User:Rymich13/Mentor
Hello All this is my mentor page. I am training to become a administrator. rymich13 (talk) 16:30, 16 January 2010 (UTC)
Starting off
[edit]Hello! As you probably know, administrators, aka sysops, are expected to have extensive experience and thousands of contributions. As such, we'll start out with basic editing first before we move onto admin coaching in several months. For now, I'll list a few of Wikipedia's most broad and significant policies with a brief description of each one. Let me know which ones you've read by adding either a 
Done ({{done}}) or 
Not done ({{notdone}}) template below each policy's blurb, and which ones you still need to study.
- 5
WP:5P — While not a policy in the strictest sense, this is among the most important pages newcomers should read. It explains in simple terms what Wikipedia is and how you can help.
Done
- C
WP:C — This page outlines the issues surrounding copyright violations. It is a lengthy and frankly dull read, so I don't expect you to be familiar with this one yet.
Done
- E
Help:Editing — This tutorial of sorts tells you how to properly edit Wikipedia, mostly in a technical sense.
Done
- I
WP:IAR — There are thousands of rules on Wikipedia, but naturally, they don't apply well to every situation. If you ever encounter a situation where following policy to a tee would damage Wikipedia instead of improve it, ignore said policy.
Done
- N
WP:NPOV — This may very well be the most important guideline on the project. All articles must be written from an unbiased and impartial point of view; in other words, it should only present the facts in a fair manner.
Done
–Juliancolton | Talk 00:56, 17 January 2010 (UTC)
I know most of these policies anyway. But they are always very good reminders. rymich13 (talk) 01:13, 17 January 2010 (UTC)
- Great. :) OK, so, are there any policies you have trouble understanding or haven't gotten around to reading? –Juliancolton | Talk 01:28, 17 January 2010 (UTC)
Finding your bearings
[edit]Alright then. Even if you've been reading and lurking for years, there's no better way to get a feel for the project's inner workings than to jump right in (be bold!). One of the best ways to do so is to take up vandal fighting. There are several tools, many of them partially automated, you can use to revert vandalism and warn the offending users, most notably WP:Huggle and WP:Twinkle. The former requires rollback permissions, but I can probably assign those to your account if you'd like. Basically, fighting vandalism for a few weeks will introduce you to some of the project's keys processes and policies, as well as let you interact with other people.
Vandal-fighting is generally pretty straightforward, however, there are some things you need to keep in mind:
- WP:AGF. Tools such as Huggle and Twinkle are used only to revert blatant vandalism, including obscenities or random, irrelevant additions of text. If you're unsure about a particular edit, but still feel it shouldn't be there, go to the page itself and use a descriptive edit summary. New users even with the best intentions often push buttons and end up accidentally adding random wiki-markup, so be mindful of AGF.
- If an editor you've reverted comes to your talk page and leaves you a good-faith message, it's a very good idea to pay attention and see if you've made a mistake somewhere along the line. They'll often be frustrated, but it's understandable.
- Sometimes seemingly random IPs or new accounts will blank a biography of a living person. This is usually just vandalism, but it's never appropriate to assume so; occasionally the subject of an article will find it dis satisfactory, and try to remove it. The best way to handle something like this is politely revert the edit manually, leave a note on their talk page, and see if you can work it out from there.
–Juliancolton | Talk 21:49, 18 January 2010 (UTC)
Julian I will take rollback permission please and also, how do I find articles with vandalism. Just randomly got through pages and seek it out or is there a better way of doing it? rymich13 (talk) 22:52, 18 January 2010 (UTC)
- Alright, done. Please see WP:ROLLBACK and any other relevant guidelines before using it. As for finding the vandalism, if you install Huggle, the program will display a continuously updated list of articles with recent edits likely to be vandalism. –Juliancolton | Talk 00:55, 19 January 2010 (UTC)
Hey Julian,
Can we do some more mentor stuff?