To help perform maintenance on the pages of this wiki, many tools are available. Several of them will be listed here, while others are listed on the Filling in the blanks page. The full list can be found on the Special pages page.
Recent changes and History[]
Reviewing what has been changed on the wiki helps prevent problems before they get too far out of hand and to fix honest mistakes such as song lyrics that are mis-heard. The Recent Changes page lists all changes. You can select how many changes to display and for how far back to list, up to 500 changes and a maximum of one month. The changes can also be filtered in several ways to hide or show the following:
- changes marked as a minor edit
- changes made by "bots" (automated processes for making updates)
- changes made by anons (anonymous users who haven't registered yet so only their IP address is displayed)
- changes made by registered users
- the changes you made
- to group related changes on the same page or list them separately
- to hide logs such as the Uploaded Files
To learn what information is displayed in the Recent changes, refer to the Help:Recent changes page. Here is the information that may be useful to focus on:
- What was the size of the change? If it is a large amount, either adding or removing, check to see if it's gibberish being added or large sections of the page being removed.
- What was the summary of the change? Changes without a summary are usually done by newer editors, so it may help to check to see if they made a good edit.
- Have several people edited the same page on the same day? Sometimes when this happens, it is just because one edit catches the eye of another person, so they add more to the page. But other times a change has to be undone, and this can be due to a deliberate or an unintentional poor edit.
- When several people (usually 3 or more) have edited the same page, you may need to look at the History of the page to see exactly what each person changed.
It is also helpful to remember that many registered users make edits as anonymous users for weeks or months before they decide to sign up for an account. A few mistakes should not be a cause for concern, unless it is obvious that they are not mistakes and were actually done deliberately. The page on vandalism has some good tips on how to deal with poor edits.
Problem reports[]
Wikia has removed the "Report a problem with this page" function, so if you see a problem with a page that you cannot correct (typically because the page has been protected) or there is a related problem such as vandalism, leave a message for an administrator to let them know what needs to be fixed. The current list of administrators is:
- Keeper Of The Reaper - Administrator
- WiKiAN - Bureaucrat, Administrator
- Con Carne - Administrator
- Ragglefraggleking - Founder, Bureaucrat
Redirects[]
Redirects are used when a new page covers the same subject as an existing page. When pages get renamed and moved, sometimes the redirects have to be adjusted.
Double redirects show which redirects link to other redirects. For example, page A redirects to page B, and page B redirects to page C. Page A should be adjusted so that it redirects to page C.
Broken redirects link to pages that do not exist. Either the page needs to be created, or the redirect needs to be adjusted to a page that does exist.
The full list of redirects can be seen on the List of redirects page.
Short and long pages[]
Short pages and Stubs are discussed on the Filling in the blanks page.
Long pages contain the most information. Standard practice on many wikis is to divide long pages into separate pages that cover major sections, such as relationships or a list of episodes. The The Grim Adventures of Billy and Mandy Wiki currently does not have a policy regarding long pages. However, since a majority of episode and character pages still have plenty of material left to be added to them, this issue can be discussed in the future and the long pages left as is for the time being.
Candidates for renaming[]
Any pages that have been marked with the Rename template are automatically added to the Candidates for renaming category. Refer to the Discussion page for each one to see if there is a valid reason to rename it via the Move command.
Oldest pages and seldom-edited pages[]
Oldest pages shows which pages have not been edited in a very long time. Any page that has not been edited in several months should be checked to see if they can be updated with new information.
Similarly, Pages with the fewest revisions shows the pages that have not been edited very often. Pages with just 2 or 3 revisions are typically redirects, or else are stubs. Pages listed here that are not redirects are candidates to be updated with new information.
Categories[]
Categories are discussed on the "Filling in the blanks" page in the Uncategorized pages and Missing categories sections.
A full list of categories in use can be viewed on the Special:Categories page. To see which categories are marked as part of another category (a sub-category), refer to the Category tree page.
Disambiguation[]
When a name, term or phrase can refer to more than one thing, disambiguation pages should be created. For example "Evil Con Carne" can refer to a show, an episode, and an organization. See Evil Con Carne (disambiguation) for this example.
Category:Disambiguations shows the pages that have been flagged as a disambiguation page with the {{disambig}} template.
Disambiguation pages lists all pages that link to a disambiguation page instead of directly to a topic. Pages listed here should be checked to see if they can link directly instead.
For more information, refer to the Wikipedia article on disambiguation.
Related changes[]
If you need to see all the pages that have been changed that a particular page links to, use the Related changes page. (Keep in mind that this function can return a large number of pages. It is dependent upon how many links are in the page you specify and how much editing is done for the time period you select.)
In some cases, it may be necessary to see all pages that link to a particular page, not just the ones that have been edited. This can be performed with the What links here page. Note that most pages have the "What links here" function at the very bottom of the page.
File lists[]
Most pictures are marked with the Images category and can be viewed there. The complete list of all files, including files other than pictures such as PDF files, can be viewed on the File list page. The list can be sorted by date, name or size of file.
If it is necessary to see exactly on which server at Wikia a file is being stored, use the File path function. Enter the name of the file and it will be displayed. You can then see the full path in the address bar of your web browser. For example, the picture "Kids fall to earth.jpg" is stored at http://images1.wikia.nocookie.net/__cb20080729174614/phineasandferb/images/7/7a/Kids_fall_to_earth.jpg.
To find out if there is an exact duplicate of a file, use the Search for duplicate files page. Major differences, such as a difference in resolution, will not show up as a duplicate file.
High use pages[]
High use pages are as the name implies: pages that are used the most. They fall into the following sections:
- Most linked-to categories — which categories are linked to the most
- Most linked-to files — which pictures (or files) are used the most
- Most linked-to pages — which pages are linked to by other pages the most
- Most linked-to templates — which templates are used the most
- Most popular categories — which categories are used the most
- Most visited pages — which pages are visited the most
- Pages with the most categories — which pages have the most categories
- Pages with the most revisions — which pages have been edited the most
Most of these are for information only, but Pages with the most categories should be checked to make sure that there aren't any unnecessary categories.
To recommend additional topics that need to be included on this Help page, list them on the Discussion page.