Wikipedia:Miscellaneous FAQ

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Can you tell me anything about the Wikipedia logo?

It was designed for Wikipedia by The Cunctator and was selected in a low-key logo contest. See Wikipedia:Logos and slogans for more details.

Where can I get the wikipedia icon used in favorites or shortcuts?

Right here: favicon.ico (/favicon.ico)

Is allowing everyone to edit pages safe? I could start defaming people. Then the legal implications of this could become a problem to the provider of this service.

Good question. Such a problem has not come up in the wiki world, so it's currently a theoretical matter. In practice, any sort of illegal material gets removed from active wikis quite quickly. See this discussion (http://c2.com/cgi/wiki?WikiAndIllegalMaterial) on Ward's Wiki for more thoughts.

What is the best way to link into Wikipedia from another site?

To link to the front page, the prefered URL is www.wikipedia.org. Our older URL, www.wikipedia.com, still works but is deprecated.

If you want to link to a specific Wikipedia page, simply use www.wikipedia.org/wiki/, plus the page name, changing spaces to underscores. For example, this is a link to the article Mohandas Gandhi:

<a class=encyclopedia href="/wiki/Mohandas_Gandhi">Mohandas Gandhi</a>

Are there any Wikipedia banners or graphics I can use for a link?

A few of our contributors have made some. They can be found at Wikipedia:Banners and buttons. You can use our logo. If you make your own Wikipedia graphics (please do!) and want them to be redistributed, simply upload them and link to them from the banner page.

Where's the article-a-day list? Can I add to it?

The article-a-day list was a feature to send out wikipedia articles to people's inboxes. This feature has been disabled. Why not check out our selection of brilliant prose instead?

I'm worried about scalability. What happens if Wikipedia is invaded by hordes of new people who don't understand that's going on here, and mess it up?

Wikipedia has a large number of dedicated volunteers who welcome newcomers, edit their contributions and point them to appropriate Wikipedia:Help pages to get them started. Our software maintains a complete history of page revisions, so Wikipedians can quickly undo any accidental (and intentional!) damage. Wikipedia has been Slashdotted twice, and we've handled the influx of newcomers with no problems.

Is there a place where people ask for new entries?

There are three places:

• the Wikipedia:Help desk aims to function like a real library's help desk: people are invited to ask questions on any subject. If you can answer something there, why not start an article on it?
• on the Wikipedia:Requested articles page you can ask for a specific article to be created. See also Wikipedia:Requested pictures.
• the Most Wanted page lists inexistent articles that other articles have link to.

Is there any peer review process to validate the data that is displayed?

Flippant answer: We are all peers here and we all review each others work.

Serious answer: Some people have plans for peer review or article certification systems to work on top of Wikipedia. We'll be sure to point them out if and when any get up and running. For more information, see Wikipedia:Wikipedia approval mechanism.

How is wikipedia backed up? Is it possible that an accident could destroy all this data?

Database dumps are made periodically; off-site storage is do-it-yourself.

Is it "the Wikipedia," or just plain "Wikipedia"?

Excellent question. We don't know, and most of us probably don't care. Some of us say "the Wikipedia" and some of us say "Wikipedia" (and some of us say both).

If there were only one Wikipedia (which, as it happens, there is no longer; see international Wikipedia), then "Wikipedia" would be a (unique) proper name, in which case saying "the Wikipedia" would be rather strange-sounding, like "the Britannica." On the other hand, we might be using "Wikipedia" as a type term, like "encyclopedia," so if someone says, "I contributed an article to the Wikipedia the other day," it's like saying, "I contributed an article to the encyclopedia the other day." But in that case, we're using "Wikipedia" as a type term, and so it should be lower case: "wikipedia," right? Perhaps it would be best to refer to / as "the English Wikipedia" or "the English-language Wikipedia," since it is now only one of several Wikipedias (or is that wikipediae?). Clearly, we are in need of the services of a professional linguist.

On the other hand, it is common for British speakers to say "the Thesaurus" and mean Roget's Thesaurus. Names of reference works like "Britannica" and "Collins" are usually referred to without an article, but the OED is called "the OED" or "the Oxford", probably because the second word is used adjectivally.

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