FamilySearch Wiki talk:Maintenance

Adding to maintenance page
It would be nice to have all the possible maintenance work centered on this page. There are a number of tasks that are on the Special page so here I will be adding other required tasks and trying to organize them to fold them into the main Maintenance page. Here they are organized by high-priority to low priority, depending on whether or not the reports actually show a problem or are just good to look at every once in a while.


 * Dead-end pages
 * Orphaned pages
 * Wanted files
 * Wanted pages
 * Wanted templates
 * Patrolling


 * Duplicate files
 * Protected pages
 * Long pages


 * Unused templates
 * Unused categories
 * Unused files
 * Oldest pages
 * Pages with the fewest revisions
 * Pages without language links
 * Protected titles

Is the main page better organized by topic as it now is or by priority? Not sure, just thinking. If we organize by topic, the above will have to be folded into the main page. Also, some of these are admin only functions. How do we set those apart so that everyone knows who can and can't work on them? janellv 05:20, 18 November 2010 (UTC)


 * I think you make a good point about the other special page maintenance reports. I have created specialpageslist, grouping the reports based on your three priority lists. This can of course be altered if needed. My personal opinion is that the FamilySearch Wiki:Maintenance article is kept to tasks that can be done by all users and that tasks that can only be done by users with certain roles/rights be detailed on the pages (or sub-pages) about those roles (ie FamilySearch Wiki:Moderator or FamilySearch Wiki:Administrators). --Steve 11:40, 18 November 2010 (UTC)


 * Thanks for jumping in on this! I'll review it in more depth, hopefully today. I think it would be nice to integrate it into what's already there rather than have 2 separate lists. Maybe we can put a high/med/low after each of the names to explain what each could be categorized as? The maintenance tasks that are already on the main list can be prioritized as well. I'm not sure if I've got the prioritization right or not, your input there would be great.
 * Question - is there any way to be able to show the # of pages in the special pages report? The way you list those in a specific category? I assume there's not or you would have added them but it would sure be nice if there was a way....
 * Also, I would love to have all maintenance tasks here on this page, but maybe find a way to set those apart that are for admins only - that way people have just one place to go for all maintenance work. Would there be a problem with that? janellv 15:11, 19 November 2010 (UTC)
 * In trying to categorize the main page, they're not breaking cleanly into categories high/med/low. Maybe we should prioritize 1-5...? janellv 15:17, 19 November 2010 (UTC)

Other Tasks:
We need certain pieces of information in order to perform each maintenance task. What's the best way to organize these pieces of information for those helping, and can they all fit on one page:


 * What the problem is
 * How to fix it
 * How it's reported
 * The policies relating to the topic
 * what else is important to know???

janellv 22:48, 22 November 2010 (UTC)  (plus ongoing editing....)

Organizational thoughts - Currently when you click on a Type, you get the policies relating to that section. I wonder if in the Maintenance "area" (each page with the "Maintenance" table on it, plus the reports themselves) it could relate specifically to why these are problems and be more direct about how to clean them up. For example, on each main Type page, each task could have a small section where there would be one link out to the policies/help pages and another link out to the report itself that would include how to fix the issue and how to report the problem. Thoughts?

This would require some restructuring, the main problem being the special pages since I'm not sure how difficult it would be to put actual instructions on those pages. But it would be nice if the sections mirrored each other and were a little more direct.

janellv 05:48, 27 November 2010 (UTC)


 * Hi Janell, I agree that the help/guidance for these tasks need to be improved. The idea that you outline, having this main FamilySearch Wiki:Maintenance article with links to the sub-tasks FamilySearch Wiki:Cleanup, FamilySearch Wiki:Categorization, FamilySearch Wiki:Stub, FamilySearch Wiki:Redirects and FamilySearch Wiki:Deletion guidelines for administrators which include more detailed information about the task, I feel is the way to go. We also need to add some brief descriptions on the related category pages (if applicable), but I feel these should only be a summary and should include a link to the relevant FamilySearch Wiki: page which can be can include an expansive explanation.
 * Your four questions will be are a good measure to find where the current pages are not the best they could be. If the current page does not answer one of these questions it should be amended so that it does.
 * As you highlight the exceptions are the Special pages as these are system generated and do not use categories. These are built in reports, part of the main software that runs the wiki. If they can be tailored, I believe the engineers would be reluctant as it would affect the ability to upgrade the software in the future. Most of these report can be used to support one of the sub-tasks. The one area that had't been included was FamilySearch Wiki:Patrolling. I think this sub-task could also be expanded to looking out for Special:LonelyPages, Special:DeadendPages and Special:LongPages. Maybe also some of the items currently under FamilySearch Wiki:Cleanup are more FamilySearch Wiki:Patrolling issues? Have a look how Wikipedia has organised themselves.
 * I am all for more directness. --Steve 16:25, 27 November 2010 (UTC)

New Proposal for Maintenance Page Tables
At last! After evaluating all of the maintenance items with a few others, we are proposing replacing the maintenance table on the main screen with the following tables, then more work on the subsequent pages to follow. Thoughts? janellv 17:04, 1 January 2011 (UTC)

Administrative Maintenance
**These reports are lists of pages that meet a specific criteria; they don't mean that there is necessarily a problem with all the pages in the report and don't need to be "cleaned up."

Where to go from here
What I would like to do next is create some Maintenance specific pages in the wiki for each section. (Not the main sections of General, Content, and Administrative, but each sub-section of "General Cleanup," "Redirects", etc.) The page names would be something like "FamilySearch Wiki:Maintenance/General Cleanup" and "FamilySearch Wiki:Maintenance/Redirects," etc. On each of those pages would be specific instructions on how to do the maintenance work, plus links out to the other pages that are helpful in understanding each concept. So rather than linking to the pages that the Cleanup/Categorization/Stubs/etc. links go to right now, they would go to a Maintenance specific page first, and then link out to that page with additional info.

The reason for this is that as I tried to train others on how to do these tasks, they had a hard time sorting through all the information for what they needed to perform the maintenance task. So I am hoping that a little bit of a reorg will help.

How does that sound? And if this is the direction to take (I will start probably creating the pages now but can always change course if this doesn't make sense), will the long skinny mainenance box still be needed? My first instinct was to say no, but...maybe it still is. If so, we can update it with all the new sections and links. I know it is on the FamilySearch Wiki pages about each topic, so maybe it's still needed there? Whereas the full maintenance tables will just be on the maintenance specific pages.....

My main concern about keeping both is that the skinny one is going to end up being reeeeaaally long with all the new links, but maybe that's not the end of the world? I do think though that it would be taken off the main maintenance page as I don't think both tables are needed on the same page. Thoughts? Is this all going too far here...? janellv 04:34, 19 January 2011 (UTC)