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Administering Wikiversity
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This is a learning project in which wiki editors can
learn how to be a Wikimedia sysop (wiki
administrator).
The topic of "how to be a Wikimedia sysop" is one which
engenders a great deal of emotion among some people, so please be
patient while this project develops, or if you need to blow off
steam, use the talk page. Thank you!
Introduction
Purpose
of this course
Newcomers to Wikimedia
Foundation wiki projects are often filled with enthusiasm at
the start and often feel they would like to contribute on the
administrative side as well as on the content creation side. The
openness of Wikimedia projects is inviting to newcomers. Back in
the early days of Wikipedia, rules and conventions were fewer
and the paths to full involvement shorter and easier. As time has
gone by, Wikipedia and some of its sister projects have become
awesome monoliths of bureaucracy (at least to the outside eye) and
it is much more difficult to become fully and deeply involved.
This development is really nothing different from what one sees
in other fields of knowledge and ability. In the ancient days of
computing, most programmers were self-taught and it didn't really
take a lot to become famous. These days you need several years of
carefully structured training even to get a modest income. Like it
or not, with Wikipedia at over 2 million articles and the #6
internet website by traffic, the days of training for
Wikipedia are here. All other fields of special abilities and
knowledge are like this, beginning with autodidacts and maturing
with educational programmes in which experience is accumulated and
passed on to maximize the efficiency and quality of each subsequent
generation.
The most obvious side of training is, of course, training
editors to be editors: e.g., how to
- make your first edit
- create bulleted and numbered lists
- sign your name
- use a template, etc.
- For more info, see w:Wikpedia:Editing
Wikiversity will, hopefully, develop a full
range of editing and sysop tutorials and become a place where other
Wikimedia Foundation projects send their
new editors.
Making someone an administrator can be a good thing, because it
gives them a greater stake in the project and may encourage them to
stay longer and contribute more (ignoring actual admin actions for
the moment). But it's also increasingly difficult to be a good
admin, as the Wikimedia projects become ever larger, older and more
complex.
Status of
this course
 |
Completion status: this resource is ~25%
complete. |
This course is optional! Nobody who wishes to be a
sysop or other functionary on any Wikimedia project should feel
that they have to take this course. Nor should you think that
taking this course somehow guarantees your later election. It is
entirely up to you to decide whether or not this course will
contribute towards your personal goals. This course does not confer
status - but it may transfer ability.
Constructive
criticism of this learning concept
There is a school of thought at Wikimedia which tries hard to
retain the original amateurishness of sysop status. People who
follow this school of thought may make comments such as "...is no
big deal" (implying anyone from off the street can do it) and will
find it hard to conceive of or accept how anyone could
train sysops. There are perhaps other schools of thought
with opinions about sysop status. As a part of this course,
representatives of these schools should be given an opportunity to
express their viewpoints.
What
makes a good sysop?
This is a rough sketch of the general areas which a sysop should
try to cover, one way or the other.
Human
resources
Content versus editors. A wiki may regard its content as a great
asset, but often its editors will be a greater asset, especially
where emphasis is laid on collaborative content creation. People
matter. Sysops don't have to be good with people, but if you
aren't, try to know this and stay away from the people-related
tasks. People-related tasks include:
-
- Orientating and having sympathy with newcomers
- Retaining, supporting and encouraging established editors
- Feeling out and developing consensus and expressing where you
think consensus lies
Technical
abilities
Knowing how the mediawiki software works and being a good
editor. Sysops don't have to be techies, but if you aren't, try to
recognize this and ask those who know better (make sure you know
who the technically good people are). Nonetheless, you should
probably master the most basic technical tasks, such as those
associated with recent changes patrolling, and make sure your core
editing skills are high. Techie tasks include:
- Knowing how the sysop tools work:
- Rollback: Be careful. Let's say that a user makes four edits to
one page, but only the last edit is vandalism. If you use rollback
it will remove all four edits by that user back to the last version
edited by someone else. In this case you would want to use Undo
instead. The other occasionally tricky thing with rollback is that
you're not really sure what the version you're returning to looks
like, and on rare occasions you might revert back to a version that
was vandalized already by another user (or even the same user if
they have a shifting IP). That's more often a problem on Wikipedia
than Wikiversity though... Wikipedia has a lot more vandals.
- Deleting
- Blocking
- Protecting: There are certain templates that are targets of
vandals, for instance inserting a crude message or image in
{{welcome}} Take a look at the log edit summary to get an idea of
how it has been used in the past. [1] A short protection might be
used if there is an edit war, but you would need to think about
that one carefully. Would it really cool off a heated argument or
make it worse? Protection may also have been used a couple times to
prevent recreating pages that were deleted as being outside the
scope of the wiki. Advertising, for example. Also, click on the
Protect tab and read the comments in the drop down box which are
some of the common reasons. Notice also that there are options like
Block New and Unregistered Users from editing which can be used to
prevent vandalism, while allowing existing users to continue
working on the page. You can also specify a short duration that is
longer than the attention span of a vandal.
- Templates
- Style sheets (the CSS things)
- Bots (a rare skill)
- System messages
Organisational skills
- Categorisation
- Tagging
- Archiving
- and other organisational issues
Hybrid
skills
Being both a people person and a techie is a difficult thing. If
you can combine them, it's good.
- Advising on the use of the wiki
- Recognizing the subtle differences between good and bad faith
edits and knowing how to deal with this in a manner which
strengthens rather than weakens community
Handling
vandalism and controversial/disruptive edits
- Communication options
- Key policies
- Good practices
- Not so good practices
- Possible actions:
- Administrative templates
- Undoing
- Reverting / rollback
- Deleting
- Protecting
- Blocking
- Oversight
Content
The general idea behind this course is that it should be an
active teaching and learning process with real interaction
between experienced and inexperienced users. Within their time
availability, the initial concept is that tutors will involve
students in regular learning and maintenance activities and provide
them with feedback on their performance.
Things you really
ought to know beforehand
If you are going to be a sysop on any Wikimedia or MediaWiki project, here are some things which
you really ought to know about, preferably already. It would be a
faux pas not to be capable in these areas. Find out
quickly and don't get caught with your trousers down.
- Transclusion and Substitution
- Templates
- The difference between consensus and majority rule
- Proper etiquette for
discussions, including:
- Signing properly
- Civility
- Not disrupting other people's posts by inserting content in the
middle
- Namespaces
- Image copyright
- Security: hacking into a sysop account is a prize attraction
for vandals and pretty well spells your wiki-death; try and use a
secure password. Some people didn't.
Things you should
tour, learn about and do
This is a beginning of a list of the "places" and "tasks" that a
probationary and/or relatively inexperienced custodian probably
should engage with - please expand or link to detailed info:
- Tools
- Blocking, deleting, protecting, rollback. Try the last 3 on
your own pages as a test; then try blocking yourself and see if you
can repair the damage. You'll notice you have a couple new buttons:
"protect" and "delete". Best way to experiment is create some pages
in your userspace and see how they function. On your watchlist and
recent changes you'll also notice 2 more options: edits can be
rolled back, and you have the option to block users. Try rolling
back your own edits somewhere, and maybe block yourself to see what
blocked users see when they try to edit (don't worry, you can
unblock yourself... you just can't edit while your block is in
place). Finally, have a look at Special:Log/delete. If you go to
one of the deleted pages, you'll see an option to view/undelete.
have a look at pages deleted recently to get an idea of what should
just be deleted.
- When to use the tools (which is mostly about knowing when
not to use them and knowing all the many
alternative courses of action which exist)
- Generating
dynamic content with MediaWiki
- Managing vandalism
- User page - some
ideas for sysop user pages - update your user page accordingly
- Sysop-related content for specific WMF sisterprojects:
- Local Project:Policy: Each sister project has its own local
policies, as well as each also subscribing to some overarching
Wikimedia Foundation policies. Familiarise yourself with these -
also check their talk pages to help anticipate related issues that
are likely to arise.
- There's nearly always custodians on our IRC chanel as well, if
you want to pop in!
Long-term
projects
This is currently a list of ideas. Feel free to expand.
- Creating tutorials for newcomer editors.
Sometimes would-be sysops are themselves still weak at their basic
wiki editing skills, and one of the best ways to perfect your own
skills is to pass them on to somebody else. By creating tutorials
for newcomers, students of this course not only contribute to
Wikiversity in practical terms, they also raise their own editing
skills to the level where they will be able to help and advise
newcomers in the future. Suggested tasks:
- Improve Help:Contents and Help:Wikitext quick reference
- Participating in and extending the maintenance
hub. The maintenance hub is a wide, varied list of
maintenance chores which can be performed at Wikiversity, and gives
students experience of the typical problems which arise in the
everyday administration of an active MediaWiki installation. Most
things which sysops do don't actually require "sysop status" and
can be practiced before becoming a probationary sysop.
- Discuss the future of Wikiversity. A good way
to learn about the present of a project is to face the challenge of
trying to help plan its future. See Wikiversity:Vision.
- Checking licences of uploaded files (mind you,
this could also go on the maintenance hub).
Short-term
projects
- Creating this How to be a Wikimedia
sysop project.
- Drawing up a religious content policy. WV has
increasingly become a target for fringe religious groups who clothe
their advocacy materials in various layers of educational intent.
How do we deal with this? Check the recent contributions of
McCormack and SB_Johnny to find materials with which to start
putting together a draft policy.
- Developing Advanced Wikiediting
Discussions
Discussions can sometimes be frustrating things where worn-out
issues arise again and again without any conclusion being reached.
On the other hand, engaging in them can be educational, in that one
learns about the issues rather than the solutions
which Wikimedia projects constantly face. Old hands may hate these
topics, but newcomers need to work through them all the same and
experienced users will need to tolerate and help with this process.
These discussion options are offered in the hope that participating
in them will be educational, not in the hope that agreement will
necessarily be reached.
- Big deal: are offices and privileges on Wikimedia projects a
"big deal" or not?
- Etiquette: suggests
some good practices for handling difficult situations on
Wikiversity.
- Models for adminship: has adminship on Wikipedia become a mere
fetish? has Wikimedia Commons found a better model?
- What is
consensus? - and how to reach consensus.
- Unwritten rules. User:Poetlister left the following comment
about "what makes a good sysop": "Each wiki has its culture,
often not explicitly written down but understood by regulars. Even
sysops on one wiki often make mistakes by failing to realise that
things may be different on other wikis." Should unwritten
rules be allowed, or is the job of the good sysop to ensure
transparency of operations?
People
involved
Current
tutors
It is proposed to have a clear division among participants
between tutors and students, where tutors are
experienced sysops and bureaucrats from Mediawiki (and especially
Wikimedia) projects. It is further proposed that there should be no
one-to-one relationship of tutor to student - a team-teaching
concept is preferred. This is different from mentorship of
custodian candidates, which is a one-to-one thing. In
team-teaching, all tutors are collectively involved with all
students.
McCormack- SB_Johnny
- Jtneill
- mikeu
Erkan Yilmaz
Current
students
New students can add themselves here. Use a *-list.
Salmon of Doubt 12:08, 13 September 2008
(UTC)-- Jtneill - Talk 14:20, 15 April 2008
(UTC) (completed)-- Terra 18:32, 21 April 2008
(UTC)--Gbaor 04:51, 26 May 2008 (UTC)
(completed)-- Thuvack |
talk | Blog 06:52, 29 August 2008
(UTC)Ottava Rima 05:14, 14 September 2008
(UTC)- Largo Largo 15:42, 9 November 2009 (UTC)
Graduated
students
Credits and externally recognized certificates are not awarded
for this course, but for those who have successfully participated,
the tutors will, in general, be willing to support a subsequent
admin or custodian request, citing the student's successful
participation. Please do not add yourself here - you will
be added by a tutor in the course of time.
- User:Jtneill has been certified by me as having successfully
participated in this project. User:Jtneill is further recommended
to become a tutor on this project. --McCormack 08:09, 9 May 2008
(UTC)
- User:Gbaor did a great job as well. --McCormack 06:51, 28
August 2008 (UTC)
Notes
sysop
terminology
At Wikiversity we call sysops or admins "custodians". This is an unusual
term, and as this course caters for projects all over Wikimedia
(and outside it as well), a more general term is preferred. In the
MediaWiki software itself, the internal programming term for the
status is sysop, which is therefore the term which will be
used in this course.
See also
Wikibooks
Wikipedia
- Wikipedia:Administrators
- Wikipedia:New admin school
Wikiversity
MediaWiki/Meta/Wikimedia
Miscellaneous
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