Responsibility for Wiki

[HansR]

While working on the Wiki for the Webtags and browsing special pages, I noted that :

• There are 35 open account requests (the first two weeks ago)
• There are 17 recently rejected requests
• There are 500+ expired requests
• There are many users in the userlist whom I have never seen or heard of.

Si I conclude that there is some but irregular management of the Wiki, principally by sfws. Afaik it is also @mcrossley, @saratogaWX and @freddie also have administrators rights. However, it is totally unclear who is doing what and who has taken which responsibilities. I think that should be clear and published both in the wiki and the forum.

The group of users who have administrator rights should agree on tasks and responsibilities which also should be published (and amended when necessary).

I write the above because apparently @sfws clearly has stated that he wants out (If not true, then confirm) and clearly the user accreditation is not handled regularly. Many pages have been outdated and/or have become irrelevant. The initiator @Daj has not been seen in years.

The wiki requires:

1. A group of editors/administrators who can confer - in a protected thread on the forum - about what needs to be done on the wiki and the users (requests, inactivity etc...).
2. Open threads - like this one - for comments, reviews and ideas
3. Being brought up to date
4. To be worked on regularly (which is not a great effort when up to date)

This thread can be a start of an improvement action.

If there are already editors/administrators as described above than that is not clear and maybe they communicate through PM. For reviews and PR in general for the wiki and related work, that is not a good situation. I would appreciate responses concerning the above. Clearly I am willing to participate but that will not happen on my own. It needs to be an organized, concerted effort.

[freddie]

I'm unaware of being an administrator on the Wiki. I would be happy to handle the user requests if necessary.

[saratogaWX]

I'm primarily handling the hosting for the Wiki and software maintenance. Then the occasional health check. I've not been doing any of the new-user vetting/administration as others seem to be working that. Mark has admin rights used to primarily post updates to the CumulusMX distribution page.

Other than the page describing Saratoga scripts, I feel ill-equipped to do wiki documentation of Cumulus software features.

I'd be glad to have one or a team handle the daily administration duties for the Wiki, and let me just handle the hosting and software. If someone else would like to take over hosting on their server, I'd be ok with transferring it to a new host and transferring the cumuluswiki.org domain too.

[PaulMy]

I have not yet seen David (water01) post here, but he was assigned by Steve for some forum role. Not sure if that has carried on though.

Thanks Hans for digging into this.
While I am an avid Cumulus user I do not have the technical skill and easy-reading-writing for the Wiki. Will gladly review and make comment on specifics from my user perspective.

Enjoy,
Paul

[freddie]

I'd be happy to host alongside the forum.

[saratogaWX]

That's great! I'd be pleased to let you host the wiki. I'll send a PM and we can get started.
Best regards,
Ken

[HansR]

OK, thanks for replying so far I'll wait a bit (some days) longer and then join in the discussion I started.

[water01]

On looking at the Wki and my profile I believe I am an administrator on the Wiki as well as the forum. However, if someone has applied to work on it etc. I never received any notifications as I do on the forum, so it is quite likely that requests never got implemented etc.

[mcrossley]

I am an admin, very occasionally I looked at new user requests and approved some. There is no notification of these requests that I know of, I just happened to see the page when browsing.

One issue for me is that it seems everyone (exaggeration) who browses the wiki asks for an account. Often just after they join the forum. Of those approved 99.99% never make a contribution. Perhaps they mistakenly think they need an account to see some content?

Of the existing accounts I suggest we have a purge and remove all of them older than say a year and have not made an edit?

Further, if possible I'd remove the new account request from the wiki itself, and add a request thread/sub-forum on here - with a pointer in the wiki. Then it would be easy to tie users together and new user requests have to make their case for what they want to contribute.

All those old hanging accounts must be a security risk.

[HansR]

OK, thanks for replying. It is time to proceed.

1. If I understand well, Ken has already agreed to transfer the hosting to Niall. I assume this process will run separately. If any problem we will hear.
2. Afaics we need first to define some tasks and a small group to handout the primary responsibility for those tasks. I propose:
   1. Rewriting and cleanup of the wiki, bring up to date. I am willing to play my part in this.
   2. Clean up users, assign acces rights (implement Marks idea), make some procedures. But before cleanup: check for experienced users if the are wiki-registered and maybe willing to participate. Ask offline.
   3. Define requirements for participation of the wiki
   4. PR and I'd almost say recruitment
   5. Review modifications and rework feedback.
3. The group who decides on how to proceed does not need to be large but it would be nice to have some additional hands who know, or are willing to learn, how to maintain this wiki.
4. Being able to handle the wiki is more important than specific technical knowledge of CMX or other tools.
5. Principally we should focus on user assistance and secondary focus on necessary technical background info.
6. Reviews are important to have the necessary structural feedback. Without criticism there is no improvement. I would make a distinction between user reviews (is it understandable) and peer reviews (technical).
7. As we all can see, it is the known suspects who replied. I think we should aim at a slow expansion of that group but we have to start somewhere.
8. I don't think it is worthwhile to have discussions of this editorial board (big words, other terms welcome ) online and would like to decide what needs te be in the forum (what do we need user feedback for) and what might be better in a mail circle and publish after the discussion is done.

So all said I see: David, Niall, Paul, Mark and myself.

That means all other users (or almost all other users) can be removed. That means we need to publish clearly how membership of the wiki board is handled and above all what is expected: having an account comes with some responsibility and obligation. And that means that we need to have clear what we can ask from wiki members, give out small tasks , small editable chunks so the overview remains and it is easy to define what a successful completion is.

if you (David, Niall, Paul, Mark) largely agree with the above, please send me a mail - or a PM with your mailaddress - and your comment on the above. That makes it possible to communicate away from the forum and come back here with actions and results. Another possibility is - when preferred - to have a secured thread. We'll see how it goes. Things will take some time.

Having said the above I think readers who do use CMX intensively and know what it can do, even if you don't see yourself as a technical skilled person, should think about what they can do i.s.o. thinking how to dive. It is great software which deserves a great wiki. And that must be a community effort.