MicroWiki:Newsletter/2022/10
MicroWiki Newsletter, October 2022
Welcome to the first issue of the MicroWiki Newsletter! We have done quite a lot of work on the Wiki in the past month and we would like the users to be up to date on the changes we have made.
New Patrons
We would like to thank our new (and current) Patrons who have started supporting us in the last month of September, namely:
Thank you for supporting the Wiki! Your contribution not only helps to ensure the Wiki operates for "one month longer", but also helps motivates our administrator team by showing the userbase values the Wiki and the efforts of the administration team to ever improve the site, its content and its community.
Article drafts
The largest change users, especially new users, will come into contact with, is the Article draft system. We kindly ask new users to create their articles in the Draft namespace first, using tools such as Create page, or their own sandboxes. Then, use the review button in your article to ask the community to review your contribution to ensure it complies with the basic principles of the Wiki, such as keeping an encyclopedic tone, compliance with the Manual of Style, not creating redlink saviours (very short articles) and making higher quality contributions in general.
This system was implemented for two reasons, first as an educational tool to ensure new contributors get help by fellow community members on their articles and help them become proficient editors quicker. Second, due to an ever-increasing amount of abandoned poor articles, we felt the need to ensure we lower the amount of created short articles so we can catch up and improve the old, and then focus on the new.
Also, do not be afraid and do not hesitate in contacting your fellow editors for feedback. Usually, active editors would be glad to help you!
Bots
We have developed or deployed several bots to help and assist in some repetitive tasks on the Wiki. If you are a new user, you may have already encountered User:WelcomeBOT, who welcomes new users every hour and sends them a helpful welcome message to explain the basics of the Wiki and how to get help. User:RedirectBot runs every night and fixes double redirects and marks broken redirects for deletion. User:Mailman will deliver MicroWiki notifications to your talk page. Currently the bot is not running due to low usage of the notifications, but if you want to be notified for new Good Article submissions, feel free to add the Userbox GA notifications to your user page (ideally directly to it, not through templates, but both should work). If you have a bot you would like to run on the Wiki, please send us a message and we can discuss it. Bots without Bot user rights will be blocked. If you have any ideas for bots you would like to see on the Wiki, also please let us know, but bear in mind, developing bots takes time and isn't easy.
Projects and Portals
A minor update concerning namespaces and their usage - all articles with the Project: prefix in the name were "moved" temporarily to DummyProject:, to make sure they do not break when we added the Portal namespace. For the first time in its history, MicroWiki has an actual portal namespace! It may not sound too exciting, but now you can search for portals specifically, you won't get a portal by clicking the random page article button, they won't be included in statistics any more either. If your Project (or DummyProject: now) was not moved to the Project namespace yet, please let us know or move it there yourself!
This initiative was spearheaded by the MW admin MattL, including moving of the portals. Thank you!
Another namespace that was added is the User project namespace. We intend to reseve the MicroWiki namespace primarily for the activites spearheaded by MicroWiki Staff, policies, guidelines, Wiki help or a newsletter such as this. This User project namespace was added to let users host their projects in a dedicated namespace. Unfortunately, Project: namespace is reserved in MediaWiki and adopts the name of the local Wiki instance (in our case, MicroWiki), so we had to use another name. We kindly ask editors to create their wonderful collaborative projects in there!
Project showcase
Already, the new namespace hosts two great projects. First, MicroProject Ohio for all micronations, micronationalists and anything else related to Ohio. The members of the project have already achieved two featured articles, one good article and two featured pictures. A second project Editor Hall of Fame, tries to find and recognize the contributions of MicroWiki users who have helped in developing the Wiki. Already a user from way back as 2007 was awarded the first spot on the list. Make sure to check both projects out!
Code of Conduct
We have recently added the Code of Conduct to our list of policies and guidelines. The code codifies several other Wiki principles that we have already tried to uphold and had outlined in other guidelines, such as the Simplifed ruleset. You can give it a read, but if you stay civil and assume good faith, you might not even have to!
Good articles
The long-overdue approval of several new Good Articles was done on 2 October 2022 by Luxor. Welcome whole 9 new good articles to the list, namely: Motto of MicroWiki, Flag of the Gymnasium State, Republic of Suverska, Flag of Eintrachtia, Micronation, Silištea, First edit on MicroWiki, 2nd Congress of the Christian Nationalist Party (Melite), Francillian Constitutional Convention 2011. A special thank you to all editors, reviewers and submitters of these articles!
Most importantly, at least according to the author of this newsletter, we have finally achieved a good article status on the core article of MicroWiki — Micronation. Writing high quality articles that are likely to be picked up on by external observers helps expand the MicroWiki community, by helping MicroWiki appear higher on search engine results. New viewers who may become to new editors, contributors, micronationalists, citizens and friends. Please do help in updating other articles, such as the articles of very famous micronations such as Sealand, Molossia or Westarctica. You will help MicroWiki grow!
Future direction
We are looking into many future projects that the admin team plans to undertake. Below is listed the list of current and ongoing projects that the MicroWiki adminstration is undertaking. If any project will be looking for volunteers to help, feel free to help us! If you do not know how, feel free to contact the administrator mentioned below.
- Project rewarding and discovering users who make high quality contributions. (Proposed by User:Andrew)
- Adjusting the new Vector skin (see French Wikipedia) so it is actually functional on the Wiki. (Proposed by User:Andrew)
- Expanding the Manual of Style, creating standardize category guidelines. (Proposed by User:MattL and User:Oritsu.me)
- Replace all deprecated templates, such as Template:Nation, Template:Infobox nation with Template:Infobox country. (Proposed by User:MattL)
- Ensure templates have correct styling.
- Rewrite some policies and make them more discoverable. (Proposed by User:Andrew and User:Luxor)
- Add some more explanatory pages to the Wiki for user roles, basics of editing and similar.
- Publish MicroWiki Brand guidelines. (Proposed by User:Andrew)
Long-term projects
We seek feedback on which of these you would consider the highest priority.
- World map of micronations, in the style of OpenStreetMaps, although the contributions would be made on the Wiki. (Proposed by User:Luxor)
- Specialized Wiki for Geofiction. (Proposed by User:Luxor)
- We do not wish to exclude any geofiction authors (and endlessly delete new articles, which lately seem geofictive in nature), but MicroWiki is for micronations, which from geofiction differ in their basis in reality; our events, people, infrastructure and systems are real, geofiction is completely fictional. We would be looking for admins to help in establishing the Wiki, and all MicroWiki contributors would be welcome to edit there as well.
- Update MW software to new version. (Proposed by User:Luxor)
- Make MW infrastrucutre more resilient and fast. (Proposed by User:Luxor)
- Would need substantially more investment on Patreon.
Updates from other MicroWikis
As you may or may not know, MicroWiki is an encyclopedia in many languages, although the most active Wiki is the English one, followed by the Czech, Russian and Japanese Wikis. Feel free to explore the other Wikis. If your language is not available yet, feel free to contact User:Luxor to ask for another Wiki, although be prepared to do the heavy work of creating templates and have at least three articles of decent quality ready to be moved there. You will be "rewarded" with the administrator rights to the said Wiki and you can help build the micronational community for contributors who speak the same language. It sure helped the Czech community in establishing itself!
Czech MicroWiki
User:AtomCZ was recently made into the head admin of the Czech Wiki and has made many great contributions to ensure the quality of the Wiki. On the Discord of the Czech Wiki, he has made a list of articles that need to be developed by their still-active authors and it seems to have worked. Several new contributors have also joined lately. A Good Article system is also present and somewhat-active. Great work!