UBC Wiki:Wiki Support Common Questions

From UBC Wiki

Common Questions that you may encounter when you are working on the ticket of the wiki:

Changing User Rights of the User

For ex: "I work for the library, and I want to edit a wiki page in the library namespace. However I am unavailable to edit the page even if I login to the page"

Though most wiki pages are editable by CWL users, some pages require certain permission to edit (For example Library pages). If a user wants to get a permission to edit a page, just go to http://wiki.ubc.ca/Special:UserRights , enter the username, and change the user permission.

See Special:ListGroupRights on explanation on each User group rights, and the list of people who have access to the rights.

How to delete a page?

For ex "I put the {{delete}} tag, it is not more than 30 days but the pages are not deleted automatically Can you delete the pages for me?" See Help:Deleting_a_page. Only wiki administrators can delete the page, even if users put the delete tag, wiki administrators need to delete the page manually. In order to delete pages by batches (For Wiki Administrator only) - see UBC_Wiki:Deleting_wiki_pages_by_batches_(For_wiki_administrators)

Questions regarding embedding videos/slides

For ex "How do I upload a video to Wiki? " You cannot upload a video directly to the wiki. However, wiki has an ability to embed youTube video, Kaltura video and slides. See here:

Resources for teaching and learning on the wiki

Cache related questions

For ex: "even though I categorize the page as "Open Resources", the page doesn't appear in the "Open Resource" Category page. Why is this happening?"

This type of problem is usually caused by cache issue. To delete cache, try the following step:

  1. Try purging the page - https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Manual:Purge
  2. If it does not work, try to edit and save the category page that has the issue.
  3. If is still causing the issue, it may be an issue with Curl timeout. Talk to Pan's team.

Changing username of the user

  1. Only wiki administrator can do this. Go to Special:RenameUser. If the user is new (no talk pages or have not created user pages), then it will be better to tick only "Do not create redirects to the new page" , then rename the user.If the user has a profile set up and/or have user pages and talk pages, then the best practice will be to ask the user if they want to move user and talk pages to new name (and also tell them that move action will be logged)
This message box is using an invalid "type=warning" parameter and needs fixing.

What is the difference between the 4 namespaces and controlled namespace?

See name spaces

Question about infobox

Instructors may have a question on how to create an Infobox template. You can suggest instructors to copy the code from Template:Infobox_Course, and create a new template for their own course.

Transcluding and templating

Templating and transclusion is useful especially when instructors want to create a course wiki. See Documentation:MediaWiki_Basics/Transclusion and Help:Templates to understand about template. The best way an instructor can learn about template is to create an infobox. (see the Question above)

"Archiving courses"

Instructors may ask you how to archive a course. You can suggest instructors to move their past course under /archive/ subpage, and link the archive on the main course page. (As an example, you can see how ENPH page created an archive page )

Can I make my UBC page private?

This is one of the most common questions you can get from an instructor. The answer is no. You may use Sandbox, so that the wiki page is unserchable. However, the page is still publicly visible.

How do I know if my page is edited?

The best way to keep track on who edited your page is to add the page to Watchlist.



Wiki Orientation

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