BoyWiki:Scribe handbook
From BoyWiki
As a Scribe, you are someone who has made significant contributions to BoyWiki which have not gone unnoticed. Because of the responsibility you have demonstrated in your time here, the you have been given special recognition in the user list and extra tools to help you manage articles.
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Duties
Scribes are not members of the BoyWiki Council and are therefore not responsible for any extra duties like Curators are. However, because Scribes are chosen from people who have taken an interest in BoyWiki and shown initiative beyond that of a casual user, they are granted extra userrights to allow them to more easily take a proactive role. These extra privileges are the ability to rename (move) articles, protect and unprotect articles from user editing, and the ability to automatically roll back a vandal's changes to an article. The following sections are adapted from the Curator handbook to give you an idea of standard practice.
Patrolling articles
Scribes do not have the ability to view which articles have been patrolled and which have not. But the following sections may be helpful in knowing when to edit content and when to contact a Curator for assistance in purging an entry from the database.
Inappropriate contributions
If a change to an article is inappropriate for some reason, check the article's history to see if it has been modified since then. If a user has removed the inappropriate content, then lesser infractions may remain in the database. Edit the article and remove the offending material.
Greater infractions, on the other hand, may not stay and are required to be removed from the database. If the content has not been removed by another user, please edit the article to remove the infringing content and contact a Curator by email immediately, giving a link to the infringing revision(s) from the article history page.
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Dealing with vandalism
Vandalism is any change to a page that hinders the usefulness of BoyWiki. This can take many forms, from inserting false information into articles to replacing articles with nonsense, inserting content to break an article's visible layout, or repeatedly editing articles in such a manner as to reduce the usefulness of the article history or the recent changes page.
If vandalism is recent or ongoing, you may wish to temporarily protect the article until you can go through the article history and find a suitable point to revert to.
If a single user has vandalized a large number of articles, you should follow the link to his user page and follow the "User contributions" link in the toolbox. This will list his latest contributions to the wiki. For all articles where he has made the latest contribution, you can click the "rollback" link to revert that article to the state it was before he made any contributions.
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Managing articles
Scribes should be mindful of taking care of BoyWiki and help make articles are easy to find. There are a variety of tools available to help bring order to the natural chaos of a wiki. It is important for Scribes to use the edit summary field to explain the changes they made, so that users will have a sign that such housekeeping is necessary.
Normalizing articles
It is important that articles have proper article names. By enforcing standard naming conventions, we make articles easier to find and link to. If an article is not properly named, it should be renamed using the move tool. Such conventions as lowercase words in article names and section titles are important, and sections such as See Also should be renamed See also and so forth. Renaming an article will create a redirect page under the original name. It may be useful to leave the redirect if there is a common misspelling or capitalization mismatch. But it may also be useful to delete the redirect so users can note that a term is misspelled.
Scribes can occasionally check the list of broken redirects and double redirects to see if articles with redirects need to be repaired.
Categorizing articles
MediaWiki automagically reads links to categories and files the article under the linked category. Articles can be linked to more than one category simply by adding extra category links. If an article is uncategorized or miscategorized, then category links should be added or changed as appropriate.
Many times, it is not easy to choose a category for an article. In such cases, the tone of the article may be useful in deciding whether it belongs under Category:Encyclopedia or elsewhere. There is, however, no reason an article can't belong to many categories at the same time.
Dealing with highly subjective articles
In the main namespace, Category:Encyclopedia and Category:Entertainment are primarily meant for informative articles rather than subjective articles (unlike Category:Life, where such are often more appropriate). The most common instance of subjective articles being inappropriate for a category will probably be personal movie reviews. Reviews and other subjective articles are useful, but in the main namespace they take away article names which could be used for objective informative articles.
Any article written in the first person or which is signed is a candidate for movement to the User namespace. When appropriate, this can be done by moving the article and prefixing the page name with User:Author's_username/. Articles moved for this reason do not need to be recategorized.
In other cases where an article is not intentionally written as a review or opinion piece but is merely biased, the article should be allowed to stand. Other users can help edit the article to make it more balanced.
Protecting articles
Protecting articles takes away the ability for normal users (but not Curators or Scribes) to make changes. Therefore it is the ideal first step during realtime vandalism or edit wars, but should be used sparingly and articles should be unprotected as soon as possible.
Articles can be protected after repeated vandalism to give the vandal a couple days to become bored and move on. Protection can also be used to end edit wars and force disagreeing users to start discussions on an article's talk page.
To protect an article, visit it and click the “Protect” link. Give an explanation for why the article is being protected so users know what is expected before the article is unprotected again.
Important notice: With the ability to protect articles comes the ability to edit protected articles. Scribes are trusted to not edit the Main Page or any system messages in the MediaWiki namespace. Violating this trust may cause the removal of Scribe status.
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Working with users
While the nature of a wiki means that users have a vast amount of power and control, there are still features that are not granted to normal users. As experienced and trusted users, it is hoped that Scribes will work to assist users and Curators in their tasks as BoyWiki expands and evolves.
Leading by example
Despite the creation of the first wiki in March 1995, wikis have only recently seen a massive surge in popularity. Most users have had no prior experience with wikis, so it is important for Scribes to be a model of how we wish other users to act. When we act with understanding and are eager to help, users will be more likely to do the same once they discover that they have much of the same ability to help others as Scribes and Curators do.
Although the rest of this section deals mostly with handling user problems, you should always keep in mind that BoyWiki exists solely for the benefit of the community and users are the difference between a thriving, vibrant wiki and a lifeless, empty site.
Arbitrating disagreements
It is inevitable that certain topics will be the source of contention between users. In most cases, there is room for opposing viewpoints and opinions to be represented side-by-side. Users are supposed to use an article's talk page to discuss the direction of articles, but in cases where an edit war erupts or where agreement is not reached on the talk page, a Curator may be asked to step in to help arbitrate. Scribes may also attempt to persuade discussion on an article's talk page.
BoyWiki should strive to represent different views fairly with minimal bias. It your job to ensure that this happens in situations where users need assistance. You may be required to create a new revision of an article that gives space to unpopular viewpoints or restates a point of view objectively without loaded language. Try to express unpopular viewpoints with the same respect you would want your opinion to be given by others.
Handling edit wars
In cases where discussion has broken down or not occurred, edit wars can begin. This is where disagreeing users begin to change an article back and forth in contrary ways. If this is happening in rapidly in real time, the article should first be protected and then a note should be added to the top of the article with a link to the talk page. An appropriate amount of time should be allowed to pass for user discussion to occur on the talk page. Ideally, the users will come to an agreement amongst themselves. At that time, the article can be unprotected.
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Dealing with vandals
If a user has vandalized a large number of articles, you should follow the link to his user page and follow the "User contributions" link in the toolbox. This will list his latest contributions to the wiki. For all articles where he has made the latest contribution, you can click the "rollback" link to revert that article to the state it was before he made any contributions.
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