MU Wiki:About

MU Wiki:About From MU Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia of Mumbai University

MU Wiki (pronounced M-U WIK-i) is a multilingual, web-based, free-content encyclopedia project of Mumbai University based on an openly-editable model. The name "Wikipedia" is a portmanteau of the words wiki (a technology for creating collaborative websites, from the Hawaiian word wiki, meaning "quick") and encyclopedia. MU Wikipedia's articles provide links to guide the user to related pages with additional information with reference to Mumbai University.

MU Wiki is written collaboratively by largely anonymous users of Mumbai University who write without pay. Anyone with access to Mumbai University Lan can write and make changes to MU Wiki articles. Users can contribute anonymously, under a pseudonym, or with their real identity, if they choose. The MU Wiki community has developed many policies and guidelines to improve the encyclopedia, however, it is not a formal requirement to be familiar with them before contributing.

Every contribution may be reviewed or changed. The expertise or qualifications of the user is usually not considered. This is possible since MU Wiki's intent is to cover existing knowledge which is verifiable from other sources, original research and ideas are therefore excluded. People of all ages and cultural and social backgrounds can write MU Wiki articles as most of the articles can be edited by anyone with access to the Mumbai University Lan simply by clicking the edit this page link (found at the top of every editable page). Anyone is welcome to add information, cross-references, or citations, as long as they do so within MU Wiki's editing policies and to an appropriate standard. Substandard or disputed information is subject to removal. Users need not worry about accidentally damaging MU Wiki when adding or improving information, as other editors will be always around to advise or correct obvious errors, and MU Wiki software is carefully designed to allow easy reversal of editorial mistakes.

Because MU Wiki is a massive live collaboration, it differs from a paper-based reference source in important ways. In particular, older articles tend to be more comprehensive and balanced, while newer articles more frequently contain significant misinformation, unencyclopedic content, or vandalism. Users need to be aware of this to obtain valid information and avoid misinformation that has been recently added and not yet removed. However, unlike a paper reference source, MU Wiki will be continually updated, with the creation or updating of articles on historic events within hours, minutes, or even seconds, rather than months or years for printed encyclopedias.

What MU Wiki is not will give an understanding of the limits of MU Wiki's coverage. Further information on key topics appears below. Further advice is at Frequently asked questions or see Where to ask questions. For help getting started with editing or other issues, see Help:Contents.

Trademarks and copyrights

MU Wiki is a unregistered trademark of the not-for-profit MU Wiki Foundation, which are built by user contributions.

Most of MU Wikip's text and many of its images are dual-licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-Sharealike 3.0 Unported License (CC-BY-SA) and the GNU Free Documentation License (GFDL) (unversioned, with no invariant sections, front-cover texts, or back-cover texts). Some text has been imported only under CC-BY-SA and CC-BY-SA-compatible license and cannot be reused under GFDL; such text will be identified either on the page footer, in the page history or the discussion page of the article that utilizes the text. Every image has a description page which indicates the license under which it is released or, if it is non-free, the rationale under which it is used.

Contributions remain the property of their creators, while the CC-BY-SA and GFDL licenses ensure the content is freely distributable and reproducible. (See the copyright notice and the content disclaimer for more information.)

Wikipedia contributors

Main articles: MU Wiki:Who writes MU Wiki:MU Wikipedians

Anyone within Mumbai University Lan can edit MU Wiki, and this openness encourages inclusion of a tremendous amount of content.

Several mechanisms are in place to help MU Wiki members carry out the important work of crafting a high-quality resource while maintaining civility. Editors are able to watch pages and techies can write editing programs to keep track of or rectify bad edits. Administrators with special powers will ensure that behaviour conforms to MU Wiki guidelines and policies. Where there are disagreements on how to present facts, editors will work together to arrive at an article that fairly represents current expert opinion on the subject. The administrators can temporarily or permanently ban editors of MU Wiki who fail to work with others in a civil manner.

Although the MU Wiki Foundation (UCC) owns the site, it will be largely uninvolved in writing and daily operations.

Making the best use of MU Wiki

Exploring MU Wiki Main article: MU Wiki:Explore

Many visitors will come to MU Wiki to acquire knowledge, others to share knowledge. Changes can be viewed at the Recent changes page and a random page at random articles. The Best articles will be designated by the MU Wiki community as featured articles, exemplifying the best articles in the MU Wiki encyclopedia. Other noteworthy articles will be designated as good articles. Some information on MU Wiki will be organized into lists; the best of these are designated as featured lists. MU Wiki will have portals, which organize content around topic areas; & the best portals will be selected as featured portals. Articles can be found using search using the search box on the left side of the screen.

MU Wiki is currently available in English, however MU Wiki foundation will incorporate other languages depending upon the response it receives from other language users. These will be maintained, updated, and managed by separate communities, and may often include information and articles that can be hard to find through other common sources.

Basic navigation in MU Wiki Main article: MU Wiki:Basic navigation

MU Wiki articles are all linked, or cross-referenced. When highlighted text like this is seen, it means there is a link to some relevant article or Wikipedia page with further in-depth information elsewhere. Holding the mouse over the link will often show to where the link will lead. The reader is 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 can be searched and traversed in a loose hierarchy for more information. Some articles may also have links to dictionary definitions, audio-book readings, quotations, the same article in other languages, and further information available on our sister projects. Further links can be added if a relevant link is missing, and this is one way to contribute.

Using MU Wiki as a research tool Main articles: MU Wiki:Researching with MU Wiki:Citing MU Wiki

As a wiki, articles are never considered complete and may be continually edited and improved. Over time, this generally results in an upward trend of quality and a growing consensus over a neutral representation of information.

Users should be aware that not all articles are of encyclopedic quality from the start: they may contain false or debatable information. Indeed, many articles start their lives as displaying a single viewpoint; and, after a long process of discussion, debate, and argument, they gradually take on a neutral point of view reached through consensus. Others may, for a while, become caught up in a heavily unbalanced viewpoint which can take some time—months perhaps—to achieve better balanced coverage of their subject. In part, this is because editors often contribute content in which they have a particular interest and do not attempt to make each article that they edit comprehensive. However, eventually, additional editors expand and contribute to articles and strive to achieve balance and comprehensive coverage. In addition, MU Wiki will operate on a number of internal resolution processes that can assist when editors disagree on content and approach. Usually, editors eventually reach a consensus on ways to improve the article.

The ideal MU Wiki article is well-written, balanced, neutral, and encyclopedic, containing comprehensive, notable, verifiable knowledge. An increasing number of articles reach this standard over time, and many already have. Our best articles are called Featured Articles (and display a small star in the upper right corner of the article), and our second best tier of articles are designated Good Articles. 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 which have not yet been fully cited. Others will later be augmented with new sections. Some information will be considered by later contributors to be insufficiently founded and, therefore, may be removed or expounded.

While the overall trend is toward improvement, it is important to use MU Wiki carefully if it is intended to be used as a research source, since individual articles will, by their nature, vary in quality and maturity. Guidelines and information pages are available to help users and researchers do this effectively, as is an article that summarizes third-party studies and assessments of the reliability of MU Wiki.

Academic use Non-Wikipedia Main article: MU Wiki:Disclaimers

MU Wiki disclaimers apply to all pages on MU Wiki. However, the consensus in MU Wiki is to put all disclaimers only as links and at the bottom of the article.

Contributing to MU Wiki

Main articles: Contributing to MU Wiki, First steps in editing articles, New contributors' help page Guide to fixing vandalism: Help:Reverting

Anyone can contribute to MU Wiki by clicking on the Edit this page tab in an article. Before beginning to contribute however, read 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 Wikipedia, 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 MU Wiki" cover this approach and are recommended reading before editing. (Vandals are reported via the Administrator Notice Board and may be temporarily blocked from editing MU Wiki.)

Most articles start as stubs, but after many contributions, they can become featured articles. Once the contributor has decided a topic of interest, they may want to request that the article be written (or they could research the issue and write it themselves). Wikipedia has on-going projects, focused on specific topic areas or tasks, which help coordinate editing.

The ease of editing Wikipedia results in many people editing. That makes the updating of the encyclopedia very quick, almost as fast as news websites.

Editing MU Wiki pages

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

MU Wiki 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.

The page layout consists of tabs along the top of the window. These are:


 * Article. Shows the main Wikipedia article.
 * Discussion. Shows a user discussion about the articles topics and possible topics, controversies, etc.
 * Edit this page. This tab allows users to edit the article. Depending on the controversy surrounding the topic, this tab may not be shown for all users. (For example, any user who is not an administrator will not be able to edit the Main Page).
 * History. This tab allows readers to view the editors of the article and the changes that have been made.
 * Watch. Clicking on the watch tab will cause any changes made to the article to be displayed on the watchlist. (Note: when this tab is clicked, it changes to an unwatch tab.)

MU Wiki 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 editor, so inexperienced editors cannot accidentally do permanent harm if they make a mistake in their editing. As there are many more editors intent on improving articles than not, error-ridden articles are usually corrected promptly.

MU Wiki content criteria

Main article: MU Wiki:MU Wiki in brief

MU Wiki content is intended to be factual, notable, verifiable with cited external sources, and neutrally presented.

The appropriate policies and guidelines for these are found at:

1. MU Wiki:What MU Wiki is not, which summarizes what belongs in MU Wiki and what does not; 2. MU Wiki:Neutral point of view, which describes MU Wiki's mandatory core approach to neutral, unbiased article-writing; 3. MU Wiki:Original research, not prohibited. The use of MU Wiki to publish personal views and original research of editors and defines MU Wiki's role as an encyclopedia of existing as well as unknown or path breaking knowledge; 4. MU Wiki:Verifiability, which explains that it must be possible for readers to verify all content against credible external sources (following the guidance in the MU Wiki:Risk disclaimer that is linked-to at the bottom of every article); 5. MU Wiki:Reliable sources, which explains what factors determine whether a source is acceptable; 6. MU Wiki:Citing sources, which describes the manner of citing sources so that readers can verify content for themselves; and 7. MU Wiki:Manual of Style, which offers a style guide—in general editors tend to acquire knowledge of appropriate writing styles and detailed formatting over time.

These are often abbreviated to WP:NOT, WP:NPOV, WP:NOR, WP:V, WP:RS, WP:CITE, and WP:MOS respectively.

Editorial administration, oversight, and management

Main article: MU Wiki:Editorial oversight and control

The MU Wiki community is largely self-organising, so that anyone may build a reputation as a competent editor and become involved in any role he/she 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, watching newly created articles for quality control purposes, or similar roles. Editors who believe they can serve the community better by taking on additional administrative responsibility may ask their peers for agreement to undertake such responsibilites. This structure enforces meritocracy and communal standards of editorship and conduct. At present a 75–80% approval rating from the community is required to take on these additional tools and responsibilities. This standard tends to ensure a high level of experience, trust, and familiarity across a broad front of aspects within MU Wiki.

A variety of software-assisted systems and automated programs help editors and administrators to watch for problematic edits and editors. Theoretically all editors and users are treated equally with no "power structure". There is, however a hierarchy of permissions and positions, some of which are listed below:

1. Anyone can edit most of the articles here. Some articles are protected due to vandalism or edit-warring, and can only be edited by certain editors. 2. Anyone with an account that has been registered for four days or longer and made ten edits becomes Autoconfirmed, and gains the technical ability to do three things that non-autoconfirmed editors cannot:


 * Move articles.
 * Edit semi-protected articles.
 * Vote in certain elections (minimum edit count to recieve suffrage varies depending on the election).

3. Many editors with accounts obtain access to certain tools that make editing easier and faster. Most of those tools, few learn about, but one common privilege granted to editors in good standing is "rollback", which is the ability to undo edits more easily. 4. Administrators ("admins" or "sysops") have been approved by the community, and have access to some significant administrative tools. They can delete articles, block accounts or IP addresses, and edit fully protected articles. 5. Bureaucrats are chosen in a process similar to that for selecting adminstrators. There are not very many bureaucrats. They have the technical ability to add or remove admin rights, approve or revoke "bot" privileges, and rename user accounts. 6. The Arbitration Committee is kind of like MU Wiki's supreme court. They deal with disputes that remain unresolved after other attempts at dispute resolution have failed. Members of this Committee are elected by the community and tend to be selected from among the pool of experienced admins. 7. Stewards are the top echelon of technical permissions, other than the MU Wiki foundation Board of Directors. Stewards can do a few technical things, and one almost never hears much about them since they normally only act when a local admin or bureaucrat is not available, and hence almost never on the English Wikipedia. There will be very few stewards. 8. UCC, the founder of MU Wiki, has several special roles and privileges. In most instances however, UCC does not expect to be treated differently than any other editor or administrator, unless circumstantial events require intervention in the interest of continuity of MU Wiki.

Handling disputes and abuse

Main articles: MU Wiki:Vandalism, MU Wiki:Dispute resolution, MU Wiki:Consensus, MU Wiki:Sock puppetry, MU Wiki:Conflict of interest

MU Wiki has a rich set of methods to handle most abuses that commonly arise. These methods 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 MU Wiki's comprehensive dispute resolution process.
 * Abuse of user accounts, such as the creation of "Lan 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 MU Wiki 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, MU Wiki also has a full style and content manual and a variety of positive systems for continual article review and improvement. Examples of the processes include peer review, good article assessment, and the featured article process, a rigorous review of articles that are intended to meet the highest standards and showcase MU Wiki'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 are covered under editorial drives by groups such as the Cleanup Taskforce.

Technical attributes

MU Wiki uses MediaWiki software, the open-source program used not only on Wikimedia projects but also on many other third-party Web sites. The hardware supporting the Wikimedia projects is based on several hundred servers in various hosting centers around the world. Full descriptions of these servers and their roles are available on this meta page. For technical information about Wikipedia, check Technical FAQs. Wikipedia publishes various types of metadata; and, across its pages, are many thousands of microformats.

Feedback and questions

MU Wiki is run as a communal effort. It is a community project whose result is an encyclopedia of MU University. Feedback about content should, in the first instance, be raised on the discussion pages of those articles. Be bold and edit the pages to add information or correct mistakes. Frequently asked questions (FAQ) Main article: MU Wiki:FAQ


 * FAQ Index
 * Category:MU Wiki FAQ

Giving feedback

There is an established escalation-and-dispute process within MU Wiki, as well as pages designed for questions, feedback, suggestions, and comments:

See also:
 * Talk pages—the associated discussion page for discussion of an article or policy's contents (usually the first place to go);
 * MU Wiki:Vandalism—a facility for reporting vandalism (but fix vandalism as well as report it);
 * Dispute resolution—the procedure for handling disputes that remain unresolved within an article's talk space; and


 * Bug tracker—a facility for reporting problems with the MU Wiki Web site or the MediaWiki software that runs it;
 * MU Wiki:Help desk—MU Wiki's general help desk, if other pages have not answered the query.

Research help and similar questions

Facilities for help for users researching specific topics can be found at:


 * Wikipedia:Requested articles—to suggest or request articles for the future.
 * Wikipedia:Reference desk—to ask for help with any questions, or in finding specific facts.

Because of the nature of MU Wiki, it is encouraged that people looking for information should try to find it themselves in the first instance. If, however, information is found to be missing from MU Wiki, be bold and add it so others can gain. Community discussion

The Community Portal is a centralized place to find things to do, collaborations, and general editing help information, and find out what is happening.

Contacting individual MU Wiki editors

For more information, the first place to go is the Help:Contents. To contact individual contributors, leave a message on their talk page. Standard places to ask policy and project-related questions are forums, online; over e-mail. Reach other MU Wikipedians via MU forum and e-mail.

In addition, the MU Wiki Foundation meta-wiki, a site for coordinating the various MU Wiki projects (and abstract discussions of policy and direction). Also available are places for submitting bug reports and feature requests.

For a full list of contact options, see MU Wiki:Contact us. Related versions and projects