Maintenance work is a vital part of keeping Wikipedia running optimally. Most of these tasks can be done by any user. Below are administrative pages used for the maintenance of the English Wikipedia project, including; cleanup pages, maintenance reports, to–do lists, information pages, and related collaboration groups. For a list of jobs and tasks to be completed that is easy to understand, there is the Task Center. Maintenance tasks of the most pressing importance can be found at the Backlog page. (See open–tasks and backlog below.) New to Wikipedia? See the contributing to Wikipedia page for everything you need to know to get started.
Things to watch out for
Editors are entrusted with the responsibility of upholding the integrity of Wikipedia while adhering to intellectual property rights, such as avoiding plagiarism, respecting copyright laws, and presenting appropriate citations for article content. Particular care should be observed when adding information about living persons to any Wikipedia page. Wikipedia should not be used as platform for activism, recruitment, promotion, advertising, announcements, or other forms of advocacy.
Copyright violations
Editors interested in identifying and resolving copyright violations may enjoy CopyPatrol, a tool from Community Tech. Handling of suspected violations of copyright policy depends on the particulars of a given case. If you suspect a copyright violation but are uncertain if the content is copyrighted or whether the external site is copying from Wikipedia, you should at least bring up the issue on that page's discussion page, if it is active. In that case, please tag the page {{copypaste|url=insert URL here, if known}}, unless your concerns are swiftly resolved. Others can then examine the situation and take action if needed. The most helpful piece of information you can provide is a URL or other reference to what you believe may be the source of the text. You may also make a note of your concerns at Wikipedia talk:Copyright problems.
If you have strong reason to suspect a violation of copyright policy and some, but not all, of the content of a page appears to be a copyright infringement, then the infringing content should be removed, and a note to that effect should be made on the discussion page, along with the original source, if known. {{subst:Cclean|url=insert URL or description of source here (optional)}} has been created for this.
See Wikipedia:WikiProject Copyright Cleanup for details.
Vandalism
Upon discovering vandalism, revert such edits, using the undo function or an anti-vandalism tool. Once the vandalism is undone, you should warn the vandalizing editor. Notify administrators at the vandalism noticeboard of editors who continue to vandalize despite warnings, and administrators should intervene to preserve content and prevent further disruption by blocking such editors. Users whose main or sole purpose is clearly vandalism may be blocked indefinitely without warning. See Wikipedia:Counter-Vandalism Unit and Wikipedia:Recent changes patrol
To make vandalism reverts easier you can ask for the rollback feature to be enabled for your registered Wikipedia account. This feature is only for reverting vandalism and other obvious disruption, and lets you revert several recent edits with a single click. See Wikipedia:Requests for permissions.
New pages
Identify new articles which do not meet the criteria for inclusion and/or to tag them for any glaring issues that need attention. Most critical are copyright violations and defamatory material about living persons, followed closely by pages whose creators seek to exploit our voluntary work for financial gain. Reviewing new pages needs a thorough knowledge of deletion and notability guidelines. See Wikipedia:Page Curation/Help for details.
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 articles for deletion. The boilerplate text on the article should be changed from {{notenglish}} to {{subst:afd}}.
Discussions
Contribute your opinions to WP:noticeboards in order to have a say in decisions and help come to consensus on certain issues. Posting a message to a noticeboard can also be an appropriate early step in resolving disputes on Wikipedia. Noticeboards are best used for simple and urgent matters. There are many pages in Category:Wikipedia dispute resolution which could use help in resolving various kinds of disputes. If an editor needs a more complex response, and is willing to wait for it, the WP:Requests for comment process may be more suitable.
The Dashboard provides an overview of the various discussions and requests taking place throughout English Wikipedia.
People seeking help
Even new users can help answer factual questions on the Wikipedia:Reference desk, which serves the same purpose as a reference desk you might find in your local library. (You might also think of it as the Wikipedia version of Yahoo Answers or Windows Live QnA.) You do not have to be an expert on Wikipedia because:
- You can help people find answers in existing Wikipedia articles.
- If you know the answer to a question not answered by Wikipedia, you can assist the questioner and at the same time, add that information to Wikipedia for the benefit of future readers.
- If you do not know the answer to an interesting question, you can research it in non-Wikipedia sources, and then improve Wikipedia for the benefit of the questioner and future readers.
If you already have some experience, your assistance in one of the many Wikipedia help forums, including Wikipedia:Help desk and Wikipedia:Teahouse, would be a valuable contribution. See also, Category:Wikipedians looking for help.
New editors
Welcoming people using one of the standard user greetings is a great way to send a positive vibe. New users can be found by looking for red talk page links on recent changes or by querying the database or check Wikipedia's account creation log. You can go to Wikipedia:Welcoming committee/Welcome templates for a full list of welcome templates, or to Wikipedia:Welcoming committee/Welcome templates/Table for a visual gallery of welcome messages. The two most commonly used are {{subst:Welcome}} and {{subst:W-graphical}}. See also Wikipedia:WikiProject Editor Retention.
Programming errors
The technical section of the village pump is used to discuss technical issues about Wikipedia. Bug reports and feature requests should be made in Phabricator (see how to report a bug). Bugs with security implications should be reported differently (see how to report security bugs). For the technical workings of Wikipedia, including software and hardware, see Wikipedia:FAQ/Technical for details.
- Wikipedia:Bots/Requests for approval
- Wikipedia:Bot requests
- Reporting software bugs
- meta:Toolserver/Reports
Finding things to do
Helpful editorial maintenance tasks include: reviewing new pages, creating requested articles, responding to edit requests, fixing spelling and grammar errors, and assisting with translation requests. Other essential maintenance tasks include: fixing unreferenced statements, fixing original research, fixing vandalism, integrating articles into the encyclopedia, welcoming newcomers, link recovery, categorization, and numerous behind the scenes tasks like moving free images to Wikimedia Commons and helping others.
| Special pages (maintenance) | Information |
|---|---|
| Broken redirects | |
| Dead-end pages | Dead-end pages |
| Dormant pages | Dusty articles |
| DoubleRedirects | Double redirects |
| Lonely pages | Orphaned articles |
| Long pages | |
| New pages | New page patrol |
| New pages feed | Page curation |
| Protected pages | Protection policy |
| Short pages | |
| Uncategorized | Categorization |
| Uncategorized cats | |
| Uncategorized templates | |
| Unused categories | |
| Unused files (images) | |
| Unused templates | |
| Without interwiki links | |
| Most interwiki links | |
| WantedPages | |
| Most-wanted articles | |
| See also: Maintenance departments |
- Overviews
- Task Center – the place to find out how and where.
- Wikipedia:Community portal/Opentask – simple list of article maintenance tasks.
- Wikipedia:Dashboard – for a listing of ongoing discussions and current requests.
- Wikipedia:Backlog – all articles needing cleanup.
- Lists
- Wikipedia:Database reports – various maintenance tasks.
- Cleanup listings by WikiProject - pick a topic, then pick an article with a specific type of problem
- Template:Category tracker – various maintenance backlogs.
- Special:Specialpages – various maintenance reports.
- Special:Recentchanges – patrol for vandals and other bad edit and for welcoming newcomers.
- New pages – patrol for vandals and redundancy with existing articles
- New Pages Feed – an improved way to review new pages. See Page Curation Help
- CopyPatrol – for identifying and resolving copyright violations.
- Wikipedia:Requested articles – all articles waiting to be created.
- Wikipedia:WikiProject Council/Directory/Wikipedia – directory of WikiProjects that deal with maintenance systems.
- Category:Wikipedia maintenance – the parent category.
- Account Creation - to help with new account requests.
Maintenance and collaboration resources
See Maintenance WikiProjects for a complete list of WikiProjects that deal with Wikipedia's maintenance systems.
Open–tasks and backlog
You can help improve the articles listed below! This list updates frequently, so check back here for more tasks to try. (See Wikipedia:Task Center for brief guides.)
Help counter systemic bias by creating new articles on important women.
Help improve popular pages, especially those of low quality.
This week's article for improvement is:
Previous selections: Recreation room · Mixed climbing · Name
Click any linked number for that category's articles prioritized by their number of incoming links.
Maintenance category tree
| To display all subcategories click on the "►": |
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See also
- The monster under the rug – a Wikipedia Signpost opinion piece on the ever-increasing backlogs (2011).
- Wikipedia:Tools– various tools and tutorials intended to simplify, make more efficient, or provide additional functionality to Wikipedians.
- Wikipedia:Statistics – analysis of wiki metrics like edits, page creation, visits and links. In the form of lists, tables and rankings.
- Wikipedia:Awards – reward vigorous Wikipedia contributors for their hard work and due diligence by awarding them a fitting barnstar, or other award.
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