FAMEPedia:FAQ/Overview

What is FAMEPedia?

 * FAMEPedia is an online free-content encyclopedia that you can edit and contribute to. FAMEPedia co-founder Ugo Chima Joseph has described FAMEPedia as "a push to make and disperse a free and global encyclopedia of the greatest conceivable quality to everyone in the world in their own language." FAMEPedia exists to bring knowledge to everyone who seeks it.

Who owns FAMEPedia?

 * Who owns the Web site? FAMEPedia's tech framework is supported by a non-profit parent organization, the Miraheze Foundation Inc, which also supports FAMEPedia's sister projects, including FAMEData (a Machine Readable Structured Database for FAMEPedia), Miraheze Commons (A shared media repository for all Miraheze wikis), and others, and owns all of their domain names. The site is run by the community of FAMEPedians guided by the principles articulated by Ugo Chima Joseph, including, for example, an adherence to a neutral point of view.


 * Who owns the encyclopedia articles? The articles hosted on this site have been edited by many people, each of whom has (by editing the article) agreed to release their contributions under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike license. As such, the articles are free content and may be reproduced freely under this license. See FAMEPedia:Copyrights for information on how you can use FAMEPedia content.


 * By law, the contributions are still owned by the people who donated them. These people are not bound by the license and can use their property in the way they like. However, media with multiple authors require permission from every contributor to use them differently from the terms of the FAMEPedia license.

Who is responsible for the articles on FAMEPedia?

 * You are! Editing is a collaborative effort. People have contributed information to different parts of this project, and anyone can do so, including you. All you need is to know how to edit a page, and have some encyclopedic knowledge that you would like to share. The encyclopedia provides users with a certain amount of freedom.


 * You can learn who is responsible for the most recent versions of any given page by clicking on the "View history" link. Nevertheless, if you spot an error in the latest revision of an article, you are highly encouraged to be bold and correct it. This practice is one of the basic review mechanisms that maintains the reliability of the encyclopedia. As a result, FAMEPedia has become one of the most extensive information libraries available on the Internet.


 * If you are uncertain, or find the wording confusing, quote the material on the associated talk page and leave a question for the next person. This helps reduce errors, inaccuracies, or misleading wording more quickly and is highly appreciated by the community.

Should I create an account? Can't I just edit articles anonymously?

 * Editors with user names enjoy several benefits. Among them is the positive reputation that goes with quality work. FAMEPedians with an established history are respected especially with regard to neutralizing article disputes.  In addition, FAMEPedians sometimes find collaborating with unregistered users frustrating, because it is more difficult to contact them with questions, concerns, or suggestions. This is not to say there is a FAMEPedia hierarchy per se.  Although there are editors with administrative abilities (see FAMEPedia:Administrators), these are approved by the community.


 * FAMEPedians with user names are, in a sense, more anonymous than contributors that do not log in. That is, while anyone can see the IP address of a user who did not log in when they edited, only a few, especially trusted people are able to view the IP address of a logged-in user (and this is rarely done). Therefore, if you are concerned about privacy and anonymity, you may prefer to create a user name for yourself in order to hide your IP address.


 * But editing as an unregistered user is acceptable. Many valuable contributors have made this choice. That said, you will not be able to create or rename pages without a user name. Some pages are also protected from editing by unregistered users in order to prevent vandalism.

How do you know if the information is correct?

 * Given that anyone can edit any article, it is, of course, possible for biased, out-of-date, or incorrect information to be posted. However, because there are so many other people reading the articles and monitoring contributions using the Recent Changes page, incorrect information is usually corrected quickly. Thus, the overall accuracy of the encyclopedia is improving all the time. You are encouraged to help by correcting articles, validating content, and providing useful references.

How do you prevent people from ruining articles? (Defacement or vandalism)

 * All changes to a page are registered in a "page history", so any destruction can be replaced by an older version of the page. And, in general, recent changes to FAMEPedia are automatically listed on a special page for that purpose.


 * Software robots automatically reverse obvious defacement immediately. Moreover, there are people who spend a little time each day watching the list of recent changes on FAMEPedia. Any user interested in a particular page can add it to a personal "watchlist", which shows when a page is updated and gives the user a chance to check whether that update is a joke or a substantial contribution. Furthermore, many readers who pass by can correct vandalism or erroneous information.


 * So, the popular pages, which are the most likely to be destroyed, are also those that receive the most attention from editors and readers, any of whom can 'revert' vandalism.


 * To stem a recurrent problem, an article can be temporarily protected from editing and/or user names and IP addresses can be blocked from editing.

Site X seems to be violating FAMEPedia's copyright. Do you guys know about this?

 * All text on FAMEPedia is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License (CC-BY-SA), and in most cases, also the GNU Free Documentation License (GFDL). Over 100 sites using FAMEPedia for content have been identified, and categorized by their degree of compliance.

Which wiki software does FAMEPedia run on?

 * FAMEPedia and the other Miraheze projects use the MediaWiki software to facilitate collaborative editing and storage of page histories.


 * For more information on MediaWiki, see:


 * the MediaWiki article, and
 * the MediaWiki web site.

How big is FAMEPedia?

 * FAMEPedia currently has articles in total in the wiki alone. (This article count is also available on the main page.)


 * Thanks to the mass-collaboration of FAMEPedians, the enlargement of FAMEPedia continues at a rapid pace, a pace much greater than that of conventional encyclopedias.

What can I do about libelous content or an invasion of privacy?

 * By design, FAMEPedia is quite easy to edit so you can simply revert wrong or hurtful information yourself. However, because every revision is logged, special steps are required to remove this information from the historical record. Please see FAMEPedia:Oversight for FAMEPedia's policy on removing historical revisions, and how to request such a change.