooked.
 * Managing vandalism: a course which anyone can take, but especially valuable for custodians.
 * Monitor Special:Shortpages for pages that have been blanked - rollback and use discretion in dealing with the vandal.
 * Managing vandalism: a course which anyone can take, but especially valuable for custodians.
 * Monitor Special:Shortpages for pages that have been blanked - rollback and use discretion in dealing with the vandal.
 * Monitor Special:Shortpages for pages that have been blanked - rollback and use discretion in dealing with the vandal.

Making it easy for yourself to help maintain Wikiversity
We have a great template which you can add to your user page.

Administering Wikiversity

Type in the above at the top of your user page, and you can have a nice colourful sidebar full of useful links to key administrative pages, including this one.

Related pages
Reading material for people interested in maintenance issues.
 * Discussions
 * Bots
 * Polls
 * Policies
 * Custodianship policy
 * Custodian mentors
 * Referees / Review Board
 * Archive