CouchSurfing Wiki:Administration

The statements and opinions on this page are solely those of its authors and do not necessarily represent the official position of CouchSurfing International.

see also pages that need some kind of work.

To administer a wiki, we generally need to do three things:

track changes
add disclaimers, provisos, and whatever's needed to maintain a good public image
clean things up and move things around
block any destructive users

To give an idea how these tasks are coordinated on a project with tens of thousands of volunteers, see Wikipedia's Community Portal.

Tracking what happens on the Wiki

With a few tools, it can be much easier and quicker to get an overview, and to respond to what's needed, on the wiki than it is with CS Groups.

You can also see what is being worked on vigorously, and you can follow the contributions of individual users, like Kasper, Leo, Steve, Pablo, Midsch, or Callum, or in topics like Category:Tech.

Finally, the pages you care especially about, use the "subscribe to this page" feature in the topbar, and you will be notified when it changes.

Adding disclaimers and provisos

When a page represents a "proposal", a "draft", a "work in progress" or someone's "personal point of view", and there is concern that this fact will not be obvious to casual viewers, we use these cute little textboxes called templates.

Just add a little text to the top of the page:

 {{rfe-draft}}

creates this:

This page is a Request for Enhancement. It is a draft. You are encouraged to find support for it, etc.
After the enhancement has been clearly articulated, and all affected portions of the website have been identified, you may try to persuade a developer to implement it. After implementation it will be deployed somewhere, but not necessarily to the main website.

and:

 {{ppov}}

creates this:

This page represents someone's personal point of view.
Please alter it to include and respect the diversity of views on the subject.

and:

 {{draft|your ideas}}

creates this:

This page is a draft. This is tentative, transient, and collaborative.
We the community are in the process of building this. Please add what you think your ideas, and rearrange things as
you see fit, but don't be quick to delete other people's ideas.

You can also make your own templates based on these.

Cleaning up and moving things

A great of leadership is possible just by creating a new page which clears up some confusion, and cutting and pasting bits from many old pages into it. You can also add and track categories.

Admins and sysops can move or rename pages, or delete the entire histories of pages, but mostly this is possibly by anyone just with cut and paste.

article history edit