Help:Page cleanup

			118Wiki

Once you’ve learnt editing, you can take part in cleanup. Fixing problems and improving articles and other pages greatly improve the quality of 118Wiki. If you find a page that you think needs fixing or improving, you can usually do so yourself or mark it down with a cleanup template so that other users can find it and improve it.

	Participating in cleanup

118Wiki has thousands of articles, written and edited by hundreds of users over decades with varying level of editing and writing skills and activity. Therefore, there are some very high-quality pages, but also those that don’t reach the optimal quality in terms of information content, style and technical execution.

Every user can work to improve 118Wiki pages by expanding, updating or cleaning them up. An improvement can be a single minor edit, or it can be a large, time-consuming project taken part by dozens of users, but every user can take part their own way. There are, however, some rules and policies one must remember when improving 118Wiki.

As stated in 118Wiki:Policies and Guidelines, 118Wiki is open to all and with the exception of certain protected pages, any user can edit any page. Some pages relating to a 118Wiki user personally, such as user pages and character pages should not be edited by others except in some minor cases such as obvious syntax fixes and categorization. Likewise, certain pages such as those relating to other ships or the leadership should be edited with special care.

Please familiarize yourself with 118Wiki policies and guidelines if you’re uncertain. However you feel about rules, you don’t have to be afraid to contributing to 118Wiki! Sincere contributions are welcomed and every honest mistake can be fixed.

	Cleanup templates

If you find a page that you think could (or should) be improved, the best way to do so is to do it yourself. If you know editing and how to make the page better, you can click “edit” or “edit source” and change the page.

Sometimes you might come across with a page that you don’t know what is needed for the page (for example, it is missing information, but you don’t know what it is), or maybe you don’t have the time or skills to do so. Then the best course of action is to let other users know about the problem and what you know about it.

If you know the person who’ve written the page you find the problem on, and they’re active, you can feel free to contact them directly and share your ideas. In case of active character pages, this is the preferred method. Asking a more experienced user to see onto it is also possible. To gain the attention of the wider community and to warn the readers of the problem, you can instead add a cleanup template to the page.

When you add a cleanup template, place it at the very top of the page or perhaps directly after a possible header template. This way it can be seen immediately after opening the page. If the problem is in a specific part of the page, you can place the template there instead.

Below is the list of currently used cleanup templates. You can use any of these templates as instructed here, but you should also read the possible documentation for further information.

118Wiki cleanup templates

Template call	What it looks like	Notes
Note: Some of the templates below can detect the type of page (namespace) they are on. As such, the appearance might be slightly altered on different pages. For example, the text “help page” might read “article” when template is placed in an article.
Deletion templates
{{Delete|reason= }}		Write the deletion reason as a value to reason parameter
Serious issue templates
none
Content issue templates
{{Beware current year}}	The Temporal Integrity Commission frowns upon casual time travel The topic of this article may be referenced in Star Trek series or episodes that take place in our fleet's distant future. When editing or adding new content, please keep in mind whether your additions are relevant to our characters in our current year of 2401.	Used when a page contains material from Discovery's later seasons or similar source
{{Discussion}}	This article needs to be discussed. Please enter your input on the discussion page.
{{Expansion needed}}	This article or section is incomplete This page is missing sections of information that may be filled using 118 canon encounters, or further detail from Memory Alpha. Feel free to edit this page to include new information, using the reference tool (<ref>) where possible.	Used when information is known to exist but is not added to 118Wiki. Compare to Template:Stub.
{{Stub}}	This article is a stub. You can help 118Wiki by expanding it.	Compare to Template:Expansion needed.
Style issue templates
{{Attention}}
{{Categorize}}	This article has no categories. Edit this page to include a category relevant to the content of the article to help improve it.	Used when a page has no categories. Compare to Template:Lacking categories.
{{Lacking categories}}	This article is lacking appropriate categories. This page is missing the appropriate categories. Feel free to edit this page to include a category relevant to the content of the article.	Used when a page has no categories. Compare to Template:Categorize.
{{Wikify}}	This article or section needs to be wikified. Please help improve this article with relevant internal links and wiki coding.
Merge & move templates
{{Mergefrom|}}	Information from Example needs to be merged here.	Give page in the first parameter
{{Mergeto|}}	This article or section needs to be be merged into Example. Please edit this page to migrate information from this page to the next.	Give page in the first parameter
{{Name|}}		Used when the name doesn't describe the content of the page. Compare with Template:Naming convention. Provide reason in the first parameter.
{{Naming convention}}	This page is lacking an appropriate name. Naming pages properly is important, because naming them improperly makes it difficult to find pages, and also to create other pages which may have similar meanings. Please move this page to a more appropriate name to better identify the content of the article.	Used when the name doesn't follow the naming convention. Compare with Template:Naming convention.

	Learn more

Finding pages to improve

In order to find pages that have already been marked with a cleanup template, you have two options. You can see what pages transclude a cleanup template by using Special:WhatLinksHere and searching with the name of the cleanup template. The other way is to browse tracking categories.

Cleanup templates typically place the page in a tracking category. For example, Template:Attention will add a page it is on to Category: Pages needing attention. If you want to find pages that need attention, you can look from that category first.

To find more tracking categories, see Category:Maintenance. Most of the tracking categories also include Template:Tracking category, which you can search for in Special:WhatLinksHere to find them. See also Special:TrackingCategories for tracking categories automatically updated by the MediaWiki system.

Creating new cleanup templates

As you can see from above, the cleanup templates come in different shapes and forms. Currently, there is no agreed uniform style to them. As such, you can create the template the way you best see fit.

One premade message box template exist, Template:Ambox. You can use it when creating a new cleanup template. Please read the documentation on that page. Whatever the style, create the new template page and save. Consider adding your template to Category:Maintenance Templates or Category:Wiki Templates and the list above. If possible, add the template to the list above without including the tracking category.

Consider creating a tracking category for your cleanup template! Template:Ambox has a parameter for it, but any template can have one. While normally categorizing a template, you would place the category between <noinclude></noinclude> tags, in order to include every transclusion, do not place the tracking category between those tags. Instead, if you do not wish to include the template itself in the tracking category, place it between <includeonly></includeonly> tags.

Read more about how to use and create templates on Help:Templates.

More on the topic

State of the Federation Address, the most recent edition will often include some statistics about problems the community finds noteworthy to mention. 118Wiki:To Do List, for what else you can do to contribute 118Wiki:Featured Articles, for when improving an article makes it one of the best in 118Wiki

Wikipedia:Tagging pages for problems, Wikipedia policy when to use tags such as cleanup templates Wikipedia:Template index/Cleanup, Wikipedia listing of cleanup templates with instructions when and how to use them Help:Maintenance template removal, Wikipedia policy when and how to remove cleanup templates