ESE205 Wiki:Administrators

Congrats! If you are reading this then it is very likely that you are a new administrator and you don't know how to administer this wiki. This page should address most of your questions.

Wiki Configuration

MediaWiki Source Files

This wiki is hosted in EIT's project web server. If you are the new lecturer for this course, contact Mark Bober at EIT to change ownership of the main web source files.

Once you have ownership of the files, you can access them logging in ssh.seas.wustl.edu using your WUSTL account. The source files are located at /project/class-www/engineering/ese205. That folder is a bit of a mess, but all the relevant content is located in the core folder, which is in itself a git repository.

Currently we are using MediaWiki 1.26, which is a bit outdated. For the time being we are unable to upgrade to a higher version since the web server does not run PHP 5.3.

Local Configuration

The most important (and almost only) configuration file is LocalSettings.php located in the core folder. In particular, when you take ownership of the wiki web source files you should edit LocalSettings.php and change the following variables to your email address, so you will get notifications when relevant or bad things happen:

• $wgEmergencyContact
• $wgPasswordSender
• $wgAccountAdministrator
• $wgConfirmAccountContact

Beginning of the Semester Maintenance

Create Class Group

Each user belonging to a particular class (either TAs or students) should become members of a particular, to help administer old wiki pages.

To create a class group, edit LocalSettings.php and add a line below the comment ## Create student group of the form:

$wgGroupPermissions['SP2017'] = $wgGroupPermissions['user'];

where SP2017 is the name of the group for Spring 2017.

Change Permits of TA users

The TAs should become members of the groups administrators, bureaucrat, staff groups. One way to add the users to these groups is:

1. Go to the ListUsers page.
2. Click on the TAs user name.
3. Click on the User rights management link on the sidebar of the user's wiki.
4. Select the desired groups for that user, and click the Save user groups button.

Define Demo Session Schedule and Reserve Space

The demo session is, by far, the most important event in the semester. To avoid conflicts, the schedule for the demo session should be defined before the first day of class, so students can check their agendas and adjust to potential conflicts. Traditionally the demo session happen at lunch time of the last Tuesday of the semester in the Lopata Hall gallery, but this is just a suggestion.

To reserve a space that can fit all the groups, their posters, and visitors, you should use the WUSTL event reservation system.

Update the Main Page and Administrative Guidelines

There is a number of guidelines that contain useful information for students, such as how to print a poster, how to write a proposal, or how to reimburse in the ESE department. Minor updates must be made to these guidelines to refresh the information. In particular, here is a lines of the changes that must be made to the guidelines (note that this list is by no means exhaustive):

• Main Page: Remove old news items and update Important Dates.
• Demonstration Session Guidelines: Change current semester and demo session schedule.
• ESE Reimbursement Process: Change maximum budget, if necessary.
• Final Report Guidelines: Change deadline (currently appears twice in the page).
• New Student Checklist: Change current semester in the text and in the snippets of code to add pages to the relevant categories.

Authorizing New Accounts

All the new users, students and TAs, must create a wiki account, as described in New Student Checklist. Once they request an account, the email address listed in $wgConfirmAccountContact will receive an email (or several, the extension running the user confirmation system is not very clever). Accounts can be authorized, rejected, or put on hold, using the ConfirmAccounts page, which can only be accessed by members of the administrators group. No account should be authorized until an email address is confirmed, this is an important rule that should be enforced, otherwise it is very hard to distinguish real accounts from spam.

Once an account is created, a similar procedure as that in #Change Permits of TA users should be used to add every single one of them to the corresponding class group. This is painful and slow (thanks Obama!), but worthwhile in the long run.

Update Urbauer 015 Card Access List

Once the add/drop season is over (usually two weeks after the beginning of classes), you should email Mark Townsend to update the Urbauer 015 card access list. The update should, at least, include all students and the TAs.

Demo Session Organization

Space Reservation

As explained in #Define Demo Session Schedule and Reserve Space, the space reservation is mostly painless.

Poster Boards and Easels

You need to borrow poster boards to hold the printed posters of the groups, and poster easels to lift the boards from the floor. Getting boards and easels has not been a straightforward process in the past, but the following contacts might help:

• Mandy Curtis: We borrowed poster easels from her in Fall 2016.
• Jennifer Kohl: We borrowed poster boards from her in Fall 2016.

End of the Semester Maintenance

Protecting Project Pages

The final report that each group must complete is in the form of a thorough and well-explained wiki project page. In order to enforce the deadline, all group project pages must be changed to protected mode, so only members of the administrators can make further changes. Besides enforcing the deadline, this process ensures that the project pages will remain unchanged for as long as this wiki exists.

To protect a wiki page, hover or click the link More next to View History and the star at the top-right of the page. Then click on protect and follow the instructions.