State of the Wiki: February 2013

[zyzzyva980]

Welcome to the state competition season here on the Science Olympiad Student Center.

The staff is committed to maintaining this website as a resource for students across the country in the most efficient way possible. This means that any major changes to the website will probably not happen until after the national tournament (probably not until rollover). The wiki is no exception; major changes, be them in templates or reformatting of pages, will be minimized from now until the national tournament.

HOWEVER, there is one exception: Any sort of major change that adds to the information on a page is ALWAYS a good change and is ALWAYS needed. So keep adding information, but… try not to experiment with what we’ve already got.

It's a brief update this month as I've been very busy. So, without further ado, here’s our maintenance statistics for February:
FEBRUARY 1


MARCH 1


+2 Stubs
-1 Dead Ends
+1 Cleanup

It wasn’t the best month for us when you look at these numbers, but we have had a lot of good information added to the wiki, so the progress we’ve seen from last month, although it is slowing, hasn’t come to a halt. The increase in stubs is only due to the addition of pages for this year’s national trial events, which were added just today.

Here is our list of editors from February. 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


There is one person not listed on this list that absolutely deserves recognition. I don’t count team or state page edits in the charts above because generally people simply edit their own team and state pages. But twototwenty has done a great job on team pages from New York and certainly deserves to be recognized for that. Other editors who deserve recognition this month also include FullMetalMaple for her work on some of the Chem Lab subpages, and fozendog for work at the beginning of the month on Dynamic Planet. Again, just like last month, there have been a lot of edits 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.

Looking for something to do in March?
There are a couple event pages that still need work, but we can always always always use more information. Check out the stubs and incomplete pages to see what needs to be done (though many of those pages aren’t pressing issues), as well as the Needs Work Wiki for a more general overview. As always, keep up the good work.

Is your season over? Consider uploading some of your notes to the wiki.

[3nv1r0nm3ntal ch3m]

Thanks, but do we really need spammy posts like this every month? Not sure if actually useful...

[EastStroudsburg13]

Thanks, but do we really need spammy posts like this every month? Not sure if actually useful...

It's generally not a good idea to label an administrator's posts as "spam".

But yes, they have proven to be helpful. The immense amount of edits in January would likely not have happened if not for the December 2012 post. So yes, we will continue to have these posts every month. Maybe not for some of the summer months, but during competition months absolutely.

And, truthfully, when looking through the topics in General Chat, can you honestly say that this is the one that deserves to be discontinued?

[silverheart7]

I've made minor edits to the wiki in the past, but I have a lot of difficulty with the code/format of the pages and I get nervous that I'll mess up the page if I add to it or make major changes (such as add an image/table).

[zyzzyva980]

That's what the "Show Preview" button is for. You won't learn how the formatting works unless you give it a shot. If you have any questions, you can always consult Wikipedia's how-to guides or you can talk to one of the mods.

[caseyotis]

Thanks, but do we really need spammy posts like this every month? Not sure if actually useful...

Just because they aren't useful to you doesn't mean they are useful for the common good of the forum as a whole. These absolutely aren't spammy because they have legitimate, meaningful content. Like what EAST said; is this really the thread that deserves one of your "spam" statements? -_-

I think this is really useful. I'm one of those people who only edited the wiki by making their own team, but without this Wiki, I wouldn't know what I'd do for things like Crime Busters and Metric Mastery. I'm glad these people are getting recognition.

[zyzzyva980]

(For those wondering) there won't be an update for March. The other staff members and I have been very busy dealing with other things so we weren't able to publish a post for March. Next month, we'll combine March and April for a larger update.