HandWiki

HandWiki - Encyclopedia of Science and Computing Recent changes • [No WikiNode] • About • [No Mobile URL]
Founded by:	Dr Sergei V. Chekanov
Status:	Active
Language:	English
Edit mode:	ByInvitation
Wiki engine:	MediaWiki
Wiki license:	Multi-license
Main topic:	Encyclopedia

HandWiki was founded and created by Dr Sergei V. Chekanov on 2019-10-20.

Wiki size:

2,196,279 article pages see stats

(As of: 2023-07)

HandWiki is a internet wiki-style encyclopedia for professional researchers in various branches of science, technology, and computing, based in the United States of America. As other wiki type encyclopedias, HandWiki is designed for collaborative editing of articles. One notable feature of HandWiki is that uses dedicated namespaces for each science topic, unlike the traditional Wikipedia that uses the MediaWiki category concept within the solitary 'main' namespace for all articles. In addition to the categories preserved from Wikipedia, HandWiki has its own categories for local articles. According to the HandWiki designers, this can simplify organization of articles according to each particular topic. The HandWiki is designed using the MediaWiki software, with additional extensions for including programming codes.^{[clarify please]} HandWiki has the following topics included in its dedicated namespaces: Mathematics, Computers, Analysis, Physics, Astronomy, Biology, Chemistry.

HandWiki registration policy

Unlike Wikipedia, HandWiki does not allow anonymous editing (commonly known as an IP editor). The login to HandWiki is restricted for professional researchers, after indicating an evidence for their qualification by imposing a specific requirement that the users who can edit HandWiki articles should have at least one published article in any peer-reviewed journal. This is enforced through providing ORCID (Open Researcher and Contributor ID) number during the registration, which uniquely identifies scientific and other academic authors and contributors. As an alternative, a researcher can send an email to the support team indicating their published research article.

According to the HandWiki documentation, the registered users can create manuals and tutorials using dedicated MediaWiki namespaces, and use different type of licenses. In particular, some articles (especially manuals [noun] and tutorials) posted on HandWiki may contain license restrictions imposed by their authors.

However, HandWiki also offer less restrictive requirements to those who do not have an ORCID account. HandWiki offer the facility for themselves to manually verify prospective editors, though this process may take one to two days.

In a further dilution of their own self-proclaimed high standards, HandWiki are willing to let ANYONE edit HandWiki, providing they pay to edit with a 'donation' of at least US$10 (or more)!

Article acceptance policy

HandWiki, in its original form, has a more permissive policy for acceptance of articles than Wikipedia. In particular, it does not enforce the Wikipedia notability for scholarly content. One important requirement for article submission is the article should have at least one reference to an 'external source', without a clear indication about the nature of this source. It also does not have a super-user or administrator who is in charge of removing articles depending on its content. The main idea behind this decision is that the articles submitted by researches will be sufficiently scrutinized by other researchers, and its mistakes and scientific rigour can easily be determined via collaborative discussions of qualified researches.

Database dumps

As of 2021, HandWiki denies any facility to download (dump) its database of articles. The site specifically states:

HandWiki contains many articles and other material (books, tutorials) protected by the licenses which are not consistent with the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License (CC BY-SA).

However, under the very clear terms of its self declared Creative Commons Attribution Share Alike 3.0 Unported License (CC-BY-SA 3.0), ALL content published under the CC-BY-SA 3.0 is 'free content'. That means that ANYONE is allowed re-use the entire content of all CC-BY-SA material, "in any medium or format". Thus, restricting database dumps of HandWiki content is categorically against the terms of their own stated Creative Commons Attribution Share Alike 3.0 Unported License! HandWiki go on to state:

In future, it will be possible to separate such material from the public-domain articles in the dump files.

However, if, and when this facility might materialise, it still does not give HandWiki the right to deny NOW database dumps of CC-BY-SA 3.0 licensed content.

History

HandWiki was first announced in October 2019 as a research encyclopedia for data science. In October 2019, the project is being carried out under the auspices of the members of the jWork portal. The technical aspect of HandWiki was executed following the standard data analysis principles.

External links

• HandWiki — at WikiApiary.com (founded 2011), the wiki site for detailed information on all MediaWiki-powered websites