AcaWiki:Infrequently Asked Questions

Each page in AcaWiki has a unique identifier which is a UTF-8 string derived in some automated way from user input. Following are some questions about that process and the use of such identifiers

What sort of characters do you use?

UTF-8

How exactly is the identifier derived from user input?

The 'identifier" is the URL. We're using sentence-case titles; see AW:SC for more details.

What if any system is in place to avoid different AcaWiki summaries for the same article? Or is this allowed/encourged?

This is discouraged; the point of a wiki is to collaborate. Since we're striving for neutral articles, the main reason to have multiple summaries would be if there are multiple audiences. In that case, I'd expect the summaries to be sections on the same page.

What is any system is in place to handle two different articles with the same title?

These will need to be handled manually, by moving articles.

Presumably we'd want a disambiguation system, similar to Wikipedia's.

How is it decided if two articles are the same, or should be considered the same?

(this is an issue of FRBR: different versions/manifestations/... of the same work)

This section is incomplete. You can help by expanding it.

Same question for Books

This section is incomplete. You can help by expanding it.

The current metadata schema is inappropriate for books, or in fact anything other than articles. Are there plans to improve this?

Question, continues: Why not allow summaries of lectures, experiments, datasets, videos? Obviously some metadata challenges there, but if the metadata standard is kept simple enough there seems to be no conceptual obstacle to writing a summary of any document or resource whatever

Absolutely! We're just getting started, so we don't have firm plans to improve the metadata scheme immediately. But you're right--it's something we need to do!

What if any commitment does AcaWiki provide to stability of article identifiers?

If, by, article identifiers, you mean the URLs to a particular summary, stability is not strictly guaranteed. Summaries can be moved. Moves should be relatively infrequent, however.

What if any system is in place to allow bulk upload of metadata, e.g. from BibTeX or similarly structured file, to create multiple AcaWiki entries?

BibTeX files with multiple entries create multiple AcaWiki summaries. The user may be prompted about which summaries s/he'd like to import.

Does AcaWiki support the creation of "stubs" (in Wikipedia terminology) which would be placeholders with just enough metadata to identify an article (e.g. a BibTeX record)?

Question, continues: I think it should, as this lowers the bar to participation of other users who could start summarizing an article without having to upload its metadata

Summaries are expected and encouraged, but there's nothing in place to prevent "stubs" with just metadata.