OrthodoxWiki:Administrators

This is a general discussion page for OrthodoxWiki Administrators to work out various administrative issues, notes, and to-do lists. Our host and first-among-sysops is FrJohn.

• For the sake of grabbing attention with new notices, it's probably best to put new subjects at the top of this page after the "Useful Admin links."
• If you are not an administrator and would like to leave a note for the admins to see, please put it on the Talk page.
• For a who's who, see Category:Sysops and Special:Listusers/sysop.

Useful Admin links

• OrthodoxWiki Yahoo Group - Low-volume closed discussion for OrthodoxWiki sysops. If you qualify, please sign up!
• OrthodoxWiki:Protected page guidelines
• Special:Protectedpages - lists protected pages
• OrthodoxWiki:Copyright problems
• Special:Listadmins
• Special:Listusers

OrthodoxSource

In case you haven't been over to OrthodoxSource lately, we can now login there with our OW logins. A category structure needs to be worked on, as well as some basic documents to get things up and running well there, based primarily on existing category structures here on OrthodoxWiki. Obviously, not everything will map the same, but we don't want to reinvent the wheel any more than need be. —Fr. Andrew ^talk contribs (THINK!) 02:51, June 19, 2008 (UTC)

Category Sitemap

In case anyone's interested in the category structure, I put up a sitemap of the categories on the English-language wiki. I find it exceedingly helpful, when trying to interwiki between languages, to have a common category structure. I think some of what we currently have could be improved (like the Orthodoxy by country, which includes "Western Europe" and "Asia" as well as countries in those regions). I would rather provoke discussion (this means you, Fr. Andrew) on the topic before making any sudden moves. And, no, I have no idea why I went through the whole thing, but there are a whole lot of categories. —magda (talk) 19:16, June 4, 2008 (UTC)

New disciplinary policy

All sysops should read and familiarize themselves with the new official disciplinary policy as approved by FrJohn on May 29, 2008. Comments and adjustments are of course welcome. Relevant templates for enforcement: Template:Warning, Template:Warning2 and Template:Banned. —Fr. Andrew ^talk contribs (THINK!) 20:43, May 29, 2008 (UTC)

Eliminating directory articles

I'm of the opinion that we ought to eliminate all the directory articles. Here's my rationale:

• The function is fulfilled far better by sites like OrthodoxyInAmerica.org and other regional and jurisdictional sites.
• Keeping them up to date and fully accurate is almost impossible.
• Keeping them representative of Mainstream Chalcedonian Orthodoxy only is a continual problem.
• They're somewhat irrelevant to the role of OrthodoxWiki as an encyclopedia.

What do you think? —Fr. Andrew ^talk contribs 08:16, August 28, 2007 (PDT)

I agree. Keeping the listings up-to-date will continue to be a large workload especially with the addition of personal information such as the resident priest, that can change frequently. Having discovered the OrthodoxyinAmerica site really makes keeping a directory in Orthodoxwiki redundant. Wsk 18:45, August 28, 2007 (PDT)

Just adding another comment to "bump" this again to attention. Let's axe the directory articles! It's too much work to keep them going, and there's no way we'll ever be as accurate or useful as existing sites. I'd like it if other admins would comment on this. —Fr. Andrew ^talk contribs (THINK!) 11:40, March 20, 2008 (PDT)

Judging by the accessed count at the bottom of those pages, it looks like they are being used, do you find much out of date info on them? - Andrew 12:39, March 20, 2008 (PDT)

I may very well be a large contributor to the accessed count. Fr. Andrew, thanks for the "bump," as I don't believe I'd seen this thread before, which raises excellent points. My only preference for having a directory on OrthodoxWiki is that I can *fix* things when they're wrong, like broken links. That desire can easily be focused on submitting corrections to the jurisdictional sites and/or orthodoxyinamerica.org. Also, I'm not sure what happened to the ROCOR directory. That being said, I have begun coming across regional organizations (included in the "external links" sections) which are not necessarily pan-Orthodox; would there be an appropriate place to include those links? —magda (talk) 14:46, March 20, 2008 (PDT)

Where other active sites exist that already have the information that we have (i.e. name, basic location, link to website), then it would be unnecessary to duplicate this; perhaps a link to that website would suffice. That said, I know that in my antipodean (well...) part of the world, we don't have anything of the sort, so I would be very much against this for the Australasian articles. — by Pιsτévο ^{talk complaints} at 17:04, March 20, 2008 (PDT)

Magda, a List of parish directories article might do the trick, consisting mainly of a series of external links.

Pistevo, y'all gotta get on the ball down there!  :) Seriously, though, I have no problem with OrthodoxWiki hosting something until such time as an external site might be created. I'd even be willing to host it in my own webspace if someone else would be willing to maintain the file and send it to me for FTPing. —Fr. Andrew ^talk contribs (THINK!) 04:39, April 1, 2008 (PDT)

If no one voices an objection, I'm going to start deleting the Parish Directory articles for the US within a day or two, for the reasons noted above. (I also have TOP SECRET information that SOMEONE is working on an external directory for Australia.) So, speak now, or forever hold your keys... or something. —Fr. Andrew ^talk contribs (THINK!) 10:43, April 2, 2008 (PDT)

Hmm... I agree that strictly this isn't in line with OWiki's mission... BUT I also see Magda's point that these are both pan-Orthodox and easily updatable, unlike any other directory I'm aware of , and I note that these have been popular "articles" over the years. Maybe we can wait a little bit on this? I dunno. — FrJohn (talk) 18:20, April 2, 2008 (PDT)

Having waited a couple months without any major objections being raised, I'm beginning deletion. —Fr. Andrew ^talk contribs (THINK!) 14:00, June 14, 2008 (UTC)

Reminder: With the deletion of each parish listing article, we will need to delete the title of the removed articles from the Churches Category pages. Currently, the titles for the deleted articles still appear in the Churches Categories but which lead to blank pages!Wsk 18:09, June 14, 2008 (UTC)

I'm not sure I understand what you mean. Could you link to what you're referring to? —Fr. Andrew ^talk contribs (THINK!) 18:56, June 14, 2008 (UTC)

Click on the Category 'Churches' on the main page. All the lists are still listed on Category Churches page.Wsk 20:21, June 14, 2008 (UTC)

There are lists of other parish directories in Category:Churches, but not the USA directories, that I see. I haven't come across any category page which gives links to articles which no longer exist. Try refreshing the page or clearing your browser cache, perhaps. —magda (talk) 20:29, June 14, 2008 (UTC

Thanks. I notice that it is all cleared, now. Earlier when I noted a list was deleted and I clicked on the Category 'Churches', I still could get the listed page, but with a note that none existed as if one were starting a new page. I may have just caught the deletion process in 'midstream'. Sorry for my 'alarm'. Wsk 20:40, June 14, 2008 (UTC)

Fellow sysops, I'm proposing adding the parish directories of Australia to be deleted, because these are currently available on http://orthodoxyinaustralia.com/ (providing more information in any event). The situation is worse with these articles as they generally don't get updated. Good idea? -- — by Pιsτévο ^{talk complaints} at 02:58, January 21, 2013 (HST) -- URL edited 1/Feb/2013

Hi! I think you have good precedent here, especially if the pages are not being updated. — FrJohn (talk) 21:38, January 31, 2013 (HST)

Yep. —Fr. Andrew ^talk contribs (THINK!) 03:13, February 1, 2013 (HST)

As you probably noticed that during our discussions in 2007 about deleting parish directory pages in the USA that I agreed in their removal, mainly over the issue of maintaining their currency. I still favor their removal for that reason. Also, even the effort of maintaining a simple listing of parishes for the world means thousands of entries, maybe tens of thousands, that should be in some orderly manner but could be difficult given the differences of opinions concerning identity of the ecclesiastical groups. (Transfer of my comment of User talk:Pistevo)Wsk 10:04, February 1, 2013 (HST)

Thanks everyone! Over the next few days, I'll change the directory pages to be links to the relevant page on the OrthodoxyInAustralia.com website, pending their deletion (before the end of the year). — by Pιsτévο ^{talk complaints} at 18:33, February 1, 2013 (HST)

Wikimedia Commons

I just ran across the storehouse of images and other files related to Orthodoxy on the Wikimedia Commons.

How do you think we can integrate these or best draw attention to these as a source for articles? I think, as a rule, we should prefer images with open licenses to those from our other benefactors.

Fr. John

Year-end inventory

Please see OrthodoxWiki:Inventory. Thanks.

New Features

As of Nov. 21, 2005 I've enabled the option to show the # of users watching each page. (Check down below, near the metadata stuff.) I've also added a feature that allows bureaucrats (i.e. me) to rename users without hacking through the database directly. This should help with the occasional request for account renaming. Fr. John

Nov 28 update - Added Special:Editcount

Awards, Recognizing civic virtue on the wiki

I've been admiring Wikipedia's use of barnstars to award people who contribute their time and talent to the wiki. We should keep this in mind as we continue to grow, and figure out how to adopt something like this for our local practice.

A few links of interest here:

• w:Wikipedia:Barnstars
• http://www.usemod.com/cgi-bin/mb.pl?BarnStar - pre-dating Wikipedia
• http://www.thebarnjournal.org/stories/story018/index2.html - Images, some ideas for alternative barnstars

Don't forget the mention of barnraising on the OrthodoxWiki:Community Portal.

Appointing Sysops

I just wanted to share some thoughts about how I've gone about appointing sysops. Basically, I'm looking for a few things:

• Some degree of sanity as well as a healthy dose of balance and humility in content submitted and dealings with other people online.
• A demonstrated commitment to OrthodoxWiki and a desire (or at least a willingness) to take on some of the administrative burden for keeping this site in good order. This generally means a good record of broad interest in the wiki.
• Finally, some ecclesiastical standing (as a cleric, seminarian, presbytera, recognized Orthodox personality, etc.) is desirable but not required. This is so because it is helpful to have those who are, in one way or another, "authorities" in the Church moderating things, and, of course, public recognition helps establish the credibility and status of OrthodoxWiki.

"If anyone aspires to the office of sysop, he desires a noble task" (cf.1 Tim 3:1) - If I've overlooked you or if you have someone to nominate for sysop duties please leave a note on my user talk page. Of course, I reserve all rights in terms of appointments and terminations.

So far, I've been pretty liberal in knighting sysops -- at this point we can use all the help we can get, and it seems to me to be a good thing to empower a robust band of trustworthy members to help manage the site. Fr. John 21:58, 27 Feb 2005 (CST)