Help:Gardening

A wiki is like a garden and individual pages and articles are like the plants in the garden. If the garden is not prepared and kept in good working order, no single plant can succeed. The same applies to wikis. The best article in the world cannot sustain itself within a wiki if the wiki as a whole isn't cared for.

Gardening involves an active participation of all editors in the caring Saintapedia's content.

We, therefore, lovingly refer to anyone who has the proclivity, initiative, desire, and ability to care for a wiki (in whatever form) as a "Gardener". This page is dedicated to the Gardeners of Saintapedia and provides a location where gardeners can identify and coordinate their actions.

Any editor can become a gardener.

Key characteristics of gardeners:

Work on more than one page
Seeks out information to fix errors or omissions in articles they didn't create
Leaves comments on talk pages
Helps users improve their pages by appropriate use of templates, wiki links, naming conventions and the like.
Look at Recent Changes
Attempts to connect articles together using {{Navbox}}es, Categories, and Wikification
Merges duplicate articles
Seeks to continually improve their understanding of the wiki infrastructure from the overall wiki interface to templates, categories, and files.

Quick tasks (under 1 minute)

File:Double redirect.mp4

Fixing a double redirect

Double redirects

Double redirects are pages which redirect to other redirect pages. To fix a double redirect:

1. Review the list of Double redirects

2. Pick a double redirect to fix (see example below)

Version history (edit) →‎ Help:Version history →‎ Help:Article history

3. Copy the name of the final page to the right

In our example, the would be Help:Article history

4. Click on the "(edit)" link after the left most item

In our example, Version history (edit)

5. Paste the name of the final in between the [[ ]]

In our example, you would change #Redirect [[Voluntary Leave Transfer]] to #Redirect [[Voluntary Leave Transfer]]

6. In the Edit summary, say "fixed double redirect."

7. Return to step 1, as your time permits, to fix other double redirects

Create a redirect

ensuring different variants of a name (plural, capitalization, etc.) all point to the same location
Common misspellings
alternative terms
improving the chance that when someone uses the search box, they will find a relevant article

Creation

Redirects can be created, on new or existing pages, in two ways:

using Visual editor
in enhanced editor
- with the Editing toolbar's Advanced Tools
- manually (see below)

#Redirect [[page name you want to redirect to]]

Example:

The TOC page redirects visitors to the Help:Table of contents page.
When a visitor goes to the TOC page, there are instructions at the top of the page to automatically send visitors to the Help:Table of contents page instead. Those instructions are #Redirect [[Help:Table of contents]].
When the visitor arrives at the Help:Table of contents page via the TOC redirect, they will see "(Redirected from TOC)" under the page title.

Add categories to Uncategorized Files

Per Saintapedia file guidelines, each file on Saintapedia should have at least one category assigned to it. However, compliance on this front is limited. Many of the files on Saintapedia need categories added.

To add categories to files:

Go to the uncategorized files list.
Click on a file from the list.
Determine what main category the file belongs:
See if you can also identify a subcategory for each file from the list at the top of each Category list. For PDF and Microsoft Office files, you will probably need to click the file icon to see what is in the file before you can figure out its sub-category.
On the file's page in Saintapedia, click the Edit tab, just as if you were editing a regular Saintapedia article
Add one or more categories using the format [[Category:<category name>]]. S

About a minute

Add an acronym

Acronyms needed adding
Go to the Acronyms page. If an article exists, check if the redirect has been created. If not, please create the redirect.

Respond to a talk page

Respond to a talk page

Wikify

Wikify refers to adding "internal links" to articles, which helps integrate the article into the whole of Saintapedia. Some of the places to start include:

Any page you are viewing that you feel should have a link
A Random page
Dead end page that does not link to other pages in Saintapedia

File:Wikify.mp4

New pages

Review list of New Pages by:

Look for redundancy with existing articles
Ensure titles comply with naming conventions.
Help connect these articles with other articles and add links to these pages from other appropriate articles
Where applicable, add one or more navigation boxes to the bottom of the page.
Add categories
- Note that making sure navigation boxes that are going to be added to many pages are categorized might be a quick way to get lots of uncategorized pages categorized.

Recent changes

Look over recent comments on Talk pages and provide your input on the situation.

Under 5 minutes

Merge articles

Main page: Help:Merging

Merge two articles
Merging one article into another

Stub

Expand a stub
Create a page, even a stub page, from the list of:
- wanted pages
- redirects to non-existing pages

Short pages

Expand a short page.

Long pages

Long pages - Look for content that can be broken out into its own page and other ways to shorten the page.

Orphaned pages

Add a link to an Orphaned page on another related Saintapedia page.
Review Recent Changes, especially look a edits of users who have not yet created their User page.

High use pages

Admin

Review:

Articles marked to be deleted
Files marked to be renamed

Table of Tasks

Task	General Description of what is needed
Welcoming committee	Email a new user after they create an account. Add to the log of emailed new users after you email them.
Patrol the Special:NewPages	Does the article follow our Saintapedia:Naming conventions? Take a look at the article...does it have wiki links? If not, add some. Does it generally follow good wiki article practices (an opening summary, then sections, logos/images on the right)? If not, consider working with the original author to move it in that direction.
Avoiding redirects	When you notice a wiki link that takes you to a page via a Redirect, go back and fix the wiki link so it sends the user directly to the page instead of via the redirect.
Wanted Pages	Use the Wanted Pages special page to identify non-existent pages that have the most inbound links and start a short stub article. Try to source your material.
Search	Use search list as a guide for ensuring most searched for terms have pages.
Dead-End Pages	Connect Dead-end pages to other pages.
Merge Pages	Watch Category:All articles to be merged and assist in merges if no one offers any objections in the discussion.

Gardening Templates

See Saintapedia:Maintenance for a listing of templates.

Other definitions

For a slightly humorous look at the role of gardening on a wiki, see Wikipedia's page called: Wikipedia:WikiGnome .
Socialtext's wiki gardening tips

Related Task Pages

Lists of common misspellings

Copied from Gardener's Dashboard

Pages that Need Wikification

To learn more about this topic, see: Wikification

Dead-end pages do not link to other pages in Saintapedia.
Orphaned pages are not linked from or transcluded into other pages in Saintapedia.

Checking recent changes

There are a few Gardeners should look for when checking Recent Changes:

Review the edits of users who have not yet created their User page.
If someone has not created their user page, suggest in their user page's talk page, that they create their user page

Special Pages

Recent Talk

Template:Saintapedia