Welcome to my first ever report as Wiki Tribune! This report is about a week late, but going forward you should be seeing a monthly report from me at the beginning of the month. This coincides with a couple of things turning over each month on the wiki itself, so it seems like a good a time as any.

Also, thanks go out to Jeric for creating my report header as well as updating my dividers below. They are very pretty. Now, onto the report, shall we?

Featured Article and Wikipedians of the Month

As is tradition around here, every month we would choose an article that can basically be summed up as “a really really good article.” It must be strong both in technical terms, and in content. The April Featured Article is Salbecca created by, well, Salbecca.

Also, we generally award the person who was seen as the most active on the wiki for that month. That is something I have changed starting in April and going forward. The wiki is an extremely useful and important tool for this club. As such, I really want to award those who go above-and-beyond in terms of what they do for the wiki. As such, I have chosen multiple people for the honour of Wikipedians of the Month. This month we have Sir Bend-a-Lot, Meleu, V’yr and Liam.

I will limit myself to how many people get the honour each month (probably to 5 max), but I will be allowing repeat winners. What do I look for when awarding this? Well, it’s a combination of a few factors. First, I want to see real content added to the wiki. It doesn’t have to be brand new pages, but I do want to see a good amount of new content added in general. Second, I want to see article maintenance. I try to catch newer items, but there’s a lot of old articles out there that could probably use some dusting off, or just need a few tweaks done to it. Third, you must do the above items on a regular basis over the course of the month.

Wait, I have to do stuff now?

So, formal introductions. Hi, I’m Halc! If you don’t know me yet you can look at my wiki page or visit my dossier and bask in all that is green and good.

As for what I’ll be doing around here, my main focus is on basically maintaining the wiki. Myself, and the rest of my staff, are constantly looking at all of the new updates and fixing or tweaking anything that is out of place. Our main job is to help all of you in ensuring that, at least on a technical level, your page looks and acts properly. We also make sure that all of the various items are categorized properly, and smite the dreaded redlinks as they come up. Basically, we enforce the general standards of the wiki so that the information it provides can be accessed readily and legibly.

In terms of content-checking, that is not an area that we will be focusing on too much for the time being. Due to all of the changes that will be occurring once all the movies are out, I don’t think it’s a great use of our time to be too detail-oriented into make sure content conforms to the current SW canon. However, in consultation with the Voice, we will be commenting on articles that stray too far from the current canon. And, we will always be on the lookout for OOC articles, to make sure they conform to general DB standards and guidelines.

Last, but certainly not least, I basically “approve” character articles for those below DJK so that they can get that little check on their records that will help them get promoted to DJK. This simple checklist is really what you need to follow to ensure your page meets the minimum standards. If you have any questions about how your article is progressing, just shoot me an e-mail and ask. If you want an article approved, then e-mail is also the preferred method. Link me to the article and I’ll take a look at it and either say it’s good to go, or let you know what’s missing.

The Road Ahead

Now that I’m getting a handle on the general wiki activities, it’s time to start focusing on getting a few things cleared up around the office. One of my main goals as T:Wiki is to organize and clean up the wiki as much as I can so that when the eventual fictional shift occurs due to the movies we can easily move and rearrange articles in a simple and straight-forward manner.

To that end, a big focus for us will be on creating and updating various resources to help teach people how to use the wiki properly. We currently have the Wiki Basics and Wiki Editing courses. Both are still very much relevant, but they could use some cleaning up, as well as perhaps an expansion on the content they provide (which may or may not mean a few more courses as well).

On top of that we have a number of guides, which also need to be cleaned out and updated. Odan-Urr has been really good lately at getting their own articles updated, and they created a pretty good editing policy for their Clan to utilize. The idea of a simple, straight-forward page detailing the basic standards of the wiki is very enticing and something we may also create for the DB as a whole. While we want to allow people as much room to be creative, the wiki is also a vehicle for information, and that information needs to be displayed in a way that is standardized from article to article.

Odds and Ends

I am looking at perhaps starting a series of monthly competitions for the wiki. These would be similar to the competitions we had during the various Vendettas where we asked you to create a wiki page. In this case it would be more like update or finish a page that currently exists. Does that interest people and/or get their creative juices flowing?

Also, in terms of staff, I am not looking for anyone (yet). The current staff is working very well, but I’m not sure if I need anyone else to help on the various projects above. I should have a much better idea by my next report, so be on the lookout then!

Wiki Tip of the Month

So, I’m hoping this becomes a regular feature in my reports (basically if I remember). Since I’m already looking at all the edits each month, it because fairly simple to see a pattern forming around certain areas of the wiki that people are having issues with. This month? Images! When uploading an image there are a few things you need to remember to add. All images need to be categorized (the the previous link shows you all the current categories) as well as either be Fairuse or Creative Commons.

Many images, especially character images, have multiple categories. For example, a character images would go into the Characters category and may also go into the Humans category, or one of the other race-based categories, depending on what the character is. Also, if it’s just an image of the head, then it should go into Head Shots. So, just remember to categorize those images when you’re uploading them!

That’s All Folks

This report is probably much longer than my normal reports will be. If you have any questions or comments, feel free to bug me on IRC or by e-mail. I prefer e-mail personally, but if it’s something quick then IRC works fine as well.