Just a brief report this month and a few updates. Between getting my CONly feet under me and a busy spring speech and debate schedule (I just finished off my fourth of nine consecutive weekend tournaments, Farrin knows my pain) it's been a bit quiet on the sweeping changes on the Wiki front this month. But, the day to day of the wiki work still goes on!

Staff Openings

Earlier this month Xolarin let me know that he was having to step away from the Brotherhood due to real life and other outside commitments. I'd like to thank him for his service, but his stepping away from the Wiki Staff is an oppertunity for the rest of you.

So, I come before you today to announce that there are two (not one!) attractive, new spots on the Wiki Staff that are now open for applications. These positions are an excellent way to develop skills and a portfolio of work that look great as you move forward in the Brotherhood, and can help spruce up medal or promo recommendations when your Clan leaders get down to writing them. Additionally, they're a good introduction into the task oriented side of the Brotherhood (the land of ACC Judges, Magistrates, etc) that isn't quite as rigorous as those other areas. It is, in essence, a great entry level post to get your foot in the door of Brotherhood leadership. Don't be scared by the job!

Some of the duties I’ll be specifically tasking new staffers with include, but are not limited to:

• Patrolling recent changes for wiki formatting and content concerns
• Monitoring the Mainteinence reports and updating as required
• Creating article content to archive Brotherhood event information
• Various long term projects

In addition to the above, I would like to bring a staffer in that is familiar with HTML/CSS/Wiki formatting in order to address the HTML replacement project referenced above. If you have those skills, be sure to let me know!

Applications will be open until Friday, February 17th. Please send an email to me with the subject "Wiki Staff Application" and outline your experience and any examples of your work (either on our wiki or elsewhere). I would prefer that applicants have passed at least the Wiki Basics course if not Wiki Editing as well, but exceptions to that will be made for the right candidate. There is no minimum rank requirement, but familiarity with the Brotherhood and the Wiki is a plus.

Wiki Projects

Two more projects ended up on this list since the last report, and Bentre finished them both off before this report was written. He is speed.

• Ship Audit/Canonizing: Lead - Selika. Auditing all past ships to either designate them as Legends content articles (with appropriate tags and categorization) or removal of Legends continuity info from those articles.
• Featured Article Audit: COMPLETE Lead - Laren. Auditing all currently listed Featured Articles for quality. This is primarily focused on going back and looking at the last ten years of Featured Articles to see which ones still up to FA standards. Those that do not will be categorized and identified by icon as former featured articles. This ensures that all articles contained within the featured article category will be examples of quality articles that can be modeled for new users.
• Construction Category Cleanup: COMPLETE Lead - Bentre. Reviewing all articles currently marked with the construction tag. Old articles that are partially complete will be marked as stubs, articles with little to no content (for example a character article with nothing more than an infobox) will be deleted, and current articles undergoing work or articles that are authored by currently active members that have seen edits more recently will remain marked as under construction. (Basically, there are over 500 articles marked as under construction, and it is my supposition that most of those articles are definitely not still "under construction".)
• Past Military Possessions Cleanup COMPLETE Lead - Bentre. Removal or updating of all red links from the Past Military Possessions Record page.
• Covenant Linking COMPLETE Lead - Bentre. Add all interwiki links necessary to the new Covenant. This makes sure that all information can be easily found by members to provide any needed context for Covenant content.
• HTML replacement: Lead - TBD. Many templates used across the wiki still use HTML formatting as opposed to Mediawiki markup. Those templates will be updated. Additionally, there are still pages on the wiki that date to the restoration of their content from Google caches after the wiki crash many years ago that still use HTML content. Those pages will also be updated to mediawiki markup.

Featured Articles & Wikipedian of the Month

This month’s featured article another quality character article: Tasha'Vel Versea. A good example of the utility of an article summary as well. Many articles really skimp on the summary section, while that section is a really good place to offer the "short version" of the article content. That is a useful tool both for those that are pressed for time when reading an article, but also to serve as a teaser for the rest of the article content.

As for our Wikipedian of the Month, I'm really left with only one option. Even the members of my staff can, on occasion, do work above and beyond their normal expectations. In addition to his normal patrolling, Bentre completed the project I'd assigned him at the beginning of the month well before it was due AND two other projects I assigned him later all within the month of January. He is, it goes without saying, our standout on the wiki this month.

Final Words

Monthly Reminder: The wiki staff as a whole is always here to give you a hand with wiki questions. Hit us up on telegram (many of us are on there often/always/too much), and even if the staffer you catch doesn’t know the answer they’ll track me down and make sure you get an answer. We’re there to help you guys out, so don’t hesitate!