User:AbhiSuryawanshi/FAQ
Thank you for for reaching out to me. Kindly go through following Frequently Asked Questions.
Basics of Wikipedia
[edit]What is Wikipedia?
[edit]- Wikipedia is an online free-content encyclopedia that you can edit and contribute to. Wikipedia co-founder Jimmy Wales has described Wikipedia as "an effort to create and distribute a free encyclopedia of the highest possible quality to every single person on the planet in their own language." Wikipedia exists to bring knowledge to everyone who seeks it.
Who owns Wikipedia articles?
[edit]- 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 Wikipedia:Copyrights and Wikipedia:Readers' FAQ for information on how you can use Wikipedia 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 Wikipedia license.
Who is responsible for the articles on Wikipedia?
[edit]- You are! Editing is a collaborative effort. Millions of 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, Wikipedia 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.
How do you know if the information is correct?
[edit]- 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.
- See Wikipedia:Replies to common objections for a longer discussion of this point.
How do you prevent people from ruining articles? (Defacement or vandalism)
[edit]- All changes to a page are registered in a "page history", so any defacement can be replaced by an older version of the page. And, in general, recent changes to Wikipedia are automatically listed on a special page for that purpose.
- Software robots automatically reverse obvious defacement immediately. Moreover, there are hundreds of people who spend a little time each day watching the list of recent changes on Wikipedia (see Wikipedia:Recent changes patrol). 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 defaced, 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.
Cranks
[edit]"Wikipedia will be ruined by cranks who post ridiculous theories on the Internet."
Some websites say the first moon landing was staged in a movie studio, or describe supposed perpetual motion machines. It is impossible to correct those websites, no matter how wrong they are, because their authors demand complete control over their work. They fail miserably on Wikipedia.
This does not mean idiosyncratic points of view are silenced or deleted, though. Rather, they should be contextualized by attributing them to named advocates. The more idiosyncratic an entry, the more likely challenges to it will be successful. Because no one owns the information in Wikipedia, misinformation can be fixed. In the best case, cranks who are unable to accept critical editing of their writing will find they have no platform and leave; those willing to present their interests in less-biased ways become valuable contributors."Some persistent cranks could write up a crankish page on the Holocaust, and keep reverting it back to their version."
Generally, partisans of all sorts are kept under control. Wikipedians feel pretty strongly about enforcing our non-bias policy. We've managed to work our way to rough consensus on a number of controversial issues. People who stubbornly insist that an article must reflect their personal biases are rare, and then they generally receive a drubbing.
In serious cases, we can ban people as a last resort and use technical means to stop them from making further edits to Wikipedia.Site X seems to be violating Wikipedia's copyright. Do you guys know about this?
[edit]- All text on Wikipedia 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 Wikipedia for content have been identified, and categorized by their degree of compliance, at Wikipedia:CC-BY-SA Compliance and Wikipedia:GFDL Compliance. Wikipedia:Mirrors and forks has more information, including what to do if someone is violating the CC-BY-SA license or the GFDL.
What if two people edit the same article at the same time?
[edit]- See Help:Edit conflict.
How big is Wikipedia?
[edit]- Wikipedia currently has 6,912,679 articles in total in the English version alone. (This article count is also available on the main page.)
- In a past comparison of encyclopedias, Wikipedia had about 1,400,000 articles with 340 million words in total, the Encyclopædia Britannica had about 85,000 articles with 55 million words in total, and Microsoft's Encarta had about 63,000 articles and 40 million words in total. See: Wikipedia:Size comparisons.
- Thanks to the mass-collaboration of Wikipedians, the enlargement of Wikipedia continues at a rapid pace, a pace much greater than that of conventional encyclopedias.
Sister projects
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Wikipedia is written by volunteer editors and hosted by the Wikimedia Foundation, a non-profit organization that also hosts a range of other volunteer projects:
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Commons
Free media repository -
MediaWiki
Wiki software development -
Meta-Wiki
Wikimedia project coordination -
Wikibooks
Free textbooks and manuals -
Wikidata
Free knowledge base -
Wikinews
Free-content news -
Wikiquote
Collection of quotations -
Wikisource
Free-content library -
Wikispecies
Directory of species -
Wikiversity
Free learning tools -
Wikivoyage
Free travel guide -
Wiktionary
Dictionary and thesaurus
What can I do about libelous content or an invasion of privacy?
[edit]- By design, Wikipedia 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 Wikipedia:Oversight and Wikipedia:Libel for Wikipedia's policy on removing historical revisions, and how to request such a change.
Writing on Wikipedia
[edit]How do I edit a page?
[edit]- Editing most Wikipedia pages is easy, just click the "Edit" tab at the top of a Wikipedia page (or on a section-edit link). This will take you to a new page with a text box containing the editable text of the page you were viewing. In this box you can type in the text that you want to add using wiki markup to format the text and add other elements like images and tables. If you don't want to learn the wiki markup syntax, you can enable the VisualEditor (but you must be a registered user), which allows you to edit pages in a user-friendly way. When you have finished editing you should write a short edit summary in the small field below the edit-box describing your changes.
How do I create a new page?
[edit]- You are required to have a Wikipedia account to create a new article—you can register here. To see other benefits to creating an account, see Why create an account?
- For creating a new article see Wikipedia:Your first article and Wikipedia:Article development; and you may wish to try the Article Wizard. For creating a new page in your userspace see How do I create a user subpage?; or use the Article Wizard, which has an option for that. Make sure that there is enough context and it is notable.
Before starting new article
[edit]- Before starting a new article, please review Wikipedia's notability requirements. In short, the topic of an article must have already been the subject of publication in reliable sources, such as books, newspapers, magazines, peer-reviewed scholarly journals and websites that meet the same requirements as reputable print-based sources. Information on Wikipedia must be verifiable; if no reliable third-party sources can be found on a topic, then it should not have a separate article. Please search Wikipedia first to make sure that an article does not already exist on the subject.
- An Article Wizard is available to help you create an article through the Articles for Creation process, where it will be reviewed and considered for publication. Please note that the backlog is long (currently, there are 1,104 pending submissions; it often takes months). The ability to create articles directly in mainspace is restricted to editors with some experience. For information on how to request a new article that can be created by someone else, see Requested articles.
- Please consider taking a look at our introductory tutorial or reviewing contributing to Wikipedia to learn the basics about editing. Working on existing articles is a good way to learn our protocols and style conventions; see the Task Center for a range of articles that need your assistance.
Most important thing?
[edit]Sources, sources, sources This cannot be overemphasized. Wikipedia exists to summarize the best published sources, not a company's inside goals or mission.
- Articles should summarize what independent, published, reliable sources have said about subjects. Self-published material from a company or group can be included, but it should not overwhelm or be used as the basis of an article.
- Good sources typically include academic journals, newspaper articles, magazine profiles, and expert websites so long as they are not self-published. Poor sources typically include blogs, press releases, and sources with a direct connection to the subject.
- Other editors must be able to verify that information is supported by a reliable source; see Wikipedia:Citing sources.
Things to avoid
[edit]- Articles about yourself, your family or friends, your website, a band you're in, your teacher, a word you made up, or a story you wrote
- If you are worthy of inclusion in the encyclopedia, let someone else add an article for you. Putting your friends in an encyclopedia may seem like a nice surprise or an amusing joke, but those articles are likely to be removed. In this process, feelings may be hurt and you may be blocked from editing if you repeatedly make attempts to re-create the article. These things can be avoided by a little forethought on your part. The article may remain if you have enough humility to make it neutral and you really are notable, but even then it's best to submit a draft for approval and consensus of the community instead of just posting it up, since unconscious biases may still exist of which you may not be aware.
- Advertising
- Please do not try to promote your product or business. Please do not post external links to your commercial website. We do have articles about products such as Kleenex and Sharpies and about notable businesses such as McDonald's, but if you are writing about a product or business, be sure you write from a neutral point of view, that you have no conflict of interest, and that you are able to find references in reliable sources that are independent from the subject you are writing about. For a business or similar organization, make sure it meets the specific notability guidelines for businesses and read the FAQ for non-profits and for-profit businesses.
- Attacks on a person or organization
- Material that violates our biographies of living persons policy or is intended to threaten, defame, or harass its subject or another entity is not permitted. Unsourced negative information, especially in articles about living people, is quickly removed, and attack pages may be deleted immediately.
- Personal essays or original research
- Wikipedia surveys existing human knowledge; it is not a place to publish new work. Do not write articles that present your own original theories, opinions, or insights, even if you can support them by reference to accepted work. A common mistake is to present a novel synthesis of ideas in an article. Remember, just because both Fact A and Fact B are true does not mean that A caused B, or vice versa (fallacies or post hoc ergo propter hoc). If the synthesis or causation is true, locate and cite reliable sources that report the connection.
- Non-notable topics
- People frequently add pages to Wikipedia without considering whether the topic is really notable enough to go into an encyclopedia. Because Wikipedia does not have the space limitations of paper-based encyclopedias, our notability policies and guidelines allow a wide range of articles – however, they do not allow every topic to be included. A particularly common special case of this is pages about people, companies, or groups of people that do not substantiate the notability or importance of their subject with reliable sources, so we have decided that such pages may be speedily deleted under our speedy deletion policy. This can offend – so please consider whether your chosen topic is notable enough for Wikipedia, and then substantiate the notability or importance of your subject by citing those reliable sources in the process of creating your article. Wikipedia is not a directory of everything in existence.
- A single sentence or only a website link
- Articles need to have real content of their own.
- See also:
Words that may introduce bias
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Puffery
[edit]Words to watch: legendary, best, great, acclaimed, iconic, visionary, outstanding, leading, celebrated, popular, award-winning, landmark, cutting-edge, innovative, revolutionary, extraordinary, brilliant, hit, famous, renowned, remarkable, prestigious, world-class, respected, notable, virtuoso, honorable, awesome, unique, pioneering, phenomenal ...
Words such as these are often used without attribution to promote the subject of an article, while neither imparting nor plainly summarizing verifiable information. They are known as "peacock terms" by Wikipedia contributors.[a] Instead of making unprovable proclamations about a subject's importance, use facts and attribution to demonstrate that importance.
- Peacock example:
- Bob Dylan is the defining figure of the 1960s counterculture and a brilliant songwriter.
- Just the facts:
- Dylan was included in Time's 100: The Most Important People of the Century, in which he was called "master poet, caustic social critic and intrepid, guiding spirit of the counterculture generation".[1] By the mid-1970s, his songs had been covered by hundreds of other artists.[2]
Articles suffering from such language should be rewritten to correct the problem or may be tagged with an appropriate template[a] if an editor is unsure how best to correct them.
Puffery is an example of positively loaded language; negatively loaded language should be avoided just as much. People responsible for "public spending" (the neutral term) can be loaded both ways, as "tax-and-spend politicians borrowing off the backs of our grandchildren" or "public servants ensuring crucial investment in our essential infrastructure for the public good".
Can I create article about myself?
[edit]Writing about yourself, family, friends
[edit]- You should generally refrain from creating articles about yourself, or anyone you know, unless through the Articles for Creation process. If you have a personal connection to a topic or person, you are advised to refrain from editing those articles directly and to provide full disclosure of the connection if you comment about the article on talk pages or in other discussions. Requests for updates to an article about yourself or someone with whom you have a personal connection can be made on the article's talk page by following the instructions at WP:COIREQ.
- An exception to editing an article about yourself or someone you know is made if the article contains defamation or a serious error that needs to be corrected quickly. If you do make such an edit, please follow it up with an email to WP:OTRS, Wikipedia's volunteer response team, or ask for help on WP:BLPN, our noticeboard for articles about living persons, or the talk page of the article in question.
Citing yourself
[edit]- Using material you have written or published is allowed within reason, but only if it is relevant, conforms to the content policies, including WP:SELFPUB, and is not excessive. Citations should be in the third person and should not place undue emphasis on your work. You will be permanently identified in the page history as the person who added the citation to your own work. When in doubt, defer to the community's opinion: propose the edit on the article's talk page and allow others to review it. However, adding numerous references to work published by yourself and none by other researchers is considered to be a form of spamming.
Why was my article deleted?
[edit]Wikipedia administrators often delete pages and media in accordance with our deletion policy.
Reasons for deletion
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Reasons for deletion include, but are not limited to, the following (subject to the condition that improvement or deletion of an offending section, if practical, is preferable to deletion of an entire page):
- Content that meets at least one of the criteria for speedy deletion
- Copyright violations and other material violating Wikipedia's non-free content criteria
- Vandalism, including inflammatory redirects, pages that exist only to disparage their subject, patent nonsense, or gibberish
- Advertising or other spam without any relevant or encyclopedic content
- Content forks (unless a merger or redirect is appropriate)
- Articles that cannot possibly be attributed to reliable sources, including neologisms, original theories and conclusions, and hoaxes
- Articles for which thorough attempts to find reliable sources to verify them have failed
- Articles whose subjects fail to meet the relevant notability guideline (WP:N, WP:GNG, WP:BIO, WP:MUSIC, WP:CORP, and so forth)
- Articles that breach Wikipedia's policy on biographies of living persons
- Redundant or otherwise useless templates
- Categories representing overcategorization
- Files that are unused, obsolete, or violate the non-free policy
- Any other use of the article, template, project, or user namespace that is contrary to the established separate policy for that namespace
- Any other content not suitable for an encyclopedia
What you can do about it
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If a page or file that you created has been deleted, please don't take offense. See our content policies and the guide to creating your first article to get an idea of what you should be aiming for. Alternatively, remember we already have 6,912,679 articles – find a subject that interests you and work on improving our existing content.
Depending on the reason why the page was deleted, there are also several ways you can try to have it undeleted by administrators. In every case, you should first make sure that the page is appropriate for inclusion in Wikipedia and, if it is an article, that its content is based on reliable sources. If it is not, your request will likely be unsuccessful.
- If you feel a page has been deleted in error, or if you think you have good reasons for wanting to edit a protected title, first contact the administrator responsible via the method explained above. If you are still not satisfied after discussing it with the deleting admin, you may then start a deletion review. Do not use deletion review merely because you disagree with the deletion, but only if there was a procedural error in deleting the page – for example, if there was no consensus to delete the page, or if it was deleted without discussion for a reason that did not apply to the page in question. Remember that deletion discussions are not votes, and opinions are weighed according to Wikipedia policies and guidelines. For this reason, arguing that there was not a majority in favor of deletion will normally not be successful in a deletion review.
- If an article was deleted as a result of a proposed deletion ("prod"), any administrator should normally restore it on your request. In such cases, you can make your request at this noticeboard.
- If the page was deleted for any other reason, and you would like to be able to access the text (for example, to resubmit it in a form that meets our content policies), there are some administrators who may provide you with the content of the deleted page on your request. Please do not bother to ask for the text of pages that were copyright violations as it will not be provided.
- If anything about these processes remains unclear, you may ask for help at the Wikipedia:Help desk.
- A substantial number of new articles by new users are deleted. If you are one of those new users, you may feel confused right now, and need to ask for help at the Wikipedia:Help desk.
- If it looks like the page you created is definitely about to be deleted, copy-and-paste the source code to a text file, for example by using a text editor (which preserves your wikitext markup), or a word processor. However, after the page is deleted from Wikipedia, do not immediately put the page back up! Otherwise, it will probably just be deleted again, and the page name may even be protected against re-creation. Either find more evidence to demonstrate the notability of the topic, or wait for more evidence to be published elsewhere in reliable sources. If you intend to recreate the page straight away, consider asking at the Help Desk or Teahouse how you can improve the article the next time around. Please note that not all topics are suitable for inclusion – if no reliable third-party sources can be found on a topic, Wikipedia should not have an article on it.
What not to do about it
[edit]- As mentioned above, please do not take offense. It is common to feel hurt or angry after seeing hours of your work deleted, but please try to work with the complex processes Wikipedians have developed to manage the world's largest collaborative editing project.
- Please do not post questions about your deleted article on this page. Instead, if you have questions, post them on the Wikipedia:Help desk.
- If you resubmit your article, please make the appropriate changes so it won't get deleted again. If the article was deleted because the text was a copyright violation, paraphrase the text from the source in your own words. If the article was deleted for not meeting Wikipedia's notability requirements, add multiple references from reliable sources that are independent from the topic (and from each other), and cover the topic in a non-trivial way.
Getting along with other editors
[edit]- Be civil to other users at all times. If you have a criticism, comment about content and specific edits—don't make negative remarks about other editors as people.
- Assume good faith: Please try to consider the person on the other end of the discussion as a thinking, rational being who is trying to positively contribute to Wikipedia. Even if you're convinced that they're an [insert insult of your choice], still pretend that they're acting in good faith. Ninety percent of the time you'll find that they actually are acting in good faith (and the other ten percent of the time a negative attitude won't help anyway). Be gracious. Be liberal in what you accept, be conservative in what you do. Try to accommodate other people's quirks as best you can, while trying to be as polite and straightforward as possible.
- Discuss contentious changes on a talk page: Mutual respect is the guiding behavioral principle of Wikipedia. Although everyone knows that their contributions may be edited by others, it is easier to accept changes when you understand the reasons for them. Discussing changes on the article's talk page before you make them can help reach consensus even faster, especially on controversial subjects. We have all the time in the world, so always make an effort to explain changes to other editors, and feel free to ask them to do the same.
- Undo others' edits with care: Undoing someone's work is a powerful tool, hence the three-revert rule that an editor should never undo the same content more than three times in twenty-four hours (ideally, even less). Try not to revert changes which are not obvious vandalism. If you really can't stand something, revert once, with an edit summary like "I disagree, I'll explain why on Talk", and immediately open a discussion on the accompanying talk page to discuss. If someone reverts your edits, do not just add them back without attempting discussion.
- Try to understand why your article or edit was deleted: Many topics do not meet our inclusion guidelines. Some of the same bad article ideas show up and get deleted frequently through processes such as articles for deletion, proposed deletion and speedy deletion. New editors may benefit from the Articles for creation helper. Other contributions are often just not neutral or just not well-sourced. In general, finding better, more reliable sources and summarizing them neutrally is almost always the best response.
- Resolve disputes: Disagreements are common but they need not be confrontational. Find out what others think about an issue and try to address it, and reach agreement with them. If you still disagree, seek input from other editors informally, or through a third opinion, mediation, or an open request for comment.
If all else fails, try another wiki
[edit]As a result of Wikipedia's rapid growth, by 2007 it had become one of the world's largest and most-visited wikis. Wikipedia articles tend to rank high in the search results for many popular search engines. Prior to Wikipedia, wiki technology was not very well-known; as a result, Wikipedia may be the first wiki many people see, and the first wiki they attempt to edit on. Some people may be under the mistaken impression that Wikipedia is the only wiki, or is synonymous with "wiki". In many cases, this is unfortunate, because Wikipedia is actually a very specialized kind of wiki (an encyclopedia), and newcomers may need some time to understand what constitutes encyclopedic writing. There is much content that Wikipedia is not appropriate for, but which may be appropriate somewhere else.
There are many other wikis, many with content policies very different from Wikipedia's, catering to a wide range of interests. Some of these wikis were founded by groups of former or continuing Wikipedia editors, who had more to say about their topic of interest than belongs in an encyclopedia. Examples include Wookieepedia (for Star Wars enthusiasts); StrategyWiki (for video-game walkthroughs); and Conservapedia (for people with Republican and Conservative views).
For almost every sort of article that would be interesting to someone, there is probably a wiki somewhere that would welcome it.
To find a happy home for the deleted article, check the List of wikis, Wikipedia:Alternative outlets, and WikiIndex. If you cannot find a suitable wiki on your own, ask for some "wiki outplacement" assistance at the Wikipedia:Help desk. If the deleted article is in a subject area overseen by a WikiProject, members of that WikiProject may know of alternative wikis to publish subject area content not meeting Wikipedia's requirements. Once you find a home, you can immediately place the article there if you copied and saved the article's wikitext (though it may need modifications to fit into the new website.) If you did not save such a copy, you will have to ask an administrator to retrieve a copy for you.
How do I change the name of an article?
[edit]- You move the article using the "move" button (you can see it by clicking the downward-pointing arrow to the right of the "edit" button). But in order to do this, you must have an account that has reached autoconfirmed status, meaning it must be at least four days old and have made at least ten edits. If you are not an autoconfirmed user, or the move is controversial, or the page you wish to rename is move protected, visit Wikipedia:Requested moves. You may also request to have an admin grant you confirmed status if you are a legitimate alternative account of an autoconfirmed user.
How do I change my username/delete my account?
[edit]- For changing your username see Wikipedia:Changing username.
- An account cannot be deleted. If an account was deleted, all the edits made by the user could not be properly attributed. You can, however, change your username, and request that your userpage be deleted by adding the code
{{db-user}}to the top of the page. See also Wikipedia:Courtesy vanishing.
How do I cite Wikipedia?
[edit]- See Wikipedia:Citing Wikipedia for details.
Who writes the articles on Wikipedia?
[edit]Wikipedians or editors are the volunteers who write and edit Wikipedia's articles, unlike readers who simply read them. Anyone—including you—can become a Wikipedian by boldly making changes when they find something that can be improved. To learn more about how to do this, you can check out the basic editing tutorial or the more detailed manual.
Wikipedians do a wide variety of tasks, from fixing typos and removing vandalism to resolving disputes and perfecting content, but are united in a desire to make human knowledge available to every person on the planet.
Almost all articles on Wikipedia are written by multiple editors, not just one. If you click on the "View history" tab at the top of an article, a list will be displayed of all the contributors to the article and when their contribution was made. If your purpose is to cite Wikipedia, see the question above. See Who writes Wikipedia for further details.
Can I rely on Wikipedia for advice on medical, legal, financial, safety, and other critical issues?
[edit]- In a word, no. If you need specific advice (for example, medical, legal, financial or risk management) please seek a professional who is licensed or knowledgeable in that area. That is not to say that you will not find valuable and accurate information in Wikipedia; much of the time you will. However, Wikipedia cannot guarantee the validity of the information found here. The content of any given article may recently have been changed, vandalized or altered by someone whose opinion does not correspond with the state of knowledge in the relevant fields. See Wikipedia:General disclaimer for more cautionary information.
About Abhishek Suryawanshi
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