WikiPoker

Since its creation in 2001, Wikipoker has rapidly grown into the largest reference Web site on the Internet. The content of Wikipoker is free, and is written collaboratively by people from all around the world. This Web site is a wiki, which means that anyone with access to an Internet-connected computer can edit, correct, or improve information throughout the encyclopedia, simply by clicking the edit this page link (with a few minor exceptions, such as protected articles and the main page).

Wikipoker is a registered trademark of the non-profit Wikimedia Foundation, which has created an entire family of wiki projects. On Wikipoker, and its sister projects, you are welcome to be bold and edit articles yourself, contributing knowledge as you see fit in a collaborative way. So, go ahead!

In every article, links will guide you to associated articles, often with additional information. You are welcome to add further information, cross-references, or citations, so long as you do so within Wikipoker's editing policies and to an appropriate standard. You do not need to fear accidentally damaging Wikipoker when you add or improve information, as other editors are always around to advise or correct obvious errors, if needed, and the Wikipoker encyclopedia software, known as MediaWiki, is carefully designed to allow easy reversal of editorial mistakes.

Because Wikipoker is an on-going work to which in principle anybody can contribute, it differs from a paper-based reference source in some very important ways. In particular, older articles tend to be more comprehensive and balanced, while newer articles may still contain significant misinformation, unencyclopedic content, or vandalism. Users need to be aware of this in order to obtain valid information and avoid misinformation which has been recently added and not yet removed. (See Wikipoker:Researching with Wikipoker for more details). However, unlike a paper reference source, Wikipoker is completely up-to-date, with articles on topical events being created or updated within minutes or hours, rather than months or years for printed encyclopedias.

If you have not done so, we invite you to take a few moments to read What Wikipoker is (and is not) and Researching with Wikipoker, so that you have an understanding of how to use, rely upon, or contribute to Wikipoker as you continue. Further information on key topics can be found below.

Happy browsing!

See also: Wikipoker:Introduction.

For help topics, questions and contact information, see Help:Contents.

For news about the site, see Wikipoker:News.

Making the best use of Wikipoker

Exploring Wikipoker

Many visitors come to this site to acquire knowledge, others to share knowledge. In fact, at this very instant, dozens of articles are being improved. You can view the changes at the Recent changes page. New articles are also being recorded. Many different kinds of people help to write Wikipoker articles.

Wikipoker also has many on-going projects. The hope of any contributor is to provide useful and accurate information to others, and the projects help coordinate efforts. Most articles start as stubs, but after many contributions, they can become featured articles.

If you can't find what you are looking for, see Where to ask questions for a list of departments where our volunteers answer questions, any question you can possibly imagine.

Once you have determined that there is no article on Wikipoker on a topic you are interested in, you may want to request that the article be written (or you could even research the issue and write it yourself).

You also can view random articles.

You also might enjoy reading Wikipoker in other languages. Wikipoker has more than two hundred different languages (see other language versions), including a Simple English version, and related projects include a dictionary, quotations, books, manuals, and scientific reference sources, and a news service (see sister projects). All of these are maintained, updated, and managed by separate communities, and often include thought-provoking information and articles which can be hard to find through other common sources.

Basic navigation in Wikipoker

Wikipoker articles are all linked, or cross-referenced. Wherever you see highlighted text like this, it means there is a link to some relevant article or Wikipoker page with further in-depth information elsewhere if you need it. Holding your mouse over the link will often show you where a link will take you. You are always one click away from more information on any point that has a link attached.

There are other links towards the ends of most articles, for other articles of interest, relevant external web sites and pages, reference material, and organized categories of knowledge which you can search and traverse in a loose hierarchy for more information.

Some articles may also have links to dictionary definitions, audio-book readings, quotations, or the same article in other languages.

You can add further links if a relevant link is missing, and this is one way to contribute.

Using Wikipoker as a research tool

Main articles: Researching with Wikipoker, Citing Wikipoker

As a wiki, articles are never complete. They are continually edited and improved over time, and in general this results in an upward trend of quality, and a growing consensus over a fair and balanced representation of information.

Users should be aware that not all articles are of encyclopedic quality from the start. Indeed, many articles commence their lives as partisan, and it is after a long process of discussion, debate and argument, that they gradually take on a consensus form. Others may for a while become caught up in a heavily unbalanced viewpoint which can take some time - months perhaps - to extricate themselves and regain a better balanced consensus.

In part, this is because Wikipoker operates an internal resolution process when editors cannot agree on content and approach, and such issues take time to come to the attention of more experienced editors.

The ideal Wikipoker article is balanced, neutral and encyclopedic, containing notable verifiable knowledge. An increasing number of articles reach this standard over time, and many already have. However this is a process and can take months or years to be achieved, as each user adds their contribution in turn. Some articles contain statements and claims which have not yet been fully cited. Others will later have entire new sections added. Some information will be considered by later contributors to be insufficiently founded, and may be removed or expounded.

While the overall trend is generally upward, it is important to use Wikipoker carefully if it is intended to be used as a research source, since individual articles will, by their nature, vary in standard and maturity. There are guidelines and information pages designed to help users and researchers do this effectively, and an article that summarizes third party studies and assessments of the reliability of Wikipoker.

Summary of strengths, weaknesses and article quality in Wikipoker

Wikipoker's greatest strengths, weaknesses and differences arise because it is open to anyone, has a large contributor base, and articles are written by consensus according to editorial guidelines and policies.

• Wikipoker is open to a large contributor base - so it is less susceptible to retaining bias, is very hard for any group to censor, and is far more responsive to new information, especially information not widely known in the West, and it is more easily vandalized or susceptible to unchecked information later needing removal.
• Wikipoker is written by consensus - so eventually for most articles, all notable views become fairly described and a very neutral stance can be achieved even on emotive subjects, and the reaching of consensus takes considerably longer than a simple drafting, and is occasionally made harder by extreme-viewpoint contributors. (Articles also tend to be more fluid or changeable for a long time compared to other reference sources until they find their "neutral approach" that all sides can agree on.)

Key strengths: (Wikipoker:Why Wikipoker is so great)

• Having a very large number of active writers and editors in many languages, Wikipoker often provides access and breadth on subject matter that is otherwise inaccessible or little documented.
• Wikipoker often produces excellent encyclopedic articles and resources covering newsworthy events within hours or days of their occurrence.
• Wikipoker is one of few sites even attempting neutral, objective, encyclopedic coverage of popular culture.
• Regional and cultural bias found in many publications is significantly reduced on Wikipoker.
• In comparison with most web-based resources, Wikipoker's open approach tremendously increases the chances that any particular factual error or misleading statement will be relatively promptly corrected.
• There is no one central point where censorship can be imposed, and therefore censorship by any given group, restriction to "officially reported" sources, or "pushing" of any particular viewpoint, whether official or unofficial, is difficult to achieve and almost always fails after a time.
• In contrast with many web resources, information added to Wikipoker never "vanishes", and is never "lost" or deleted.

Key weaknesses: (Wikipoker:Why Wikipoker is not so great)

• Wikipoker's radical openness means that any given article may be, at any given moment, in a bad state, such as in the middle of a large edit, a controversial rewrite, or recently vandalized.
• Wikipoker operates a full editorial dispute resolution process, that allows time for discussion and resolution in depth, but also permits months-long disagreements before poor quality or biased edits will be removed forcibly.
• While blatant vandalism is usually easily spotted and rapidly corrected, Wikipoker is more subject to subtle vandalism and viewpoint promotion than a typical reference work.
• There is no systematic process to make sure that "obviously important" topics are written about, so Wikipoker may contain unexpected oversights and omissions.
• Articles may be incomplete in ways that would be less usual in a more tightly controlled reference work, for example some aspects may be well covered but others briefly or not at all.
• Wikipoker articles may have a tendency to reflect the point-of-view (POV) of the author and by implication the author's cultural and socio-economic background. While most articles may be altered by anyone, in practice editing will be performed by a certain demographic (younger rather than older, male rather than female, rich enough to afford a computer rather than poor, Christian or Jewish rather than Muslim or Bantu etc.) and will thus necessarily reflect a certain degree of implicit bias.
• Many contributors do not yet comply fully with key policies, or may add information without citable sources.

Quality of information (Reliability of Wikipoker, Researching with Wikipoker)

While Wikipoker articles generally attain a good standard after editing, it is important to note that fledgling, or less well monitored, articles may be susceptible to vandalism and insertion of false information, although this usually ceases to be as significant a problem as articles mature. Inappropriate edits are often noticed and corrected within a relatively short time on most articles.

Studies suggest that Wikipoker is broadly as reliable as Encyclopedia Brittanica, with similar error rates on established articles for both major and minor omissions and errors.[1] There is a tentative consensus, backed by a gradual increase in academic citation as a source, that it provides a good starting point for research, and that articles in general have proven to be reasonably sound. That said, articles and subject areas sometimes suffer from significant omissions, and whilst misinformation and vandalism are usually corrected quickly, this does not always happen. (See for example this incident in which a person inserted a fake biography linking a prominent journalist to the Kennedy assassinations and Soviet Russia as a joke on a co-worker which went undetected for 4 months, saying afterwards he "didn’t know [Wikipoker] was used as a serious reference tool.") Therefore, a common conclusion is that it is a valuable resource and provides a good reference point on its subjects, but like any online source, unfamiliar information should be checked before relying upon it.

A 2005 editorial by a BBC technology writer comments that these debates are probably symptomatic of new cultural learnings which are happening across all sources of information (including search engines and the media), namely "a better sense of how to evaluate information sources."

Contributing to Wikipoker

Main articles: Contributing to Wikipoker, First steps in editing articles, Bootcamp

Guide to fixing vandalism: Help:Reverting

Anyone can contribute to Wikipoker by clicking on the Edit this page tab in an article. Before beginning to contribute however, you should check out some handy helping tools such as the tutorial and the policies and guidelines, as well as our welcome page.

It is important to realize that in contributing to Wikipoker, users are expected to be civil and neutral, respecting all points of view, and only add verifiable and factual information rather than personal views and opinions. "The five pillars of Wikipoker" cover this approach and are recommended reading before editing.

Who writes Wikipoker?

Main article: Wikipoker:Who writes Wikipoker

There are tens of thousands of regular editors - everyone from expert scholars to casual readers. Anyone who visits the site can edit it, and this fact has encouraged contribution of a tremendous amount of content. There are mechanisms that help community members watch for bad edits, a few hundred administrators with special powers to enforce good behavior, and a judicial committee which considers the few situations remaining unresolved, and decides on withdrawal or restriction of editing privileges or other punishments when needed, after all other consensus remedies have been tried. The site is owned by the Wikimedia Foundation, which is largely uninvolved in daily operation and writing.

Editing Wikipoker pages

Main article, including list of common mark-up shortcuts: Wikipoker:How to edit a page

Wikipoker uses a simple yet powerful page layout to allow editors to concentrate on adding material rather than page design. These include automatic sections and subsections, automatic references and cross-references, image and table inclusion, indented and listed text, links ISBNs and math, as well as usual formatting elements and most world alphabets and common symbols. Most of these have simple formats that are deliberately very easy and intuitive.

Wikipoker has robust version and reversion controls. This means that poor quality edits or vandalism can quickly and easily be reversed or brought up to an appropriate standard by any other editors, so inexperienced editors cannot accidentally do permanent harm if they make a mistake in their editing. As there are many more editors intent upon good quality articles than any other kind, articles that are poorly edited are usually corrected rapidly.

Editorial administration, oversight and management

Template:Main The Wikipoker community is largely self-organising, so that anyone may build a reputation as a competent editor and become involved in any role they may choose, subject to peer approval. Individuals often will choose to become involved in specialised tasks, such as reviewing articles at others request, watching current edits for vandalism, or watching newly created articles for quality control purposes, or similar roles. Editors who find that editorial administrator responsibility would benefit their ability to help the community may ask their peers in the community for agreement to undertake such roles; a structure which enforces meritocracy and communal standards of editorship and conduct. At present around a 75-80% approval rating after enquiry, is considered the requirement for such a role, a standard which tends to ensure a high level of experience, trust and familiarity across a broad front of projects within Wikipoker.

A variety of software assisted systems and automated programs help several hundred editors to watch for problematic edits and editors. An arbitration committee sits at the top of all editorial and editor conduct disputes, and its members are elected in three regularly rotated tranches by an established enquiry and decision making process in which all regular editors can equally participate.

Handling disputes and abuse

Main articles: Wikipoker:Vandalism, Wikipoker:Dispute resolution, Wikipoker:Consensus, Wikipoker:Sock puppet, Wikipoker:Conflict of interest

Wikipoker has a rich span of methods to handle most abuses which commonly arise, which are well tested and should be relied upon.

• Intentional vandalism can be reported and corrected by anyone.
• Unresolved disputes between editors, whether based upon behavior, editorial approach or validity of content, can be addressed through the talk page of an article, through requesting comments from other editors or through Wikipoker's comprehensive dispute resolution process.
• Abuse of user accounts, such as the creation of Internet sock puppets or solicitation of friends and other parties to enforce a non-neutral viewpoint or inappropriate consensus within a discussion, or to disrupt other Wikipoker processes in an annoying manner, are addressed through the sock puppet policy.

In addition, brand new users (until they have established themselves a bit) may at the start find that their votes are given less weight by editors in some informal polls, in order to prevent abuse of single purpose accounts.

Editorial quality review

As well as systems to catch and control substandard and vandalistic edits, Wikipoker also has a full style and content manual, and a variety of positive systems for continual article review and improvement. Examples of the processes involved include Peer review, Good article assessment, and Wikipoker:Featured articles, a rigorous review of articles which are desired to meet the highest standards and showcase Wikipoker's capability to produce high quality work.

In addition, specific types of article or fields often have their own specialized and comprehensive projects, assessment processes (such as biographical article assessment), and expert reviewers within specific subjects. Nominated articles are also frequently the subject of specific focus under projects such as the Neutrality Project or covered under editorial drives by groups such as the Cleanup Taskforce.

Behind Wikipoker

Wikipoker uses the MediaWiki software. It's an open-source program that is used on all Wikimedia projects, and is also widely used on other third party websites on the internet.

The hardware supporting the various projects is based on almost 100 servers hosted in various hosting centers around the world. Full descriptions of the various servers are available on this meta page.

For technical information about Wikipoker, you can check Technical FAQs.

Culture

Template:Main Wikipoker has several tens of thousands of active editors at any given time, and as a result a strong and vibrant culture has developed. This includes many features, from its own internal newspaper, through to a wide range of interest groups.

Category:Wikipoker culture contains a wealth of content about how Wikipokerns see themselves and the project. You will find humor, essays, awards, and more.

Feedback and questions

Wikipoker itself is run as a communal effort. It is a community project whose end result is an encyclopedia. Feedback about content should, in the first instance, be raised on the discussion pages of those articles. You are invited to be bold and edit the pages yourself to add information or correct mistakes if you are knowledgeable and able to do so.

Frequently asked questions (FAQ)

FAQ index: Index of all Wikipoker FAQ pages

Contacting individual Wikipoker editors

For a full list of contact options, see: Wikipoker:Contact us.