Wikipedia talk:Wikipedia FAQ

Do we need to archive old stuff, or can it just be consigned to the great electron recycler in the sky? -- Tarquin

There's not particular need to archive it if it's not useful or of historical value. I'm going through this stuff and taking the useful bits out. -- Stephen Gilbert 03:19 Nov 27, 2002 (UTC)

Discussions not quite ready for the FAQ.

Q. How do I get my own wiki? For example for my own web site or business or family discussions or maybe a church group or some other organisation?

A. See the [UseMod:UseModWiki UseModWiki home page] to download the software used to build this site. (Note that the Wikipedia version is slightly different than the official release, but it is mostly the same.) --CliffordAdams

A2. Also, I am probably willing to hook you up with a wiki of your own at http://www.wikicities.com Someday this may be a full service, for now it is ad hoc. --Jimbo Wales

Q. What's the Wikipedia convention on referencing (not quoting from) outside Web and traditional-media sources? What's the line between referencing, "I think _Foobar For Lusers_ is a great source", and shamelessly plugging something? (asked 26 September 2001)

A. I'd say it's a matter of stating the facts from the neutral point of view.

Q. Perhaps this question is stupid or perhaps this is not the right place to ask it, but I want to be absolutely sure before committing any blunder that could hurt Wikipedia: I would like to write an article about Julian the Apostate (Roman emperor), which I would like to base on an essay I prepared for a high school course some two years ago. This essay relies heavily on a number of books. It is not cut-and-paste work and it contains just a few verbatim quotations, but nevertheless I "used copyrighted work" to write it, because I read the books and got most of the factual information from them. I guess it is not a problem to publish this essay on Wikipedia (including a bibliography, of course), or is it?

A. First, see fair use. Excerpts for comment and criticism generally fall under those guidelines. The fact that your paper was done for school adds additional protection in that context that doesn't apply to the Wikipedia context, so it is possible that excerpts that would be considered fair use for a school paper might be more problematical when placed in Wikipedia, even though we might be able to claim that this is an "educational" project. But if they are small excerpts clearly identified as such, collected and used for comment and criticism, I don't think there will be a problem. The worst thing that could happen is that one of the authors requests us to remove it; we either capitulate and suffer no consequences, or else we argue fair use if we think using the material is important enough. --LDC

Q. How can I find a list of all pages linked from a given page?

A. At the top of each page there is a button, Links to This Page which provides two lists. The first is a list of links to the page but to which the page does not have a link. The second is pages with which the current page has a mutual link arrangement. The links embedded in the page are not provided ..... probably because viewed as redundant.

Wow, what a huge improvement to the FAQ! Thanks a lot, Hornlo! --LMS

Q. Why are some links preceded by a slash?

A. The slash indicates that the linked page is or will be a subpage of another. If there is no target specified, the page will be a subpage of the page you are currently on, unless you are on a subpage already. (There can only be one level of subpages. For instance, a link to /Newpage from Algeria/Economy would make the page Algeria/Newpage, not Algeria/Economy/Newpage.) Users can also specify which page the link should be a subpage of, for instance: Poker/High-low split.

There is an ongoing debate on Wikipedia about the usefulness and limits of subpages, with the debate centering around the contextualization and implied hierarchy of them.. See Larry Sanger/Why I am suspicious of subpages[?] and Larry Sanger/The case against subpages[?] for most (all?) of the debate. But it seems everyone agrees that subpages are useful for commentary, debate, and strictly personal pages such as To-Do lists.

----

Yeah, the very case insensitivity whose lack is causing your contributors huge headaches (and causing untold numbers of duplication of effort and redirections) will cause problems when it is implemented. Lots of articles will need renaming to the new standards.

On the other hand, its the type of problem that gets worse the longer it is ignored. Since you must (probably) go down for a piece while the upgrade is done, anyway, some additional time will be required to automatically convert all article names to the canonical form and detect and somehow handle those article names whose canonical names are the same. The longer you wait, the greater will be this time and the more manual intervention will be required.

If we had some data on the basics of how Wikipedia was set up (platform, how the articles are stored, etc) someone (perhaps I) might be able to offer some help in this matter. And no, I am not about to download and study the source code to find out. The payoff (for me) is not high enough.

--Buz Cory

A: Whatever you do, don't restrict users from things

subQ: If they want to, they still can, but we shouldn't promote this.

A: Why link to a bookstore anyway? There's a wonderful system called interlibrary loan in place. In a matter of days, you can get pretty much any book ever printed delivered to your local library. Why not simply link to the entry in the Library of Congress catalog: it has all the information you need about the book, should you want to buy or borrow it. --AxelBoldt

subQ: Does it also work in Europe ?

A: It also occurs as late as the mid 80s on a U2 album. :-)

1. MHO is that if the two entries are substantially different then write an entry on both, but if they are just two ways of expressing the same thing then the less common one deserves a redirect to the more common one. This is only my opinion, and may not be shared by others. You can make a #REDIRECT page by typing #REDIRECT at the far left (no leading space, all caps) and then following it with [[the name of the page you'd like to link to]]. --Koyaanis Qatsi

Search:

Q. Why doesn't Wikipedia's search look at titles of pages? Sometimes, I want to go directly to a specific page title.

Q. How long does it take for new pages to show up in Wikipedia's index?

(ensuing discussion moved to Ben Finney/Wikipedia markup. I think this issue is important to resolve for Wikipedia; if you do too, please continue discussing there. -- Bignose)

A. I can think of no reason why not. However, if your grandmother's name was Margaret Thatcher or Whitney Houston, don't be shocked if someone moves your homage to make room for what most readers would be looking for.

One of the great things about Wikipedia is that it doesn't really matter how obscure a topic is. Maybe no one will ever read your article. Or, perhaps they will. It doesn't matter. Britannica can't afford the time, money, or page space to have an article about your hometown. Wikipedia can, if you want to write it.

A2. One reason why not is that minutiae would clutter up the search engine. This was the old objection to doing this; now that the search engine looks at article titles rather than complete texts this may not be as significant.

A. There is some discussion in the mailing list archives (links above and on main page footer I think) of maintaining a very flat "Democratic" hiearchy consisting of sysops, knowledgable community users, and new users. Basically the new users would have a couple of minor restrictions to protect the site from initial errors by novices learning the Wiki(pedia) Way or local ropes. I notice that my download button has also gone away so perhaps this mechanism has been added or the download was loading the system to badly or nonfunctional. It would seem reasonable to avoid accidental massive downloads by beginners and casual users so perhaps it has been relocated.

Q. A related question, is a business plan or organizational charter for Wikipedia.com intended to be published at some point such that its contributors can be confident it will always be available free to the public at large?

A1 This is under discussion at http://meta.wikipedia.com/ which is an associated space setup for people interested in working on the site and community infrastructure. This preserves Wikipedia.com scholarly atmosphere and focus on improving and adding content to Wikipedia.com articles.

Q. Is the wikipedia code going to be released under a free or open license? The reason I ask is that it seems to me that the information in the wiki entries is greatly diminished if one cannot access the related wiki links and track to more detailed or general information on the subject of interest.

A. From browsing email list archives it appears there has long been an informal understanding among the wikipedia community of developers that while wikipedia.com is a commercial venture the source to operate the site would be open or free. Browsing the wikitech-L archives reveals that this has been now formally documented and finalized by inclusion of the GPL text into the CVS tree on the 14 Feb 2002.

Q. I am concerned about the backing up of data, however and would like to know more about that. How about wiki-mirrors? I wonder how many giga-bytes just the current versions of all the articles take up. --maveric149

A. One developer on the wikitech-L list stated that for testing purposes he had a "old" download snapshot of 21000 plus articles that was 30 MB and provided a link for developers interested in stress testing. I am unclear whether this included previous versions and attribution data as seen on the history page.

Q. Is the complete database (all data required to efficiently setup a mirror or free fork of the site)download functionality currently available or will it be extended at some point in the future for free (as in beer) or for fee?"

A. ?

Q. Specifically is the attribution data necessary to comply with the specified FSF license contributors submit under by clicking submit on change or article submission part of the primary schema of the content database or a separate shema processed by the GPL source code that runs the site.

A. ?

Q. Are the casual dropins from the recent publicity drives and recruiting efforts given a misleading impression by the front page? In other words, is any work in progress to adequately define organizational and business models such that "Wikipedia: The Free Enclycopia" can explain what its precise intended committment to Wikipedia.com users and contributers consists of and how it plans to attempt fullfill them?

A. This is a complex issue, and it is not at all well-agreed or well-understood exactly what the problem is in the first place. It requires some discussion to find solutions acceptable to Wikipedia contributers and users. Some people are under the mistaken impression (or are conveying such an impression, anyway) that the leadership of the project--Jimbo Wales and Larry Sanger--regard Wikipedia as a "commercial venture," which is just false. They have been discussing ways of making the project entirely nonprofit for many months now. Please join us on Wikipedia-L or on http://meta.wikipedia.com/ if you wish to assist the Wikipedia community with clarifying these questions and articulating well-informed answers.

:-( I liked having the FAQ all on one page. --LMS

• Perhaps both means could be utilized? Keep the present sub-sections and index to them, but also have the full text in the main document? -- April