Overview FAQ

[edit] What is Diyinfo?

Diyinfo is an online free-content Do It Yourself Information based website that anyone can edit or add to. Diyinfo founder Imre Jecsak has described Diyinfo as "an effort to create and distribute a free DIY information resource of the highest quality to every single person on the planet." Diyinfo exists to bring knowledge to everyone who seeks it.

[edit] Who is responsible for the articles on Diyinfo?

You are! Truthfully, you can even edit this very FAQ, so long as each edit is helpful. This is a collaborative effort. People are constantly 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 knowledge you want to share. Diyinfo 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 "Page 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 articles in the site. As a result, Diyinfo hopes to become one of the most extensive DIY information resource 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 omit errors, inaccuracies, or misleading wording more quickly and is highly appreciated by the community.

[edit] How can I contact the project?

There are many reasons you might want to contact the community leaders at DIYinfo.org, below are some of the major reasons why people want to contact us. If you can't find anything appropriate below please use general@diyinfo.org

• • I have some information on a Missing/Wrong/New fact sheet
    

Please send an email to factsheet@diyinfo.org with as much detail as possible about the fact sheet. Such as if you have been clicking around the site and have not been able to find a fact sheet that should be here, someone might have missed it, or mis-linked it, generally this doesn't take much to fix. If there is some incorrect information, we really need to know about this as soon as possible, we need to know the exact fact sheet title/name or URL. Or esnd an email here if you've got a new fact sheet you'd like to which doesn't appear to be on the site, but you're not confident about putting it in yourself.

• • If you're having trouble accessing or navigating the site
    

Please send an email to trouble@diyinfo.org with as much detail as possible about the troubles you are having. This could be due to an external site linking to us, or someone has messed up with the links internally, or you're having a hard time finding what you want. Either way, all of these problems need to be solved fast, if you don't tell us about it, we might never know about it. So fire of an email to us today if you're experiencing any problems like this.

Alternatively, if you want to communicate with a specific user, you can leave a message on his or her personal talk page. The talk page for User:John Doe is located at User talk:John Doe. Many members have also registered their email addresses, which you can use by clicking the "Email this user" link on their user pages. In addition, each article has a talk page. Use the discussion link at the top of each article to get to its talk page.

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

Editors with account names enjoy several benefits; among them is the positive reputation that goes with quality work. Members with an established history are respected especially with regard to neutralizing article disputes. In addition, members sometimes find collaborating with anonymous users frustrating, because it is more difficult to contact them with questions, concerns, or suggestions. This is not to say there is a hierarchy per se - though there are editors with administrative abilities, these are approved by the community.

Members 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 he/she edited, only a few, especially trusted people are able to view the IP of a logged-in user and it is rare for this to be used. Therefore, if you are concerned about privacy and anonymity, you may prefer to create a username for yourself in order to hide your IP.

However, if you would like to stay in the dark, it is fine to edit without a login. Many valuable contributors have made this choice. That said, you will not be able to create or rename pages without a login. Some pages are also protected from editing by unregistered users in order to prevent vandalism.

[edit] How do you know if the information is correct?

As 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 as it attracts more and more contributors. You are encouraged to help by correcting articles, validating content, and providing useful references.

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

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 all recent changes to Diyinfo in general are automatically listed on a special page for that purpose. There are software robots that automatically reverse obvious defacement immediately, and there are people who spend a little time each day watching the list of recent changes on Diyinfo. Any user interested in a particular page can add it to a personal 'watchlist' which shows when a page is updated, whether that update is a joke or a substantial contribution. Furthermore, any of the many readers who pass by can correct vandalism or any other erroneous information. So, the popular pages that people might be most likely to deface are also the ones which have the most editors watching and the most readers, all of whom can 'revert' vandalism. If there is a recurrent problem, an article can be temporarily protected from editing, or user accounts and IP addresses can be blocked from editing.

[edit] Site X seems to be violating Diyinfo copyright. Do you guys know about this?

All text on Diyinfo is licensed under the [GNU Free Documentation License] (GFDL) so therefore is free to all. The only thing that we ask is that

[edit] Which wiki software does DIYinfo run on?

Diyinfo projects use the MediaWiki software to facilitate collaborative editing and storage of page histories.

For more information on MediaWiki see The MediaWiki web site

[edit] How big is The DIYinfo?

Diyinfo currently has 385 articles in total in English.

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

By design, Diyinfo 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 contact admin@diyinfo.org to removing historical revisions.