biologydaily.com:Maintenance

As well as editing, many people at Wikipedia are involved in maintenance tasks. If you are interested in these, you may want to consider helping out at the Cleaning department, Welcoming committee or the Typo team. This page provides some ideas of areas that need maintenance work (most have sign-up lists on the Cleaning department page). Most of these tasks can be done by any user, not just administrators. See also the list of things to watch and fix.

Maintenance work is a vital part of keeping Wikipedia running optimally. Be careful to avoid creating more maintenance work through instruction creep . Organise when you can, but always keep the big picture in sight: we're here to create an encyclopedia.

Votes for Deletion

There is a common misconception that only administrators can deal with Wikipedia:Votes for deletion. This is not the case. Over half of the pages listed are never deleted, so at least half the work can be done by non-sysops. The advice in the following two sections applies to VfD, RfD and IfD, though note that the lag on pages other than main VfD is longer than five days. Details of pages listed for reasons of copyright violation or foreign language are discussed separately. More details can be found at Wikipedia:Deletion process.

Pages to be kept

If items have been listed on VfD for more than five days and there is a rough consensus to keep them (particularly if less than 66% have voted to delete), then these can be removed from VfD. The {{subst:vfd}} tag should be removed from the article. If the discussion was occurring on a subpage of VfD, then you should make sure that page carries the boilerplate notice shown on Wikipedia:archived delete debates to say that the result was to keep it. You can also link that subpage from the article's talk page, but make it clear the article is not currently listed for deletion.

Pages to be deleted (admins only)

Sysops can also deal with items where the consensus is to delete the page after five days. This involved deleting the page, and its talk page. Check the "what links here" and make sure there are no redirects to the deleted page. These need to be deleted if they exist. If the page is being deleted because it should never be an article, then make sure there are no links to that page. If it is being deleted because it currently no good, but it is possible such a page could exist in future, it is ok for the links to stay. If the discussion was occurring on an delete debate page or subpage of VfD then you should make sure that page carries the boilerplate notice shown on Wikipedia:archived delete debates to say that the result was to delete it. Make sure the page is listed on Wikipedia:archived delete debates.

Possible copyright violations

Wikipedia: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 to be not a copyvio, these two can be merged. Alternatively, you can write to the copyright owner 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.

Village pump

The village pump is not a place for lasting discussions, so anything older than 7 days from the date of the last comment are moved to an archive page below each of the Village pump's sections. These dicussions will be kept in that archive for 7 more days. During this period (or before) the discussion can be moved to a relevant talk page in the article, Wikipedia or template namespace or to the user talk page of the user who started the discussion. For example, if a question about copyright was asked, and this is likely to be asked again, move the question to . It may also be summarised, or refactored, if appropriate. If discussions are moved elsewhere, the links to where they have moved to should remain in the summarised section until the village pump is next cleaned.

After 7 days in the archive, the discussion will be permanently removed, although it will still be available from the history.

Often people ask things on the village pump that should have been asked at the Wikipedia:Reference desk. These should be moved. Leave behind a link in the same location the question was such as

Question on beetles moved to the Wikipedia:Reference desk

Foreign language pages

For 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 votes for deletion. The boilerplate text on the article should be changed from {{notenglish}} to {{vfd}}.

Talk pages

Talk pages are useful. 50,000 words on the topic might not be. Many articles have excessive numbers of talk page archives. Whilst these provide an interesting history to the development of the article, they are next to useless for someone new to the article wanting to know what the past discussion was about. New Imperialism, for example, currently has 15 archives. It would be far more useful to have a summary of these that would be readable by a newcomer. See the archives of the VfD talk page for examples of how the previous discussion was summarised. An alternative to summarising the discussion is to split the archives by topic rather than purely chronologically. Look at User talk:Daniel C. Boyer/undelete and Talk:AKFD for examples of this. Wikipedia:Refactoring explains other alternatives to just archiving a talk page. See also how to archive a talk page

Welcoming newcomers

Welcome 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.

Main page

The 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.

Protected pages

Though a log is kept of protected pages, they should still be listed at Wikipedia:protected page as well, as described in the Wikipedia:protection policy. Sometimes people forget to list them, so you can check the protection log to make sure there aren't any pages listed there as being protected that are not mentioned on Wikipedia:protected page. Any missing ones can be added to the temporarily protected pages section.

Vandalism

Anyone can revert vandalism. See Wikipedia:revert for instructions. If you see any recurrent vandalism, you can list it at Wikipedia:vandalism in progress. 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.

Current events

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

Requested articles

Articles which are listed on Wikipedia:Requested articles, and its sub pages, but have already been written should be removed. Before doing this, please check the articles are really articles, and not vandalism. If they are vandalism, list them on Wikipedia:Speedy deletions, delete them, or rewrite them. Do not remove them from the request list. It is also useful to make sure the new articles you delist are not orphans. See the section below about dealing with orphans.

Orphans

Category:Orphaned categories is a collaboration page for categories that need to be put in an appropriate category.

Wikipedia: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.

See Special:Lonelypages for a list of pages that have nothing linking to them. To fix these, just find an appropriate place in another article to add a link to the orphan page.

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 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.

Misspellings

There are always spellings that need correcting. Wikipedia:List of common misspellings contains some common ones that you can search for with a search engine. Wikipedia:Typo is a project designed to co-ordinate the efforts of the typo searchers. Wikipedia:Redirects from misspellings contains a list of redirects that should have nothing linking to them.

Disputes

If a dispute is over, remove it from the Requests for comment page. You may need to check with the people involved whether it is really over if you are unsure. People often forget they listed a dispute there, so it is helpful to remind them when you think it might be over.

By checking what links here on Wikipedia:NPOV dispute or Wikipedia:accuracy dispute, you can see which articles have a disputed tag attached. Check whether the articles are still disputed and remove the tag if they are not. You could help by editing the page to remove the POV issues or factual inaccuracies, but make sure you read the talk page first to make sure what you intend to edit hasn't already been decided against.

Cleanup

Wikipedia:Cleanup is a page to list articles that need fixing in some way, from pages with POV issues to pages that just need wikifying. There are a number of maintenance tasks needed by this page that can be carried out by anyone. Pages that have been fixed need to be removed. If there aren't any that can be removed, try summarising the discussions to reduce the page size instead. If entries are old but not fixed, list them on Wikipedia:Votes for deletion or Wikipedia:Pages needing attention. Articles where the current content is harmful should be reduced to a stub so nothing objectionable remains. Full details are on the Cleanup process page.

If you think an item listed on Cleanup would be a good task for newcomers, you can add it to Template talk:Opentask which is often used as part of the welcome message given to new users.

Surveys

There 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.

Peer review

Wikipedia:Peer review is a forum for getting comments and peer review from other Wikipedians on articles or on other content. The page details a recommended layout for new entries. Often this is not followed, so one maintenance task on the page is to format the entries according to this style guide. Discussions often start on peer review page itself. These need to be moved to the article's talk page, so the peer review page does not get too long. Old entries need to be removed from the page after topics have received attention, after they have been there for a while, or when the original poster is satisfied they have received enough comments.

Pages needing attention

There are many pages that need attention, but also lots of pages that list the pages needing attention which need maintenance. Wikipedia:Categories of pages needing attention lists some of these pages. The lists need to be regularly checked to see whether the pages on them really are still in need of attention. If a page appears to be fixed and there is nothing on its talk page that suggests there are still problems, then remove it from the list of Pages needing attention or whichever list it is on, or remove the notice that suggests it is needing attention (such as an NPOV dispute notice or Stub notice). If pages have been ignored on these lists for a long time, you may want to list them on Wikipedia:Cleanup for a while instead as this often gets more traffic than the other pages.

Requests for expansion

Wikipedia:Requests for expansion lists those stubs and other articles that have decent information, but that other Wikipedians find too short or insufficient for an encyclopedia of the stature to which Wikipedia aspires.

Articles to be moved

See VfD, Wikipedia:Things to be moved to Wiktionary and the Wikipedia:Transwiki log ...

Redirects with possibilities

The Redirects with possibilities page lists pages that are currently redirects, but have the possibility of being turned into real articles. The list needs to be checked occasionally to make sure that the pages listed really are redirects. Those that have been converted into articles should be removed from the list.

Featured articles

Wikipedia:Featured article candidates - Wikipedia:Featured pictures candidates

Nomination

If you find a really good article (or picture), and you think the wikipedia community should know about it, nominate it on the appropriate page.
List it under its own subheading under Current nominations without objections.
Write a short summary of why you think the page should be featured. Be sure to sign and time stamp your nomination.

Reviewing nominations

Read the articles (look at the pictures) that have been nominated.
If you like a nominee and think it should be included in Wikipedia:Featured articles or Wikipedia:Featured pictures, voice your support on the candidates page (Each article needs two supports to be featured). Be sure to sign and date your statement.
If, however, you feel the article could be improved before being listed on featured articles or brilliant pictures, object and give a reason for the objection.
1. If you are the first to object, move the nomination to Nominations with objections.
The nominator, page contributors, or others will then address your objections, either by stating why your objection is invalid (rare), or by editing the article to address your concerns (much more common).
Review the article again, and either better explain why you object, or withdraw your objection if you feel the page is now up to snuff.
1. If yours was the only outstanding objection, move the article back to the without objections section.
This process will continue until a consensus is reached.

Articles to be added

Observe the following procedure when adding to Featured articles or Pictures.

If a week has gone by after the last objection was withdrawn, or a week after the nomination was listed, and the article has received two or more seconds, or voices of support, move the discussion to the section Recently added to Featured articles and add a line that states Added by ~~~~, so we know when and by whom a page was added to FA.
Add the article to the list at Featured articles or pictures
Remove the optional nomination boilerplate from the article, if the nominator chose to use it.
Copy the discussion and paste it into the talk page for the article, and add the {{msg:featured}} tag to the top of the talk page.

Archival of unaccepted nominations

Discussion about a proposed article that has been objected to for more than a month, or a nomination that fails to receive enough seconds for a month may be removed from the page by following this procedure.

Copy the discussion and paste it in the article's talk page and in Wikipedia:Featured article candidates/Archived nominations
delete it from the nomination page.

Was brilliant, but isn't anymore

If you find an article on one of the featured lists that no longer is a good example to be emulated:

If you are a sysop, remove it from the list and make an entry in the Recently removed articles, and reason for removal section of the candidates page explaining why it was removed; or if you are not a sysop, list it on the talk page, with your objections and a sysop will continue the process.
Treat such articles as new nominations with built in objections; i.e. if the problem is fixed and no one objects for a week, add it back to the list. If a month goes by and the objection is not addressed, or a general consensus to put the article back is not reached, move the discussion to the archive and the article's talk page and delete the listing.