Dragon Ball Encyclopedia:About
From Dragon Ball Encyclopedia, the ''Dragon Ball'' wiki
Dragon Ball Encyclopedia (IPA: dʒrægɪnbɑːlwɪkɨ) originally started in 2005 as Dragon Ball Wiki and branched off into Dragon Ball Encyclopedia in November 2010. It is an English, web-based, free content encyclopedia based on the Dragon Ball franchise created by Akira Toriyama. The franchise includes two manga series (Dragon Ball and Dragon Ball Z), four anime series (Dragon Ball, Dragon Ball Z, Dragon Ball GT, and Dragon Ball Z Kai), video games, films, books, and countless other products. Dragon Ball Encyclopedia is written collaboratively by volunteers from all over the world. Its articles can be edited by anyone with access to the Internet simply by clicking the "Edit this page" tab located at the top left of every article. On a side note, Dragon Ball Encyclopedia tends to lean more towards the English anime perspective rather than the manga or other sources.
In every article, links are made available in order to guide the user to associated pages that often have additional information. Anyone is welcome to add further information, cross-references, or citations as long as they do so within Dragon Ball Encyclopedia's Manual of Style, Rules, and Standards. One need not fear accidentally damaging Dragon Ball Encyclopedia when adding or improving information, since other editors are always around to advise or correct obvious errors, if needed, and the software for Dragon Ball Encyclopedia, known as MediaWiki, is carefully designed to allow easy reversal of editorial mistakes.
Because Dragon Ball Encyclopedia is a "work in progress", to which in principle anyone 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 any misinformation that may have been recently added, but not yet removed. Unlike a paper-based reference source, Dragon Ball Encyclopedia has the ability to be constantly updated with articles on topical events being created or changed within minutes or hours rather than months or years, which is often the case with printed encyclopedias.
Contents
About Dragon Ball Encyclopedia
Dragon Ball Encyclopedia statistics
Dragon Ball Encyclopedia currently has 100,465 users and 9,383 articles. Every day, visitors from around the world make edits and create new articles to enhance the amount of knowledge held by Dragon Ball Encyclopedia. Visitors do not need any specialized qualifications to contribute, since their primary role is to write articles that cover already-existing knowledge, and people of all ages therefore can write Dragon Ball Encyclopedia articles.
All the text in Dragon Ball Encyclopedia, and most of the images and other content, are covered by the GNU Free Documentation License (GFDL). Contributions remain the property of their creators, while the GFDL license ensures that the content will remain freely distributable and reproducible.
Who writes Dragon Ball Encyclopedia?
Regular editors can be anyone from expert scholars to casual readers, all with one thing in common: the general Dragon Ball Encyclopedia user is a fan of the Dragon Ball franchise. Anyone who visits the site can edit it. Mechanisms exist to help community members keep a watch out for bad edits and for administrators and system operators with special powers to enforce correct behavior. The site is administrated by Nonoitall, PrinceZarbon, 10X Kamehameha, Rolandius, and Raging Gohan.
Making the best use of Dragon Ball Encyclopedia
Exploring Dragon Ball Encyclopedia
Many visitors come to this site to acquire knowledge, others to share knowledge. In fact, at this very instant, old articles may be being improved and New articles being created. You can view changes as they happen at the Recent changes page. If you like, you also can view Random articles. You may also search for articles by using the search box on the left side of the screen.
Dragon Ball Encyclopedia's articles are all linked, or cross-referenced. Wherever you see highlighted text, like so, it means that there is a link to some relevant article or Dragon Ball Encyclopedia page with further in-depth information. Holding your mouse over the link will often show you where it will take you. You are always one click away from more information by the link attached. Other links, found towards the ends of most articles, are for other articles of interest, relevant external web sites and pages, reference material, and organized categories of knowledge. Some articles may also have links to definitions, audio previews, quotations, and art. You can add further links if relevant sources are missing, yet another way for visitors to contribute to the site.
Using Dragon Ball Encyclopedia as a research tool
As a wiki, articles are never complete. They are continually edited and improved upon 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, and therefore may contain false or debatable information. Indeed, many articles start their lives biased. It is only after a long process of discussion, debate, and argument that they gradually take on a more neutral point of view through consensus. Other articles may be caught up in such a heavily unbalanced viewpoint that it takes some time - months perhaps - to regain a better balanced consensus. In part, this is because Dragon Ball Encyclopedia operates on 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" Dragon Ball Encyclopedia article is balanced, neutral, and encyclopedic, containing notable and verifiable knowledge. An increasing number of articles reach this standard over time, and many already have. This is a process though 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. Other articles will later have entire new sections added. Some information will be considered by later contributors to be insufficiently founded, and therefore may be removed or expounded.
While the overall trend is generally upward, it is important to use Dragon Ball Encyclopedia carefully if it is intended to be used as a research source, since individual articles will, by their nature, vary in standard and maturity. Guidelines and information pages exist that are designed to help users and researchers do this effectively.
How is Dragon Ball Encyclopedia different from a paper guide?
The major differences between Dragon Ball Encyclopedia and a traditional paper guide include: very low "cost" of adding additional articles or information, or expanding existing material; ability to provide both overview summaries and extensive detail that are not hard to read; ease of reading due to wiki links replacing in-line explanations; timeliness, accessibility, and ease of editing within the editorial cycle; low environmental cost (no paper or distribution impact on the environment). Also, Dragon Ball Encyclopedia updates itself every minute to stay abreast of the most recent developments, while paper guides are only updated to the day they were created.
Strengths, weaknesses, and article quality in Dragon Ball Encyclopedia
Dragon Ball Encyclopedia'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. The MediaWiki software which runs Dragon Ball Encyclopedia retains a history of all edits and changes, and therefore information added to Dragon Ball Encyclopedia never "vanishes" and is never "lost" or deleted.
Dragon Ball Encyclopedia is open to a large contributor base, drawing a large number of editors from diverse backgrounds. This allows Dragon Ball Encyclopedia to significantly reduce regional and cultural bias found in many other publications, and makes it very difficult for any group to censor or impose bias. A large, diverse editor base also provides access and breadth on subject matter that is otherwise inaccessible or scarcely documented. A large number of editors contributing at any moment also means that Dragon Ball Encyclopedia can produce excellent encyclopedic articles and resources covering newsworthy events within days, hours, or even minutes of their occurrence.
Dragon Ball Encyclopedia's articles and coverage of topics may have a tendency to reflect the cultural, generational, and socio-economic demographics of its contributors. No systematic process exists to make sure that "obviously important" topics are written about, and therefore Dragon Ball Encyclopedia may contain unexpected oversights and omissions. While most articles may be altered by anyone, in practice editing is performed by a certain demographic and will therefore undoubtably reflect a certain degree of implicit bias. An example is how topics about paintings may not be very well covered on Dragon Ball Encyclopedia, while topics about a band's discography are covered in great depth.
Allowing anyone to edit Dragon Ball Encyclopedia means that it is more easily vandalized or susceptible to unchecked information, requiring its removal. While blatant vandalism is usually easily spotted and rapidly corrected, Dragon Ball Encyclopedia is subject to more subtle vandalism and viewpoint promotion than a typical reference work. While Dragon Ball Encyclopedia's articles generally attain a good standard after editing, it is important to note that fledgling, or less monitored, articles may be susceptible to vandalism and insertion of false information. Dragon Ball Encyclopedia's radical openness also means that any given article may be, at any given moment, in a bad state, as happens in the middle of a large edit or a controversial rewrite. Many contributors may not yet comply fully with key policies, or may add information without citable sources. Dragon Ball Encyclopedia's open approach tremendously increases the chances that any particular factual error or misleading statement will be, relatively, promptly corrected. Numerous editors at any given time are monitoring recent changes and edits to articles via their Watchlist.
Dragon Ball Encyclopedia is written by consensus – an approach that has its pros and cons. Censorship or imposing "official" points of view are difficult to achieve and almost always fail after a time. Eventually for most articles, all notable views become fairly described and a neutral point of view reached. In reality, the process of reaching consensus may be long and drawn-out with articles more fluid or changeable for a long time compared while they find their "neutral approach" that all sides can agree on. Reaching neutrality is occasionally made harder by extreme-viewpoint contributors. Dragon Ball Encyclopedia operates a full editorial dispute resolution process that not allows time for discussion and resolution in depth, but may also permit months-long disagreements before poor quality or biased edits are removed forcibly.
A tentative consensus exists, backed by a gradual increase in academic citation as a source, that the written by consensus approach provides a good starting point for research and that articles in general have proven to be reasonably sound. That being said, articles and topics sometimes suffer from significant omissions, and whilst misinformation and vandalism are usually corrected quickly, this does not necessarily always happen. (An example of this occurred on Wikipedia when a user 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, afterwards saying that he "...didn't know Wikipedia 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."
Disclaimers
Dragon Ball Encyclopedia, as is common with many websites, makes its disclaimers highly visible – a practice which at times has led to commentators citing these as support for a view that Dragon Ball Encyclopedia is unreliable. A selection of similar disclaimers, from places which are often regarded as reliable sources, are found within Wikipedia, the Encyclopaedia Britannica, the Associated Press, and the Oxford English Dictionary.
Contributing to Dragon Ball Encyclopedia
Anyone can contribute to Dragon Ball Encyclopedia by clicking on the "edit this page" tab located at the top left of every article. It is important to realize that in contributing to Dragon Ball Encyclopedia, users are expected to be civil and and have a neutral perspective, respecting all points of view and only adding verifiable and factual information rather than personal views or opinions. Repeated vandalizing, however, can be reported by fellow users to an administrator and the user may be temporarily or permanently blocked from editing Dragon Ball Encyclopedia.
Most articles start as stubs. Once you have first determined that there is not an existing article on Dragon Ball Encyclopedia on a topic that 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). Dragon Ball Encyclopedia has many on-going projects focused on specific topics or tasks that help coordinate editing. The hope of any contributor is to provide useful and accurate information to others, and these on-going projects help coordinate all efforts.
Editing Dragon Ball Encyclopedia articles
Dragon Ball Encyclopedia uses a simple, yet powerful, page layout to allow editors to concentrate on adding material rather than page design. This 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 the usual formatting elements and most world alphabets and common symbols. Most of these have simple formats that are deliberately made very easy and intuitive.
Dragon Ball Encyclopedia 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 other editors in order for inexperienced editors to not accidentally do permanent harm due to a mistake in their editing. As there are many more editors intent upon good quality articles rather than any other kind, articles poorly edited are usually corrected promptly by the "rollback" feature.
Editorial administration, management, and oversight
The Dragon Ball Encyclopedia community is largely self-organizing in order for anyone to build a reputation as a competent editor and become involved in any role that they may choose, subject to peer approval. Individuals often will choose to become involved in specialized 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 find that editorial administrator responsibility would benefit their ability to help the whole community may ask their peers for permission to undertake such roles; a structure which enforces meritocracy and communal standards of editorship and conduct. At the present, an approval rating of around a 75%-80%, 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 Dragon Ball Encyclopedia.
Handling abuse and disputes
Dragon Ball Encyclopedia has a rich choice of methods, which are well tested and should be relied upon, to handle most abuses that commonly arise.
- Intentional "vandalism" can be corrected and/or reported by anyone.
- Unresolved "disputes" between editors, whether based upon behavior, editorial approach, or validity of content, can be addressed either through the talk page of an article by the requesting of comments from other editors or through Dragon Ball Encyclopedia's comprehensive dispute resolution process.
- Abuse of user accounts, by the creation of Internet sock puppets, the solicitation of friends or other parties to enforce a non-neutral viewpoint or inappropriate consensus within a discussion, or the disruption of other Dragon Ball Encyclopedia processes in an annoying manner, is addressed in the sock puppet policy page.
In addition, "brand new" users (until they have established themselves a bit) may at first find that their votes are given less weight by editors in some informal polls in order to prevent abuse of single purpose accounts.
Technical
Dragon Ball Encyclopedia uses the MediaWiki software. It is an open source program that is used on all Wikimedia projects and is also widely used on other third-party websites found on the Internet. The hardware supporting the various projects is based on almost 100 servers hosted in various hosting centers around the world.
Feedback and questions
Dragon Ball Encyclopedia itself is run as a communal effort. It is a community project whose end result is an encyclopedia. Feedback about content should firstly be raised on the discussion pages of those articles. You are invited to be bold and edit the pages yourself in order to add information or correct mistakes if you are knowledgeable enough and are able to do so.
Contacting individual Dragon Ball Encyclopedia editors
To contact individual contributors, leave a message on their user talk page. Standard locations to ask about Policy and project-related questions can be found within Dragon Ball Encyclopedia, while the Dragon Ball Encyclopedia mailing list can be requested and sent by e-mail. You can also reach other Dragon Ball Encyclopedians via IRC or instant messengers. Another option is to leave a message for Dragon Ball Encyclopedia Administrators on their user talk pages.
