Wikispooks:To Do

This page is for Wikispooks editors - readers are directed to the Wikispooks:FAQ page.

How to find information?

The internet is the source of ~99% of the information for this project. Books or other verifiable sources are acceptable, but are not as convenient as online resources. Remember that Google has a subtle censorship policy, so you are certainly not recommended to use it as your sole search engine. Familiarising yourself with a variety of search engines is recommended.

For help on how to edit a page and how to do proper formatting, see:

Full article: Help:Editing pages

Projects

Full article: Wikispooks:Projects

Wikispooks has a number of ongoing projects, on which several editors are collaborating. Joining such a project is a simple way to pick up good practice.

New pages to create

A simple way to contribute to this site is to create a new page:

Your Own Topic

It's easy to start a new page - you just need to choose a title. If you're an experienced researcher, you won't need telling where to edit. Any page where you have opinions which are politically unwelcome on Wikipedia is likely to be a good topic, especially if you have specialist knowledge. Be bold! Starting a page is the best way to get help from other editors, who will pitch in and contribute what they can. Choose a title for the page and then enter it in to the URL (or make a link to it and then follow the link). As above, then click on 'Create page'.

Broken Links

Browsing the site you'll sometimes see a link in red, which is a warning that it links to a page which hasn't been made yet. For example, there's nothing here yet about Nothing. To start a page like this, first click the link and then click on 'Create page'. A fast way to find broken links is to see this list of wanted pages.

Existing pages to edit

A Wikispooks style has gradually evolved since its launch in 2010. Many pages still need updating to reflect the improved technology now used on the site. Most of the following page sections, in particular, could probably do with replacement:

"See Also" - Instead of just listing these, it is usually better style to link these in from the text, explaining their relevance. The documents, in particular, will appear on the page automatically by adding the page title as one of the document's subjects. (See Template:Document for more on this)
"Affiliations" - Instead of just listing people memberships and loyalties, it is better to express these in the text itself, or by assigning them jobs which clarify the nature of these affiliations.
"External Links" - Most of these would be better replaced by links (with<ref> links explaining their relevance)

Your User Page

Each Wikispooks user has a User page - i.e. a page specially for them to write as much (or as little) as they like about themselves - or anything else. Unless you modified it, your user page will only have the short bio you sent when you made a login. Rating a document, writing more about yourself or uploading a photo could be a good way to get to know other users.

Recent Changes

One of the best ways to encourage your fellow Wikispooks editors is to improve the pages they are working on — even if it's something as simple as fixing a recent typo of theirs. The Recent changes link on the left shows you the most recently worked on pages.

New Pages

The list of new pages shows all the pages created in the last 7 days. Many of these will commonly be Category:Stubs.

5 Templates with Problems

Wikispooks has a list of templates which are not working properly. These are all in active use, so would be a great help to the site if you can fix templates.

20 Pages which are Too Shallow

If you know an area well, see the list of pages which are too shallow - these pages may have good information on them, but lack a deep political perspective.

19 Untidy Pages

If would like to help tidy up, whether you're a re-organiser or a proof reader, see the list of untidy pages - pages which have good information on them, but for one reason or another do not present it well.

47 Priority Pages

Wikispooks has a list of priority pages - pages which relate to deep politics and those with a high search engine ranking. Contributions on these pages are particularly welcome.

Pages to add data to

It you're looking for a small job which could be done in a couple of minutes, there are plenty of tasks other than working on complete articles:

3 Pages with unsourced text

Wikispooks has a list of pages with unsourced text. It is important to give 3rd parties correct attribution for their text.

76 Documents of unspecified Type

Some of the documents on Wikispooks do not have a document type. It doesn't take long to decide which documentType is appropriate for most of the Category:Untyped Documents.

34 Subjectless Documents

Some of the documents on Wikispooks do not have any specified subjects, so are excluded from cross referencing elsewhere on Wikispooks. The subject should be a comma separated list of Wikispooks pagenames (whether or not they yet exist). See Category:Subjectless Documents for a list of such pages.

942 Pages missing Descriptions

Each page on Wikispooks should have a description, the box containing the summary paragraph at the top. However, many still lack a description. Here is a list of Category:Undescribed Pages.

1 Page with an overlong description

Each description should be less than 500 characters. This is a category for pages with overlong descriptions.

680 Pages with unsourced statements

Some pages on Wikispooks contain assertions of contentious facts without a suitable references. See this category for those pages in which this is flagged up by template:CN.

239 Missing Images

Many pages on Wikispooks have no images at all. Uploading images is pretty straightforward, and is a good way to increase the clarity and appeal of articles. Most of the Category:Pages with broken file links are missing images.

215 Unsourced Documents

Some of the documents on Wikispooks are from unknown sources. Judicious use of a serch engine could quite likely turn up sources for most of the Category:Unsourced Documents.

Pages needing serious attention

30 Unclear Pages

Some pages are marked as needing clarification on particular points. See the list of unclear pages for such.

3 Problem Pages

Some pages have more serious problems. See the list of problem pages for pages which have serious problems of bias, gaps etc.

49 Pages with hardcoded data tables and lists

Some pages on Wikispooks still contain hardcoded data tables or lists of items that would be more functional if replaced by dynamically generated tables that were created from SMW data. See Category:Pages with hardcoded data tables and lists for a list.