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<h1>Manypedia Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ)</h1>

<h2>What is Manypedia about?</h2>
<p>On Manypedia you can compare the same Wikipedia page as it appears on 2 different language Wikipedias, both translated in your language.</p>
<p>For example you can search for a page in the English Wikipedia and compare it with the same page on the Chinese Wikipedia but translated into English.</p>
<p>But, just as an example, you can also search for a page in the Arabic Wikipedia and compare it with the same page in Hebrew Wikipedia but translated into Arabic. Or from Italian into French, or from Tagalog into Catalan, or from Hindi into Irish, or from Turkish into Yiddish, or from Persian into Swahili … well, you've got the idea ;)</p>

<h2>In which languages can I compare Wikipedia pages?</h2>
<p>The languages from and into which you can translate any page are currently 56:
<ul>
<li>af - Afrikaans</li>
<li>ar - Arabic</li>
<li>be - Belarusian</li>
<li>bg - Bulgarian</li>
<li>ca - Catalan</li>
<li>cs - Czech</li>
<li>cy - Welsh</li>
<li>da - Danish</li>
<li>de - German</li>
<li>el - Greek</li>
<li>en - English</li>
<li>es - Spanish</li>
<li>et - Estonian</li>
<li>fa - Persian</li>
<li>fi - Finnish</li>
<li>fr - French</li>
<li>ga - Irish</li>
<li>gl - Galician</li>
<li>he - Hebrew</li>
<li>hi - Hindi</li>
<li>hr - Croatian</li>
<li>ht - Haitian Creole</li>
<li>hu - Hungarian</li>
<li>id - Indonesian</li>
<li>is - Icelandic</li>
<li>it - Italian</li>
<li>ja - Japanese</li>
<li>ko - Korean</li>
<li>lt - Lithuanian</li>
<li>lv - Latvian</li>
<li>mk - Macedonian</li>
<li>ms - Malay</li>
<li>mt - Maltese</li>
<li>nl - Dutch</li>
<li>no - Norwegian</li>
<li>pl - Polish</li>
<li>pt - Portuguese</li>
<li>ro - Romanian</li>
<li>ru - Russian</li>
<li>sk - Slovak</li>
<li>sl - Slovenian</li>
<li>sq - Albanian</li>
<li>sr - Serbian</li>
<li>sv - Swedish</li>
<li>sw - Swahili</li>
<li>th - Thai</li>
<li>tl - Filipino</li>
<li>tl - Tagalog</li>
<li>tr - Turkish</li>
<li>uk - Ukrainian</li>
<li>vi - Vietnamese</li>
<li>yi - Yiddish</li>
<li>zh - Chinese</li>
</ul>
</p>
<p>Note however that a certain page might be available only on a subset of the language Wikipedias simple because it was not created on that Wikipedia. Only available languages are shown in the drop-down menu.</p>

<h2>How can you translate webpages so quickly?</h2>
<p>Well, it is not us! We use the mighty <a href="http://code.google.com/apis/language/translate/overview.html">Google translate API</a> by means of the <a href="http://code.google.com/p/jquery-translate/">translate plugin</a> of the fabolous <a href="http://jquery.com">jQuery library</a>. The translation is automatic and hence it is not perfect, but we believe most of the times and for most language pairs, it is enough to get a precise idea of what the translated page is speaking about. 
Being able to "understand" the result of hundreds of edits by Wikipedians who edited a certain page in Arabic or Chinese (without knowing Arabic or Chinese!) is something that was impossible up to 20 years ago and we still marvel at how powerful this is for cross-cultural studies.</p>

<h2>I love Manypedia. I would like to know who created it (... and send gifts to them)!</h2>
<p>We love you love Manypedia. ;)
<!-- our photos -->
Manypedia is a project of <a href="http://www.gnuband.org">Paolo Massa</a> and <a href="http://autistici.org/fox/">Federico "fox" Scrinzi</a> of <a href="http://sonet.fbk.eu">SoNet group at FBK</a>. If you want to send gifts (or more likely complain about a bug ...), you can contact us at manypedia at gmail dot com.</p>

<h2>I have a suggestion for improving Manypedia. Are you interested?</h2>
<p>Absolutely! You can send suggestions and bug reports at manypedia at gmail dot com. And, as Wikipedians puts it, <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Be_bold">Be bold</a>! ;)</p>

<h2>What is Wikipedia?</h2>
<p>The most amazing thing ever! Actually we agree with Randall Munroe of <a href="xkcd.com/">Xkcd</a> that it's so easy to end productivity when you enter on Wikipedia and, three Hours of Fascinated Clicking Later, you find yourself having learnt about so many new concept (but not having your work done ;)</p>
<p><a href="http://xkcd.com/214/"><img src="http://imgs.xkcd.com/comics/the_problem_with_wikipedia.png" /></a></p>
<p>What we find amazing is that, at 31 March 2011, 68,943,830 pages (of which, 18,284,271 are articles) have been created by 28,328,543 Wikipedians (of which 4,839 are administrators) with a grand total of 1,095,819,060 edits (<a href="http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Complete_list_of_language_Wikipedias_ordered_by_size#Grand_Total">source</a>)! If 10 years ago, we would have been to tell in conferences "I think it is possible and it is going to happen that in 2011 the volunteer work of 30 million people will be able to create a free-for-everyone encyclopedic resource whose <a href="http://www.nature.com/news/2005/051212/full/438900a.html">quality is comparable with Britannica</a>", you would have laughed at us. Well, what we like about Wikipedia the most is that it is there to testify and demostrate that humans can get together to create fantastic commons and resources free for everyone!</p>

<h2>You incorporate and translate Wikipedia pages, but can you?</h2>
<p>First of all, Paolo and Federico love Wikipedia (you can find us on Wikipedia as <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Phauly">phauly</a> and <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Fox1991">fox1991</a>) and hence it is our pleasure to clearly state here (and in the main page footer) that Manypedia is not affiliated with Wikipedia, as correctly requested by the <a href="http://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Trademark_Policy">Wikimedia Foundation Trademark Policy</a> with the overarching requirement that the use of Wikimedia trademarks be non-confusing and non-disparaging.</p>
<p>Manypedia is a project of <a href="http://www.gnuband.org">Paolo Massa</a> and Federico "fox" Scrinzi of <a href="http://sonet.fbk.eu">SoNet group at FBK</a>. Manypedia is a Web mashup, combining information collected from different Web sources. The main source is Wikipedia and each comparison gives credits to the specific Wikipedia articles (released under Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike License). The content of Manypedia is released under a <a rel="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/">Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike License <img alt="Creative Commons License" style="border=width:0" src="http://i.creativecommons.org/l/by-sa/3.0/88x31.png" /></a> so this means you can copy, distribute, transmit and also remix the text as long as you attribute it to Paolo and Federico of Manypedia and as long as you redistribute the resulting work only under the same or similar license.</p>

<h2>What is the license of the text I find on Manypedia? Can I copy and paste it on my blog, twitter, facebook, or somewhere else?</h2>
<p>Please do!</p>
<p>The content of Manypedia is released under a <a rel="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/">Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike License <img alt="Creative Commons License" style="border=width:0" src="http://i.creativecommons.org/l/by-sa/3.0/88x31.png" /></a> so this means you can copy, distribute, transmit and also remix the text as long as you attribute it to Paolo and Federico of Manypedia and as long as you redistribute the resulting work only under the same or similar license.</p>
<p>On the bottom of the Manypedia interface there are buttons for sharing any comparison you find interesting with the world using Facebook, Twitter, Digg, StumbleUpon, Delicious and GoogleBuzz. If you want to share it on your blog, we are very happy about it as well, of course!</p>

<h2>What is the Linguistic Point Of View (LPOV)? And the Neutral Point Of View (NPOV)? What is the reason behind the creation of Manypedia?</h2>
<p>We (Paolo and Federico) are researchers. at ...</p>
<p>Paolo <a href="http://www.gnuband.org/2010/07/21/differences_in_wikipedia_pages_about_vietnam_war_english_vs_vietnamese/">was pondering</a> ...  but 
Federico is much-much-more-skilled programmer than Paolo and hence it was relatively easy for him to create Manypedia.</p>

<p>Our goal create a useful service (get citations ;)</p>
<p>Neutral point of view.</p>

<p>Manypedia Linguistic Point Of View (or Language Point Of View).</p>

By language NOT by nation.

<p>Papers.</p>

<h2>How can Manypedia find the equivalent of Thai Wikipedia page "X" in, say, Korean Wikipedia?</h2>
<p>Interwiki links, inserted by Wikipedians.</p>
<p>Using the example above, if you find the interwiki link is not present in the Thai Wikipedia page "X" but you know the equivalent page "X" is present in the Korean Wikipedia, please visit the specific Thai Wikipedia page (you can follow the attribution link on bottom of the page) and add the interwiki link. When you come back on Manypedia, Korean will be available as additional language for comparison of the specific Thai Wikipedia page.
 
<h2>Can you tell me something about how to use the site?</h2>
<p>Sure thing. We will create an howto video and post it on Youtube as well (but if you want to help us and screen-record your Manypedia browsing session and tell us by email, you are welcome!).</p>
<p>On top of page, there is a drop-down element (just move your mouse over it and it will drop down) on which you can</p>
<ul>
<li>(1) search for a specific page by on one specific (out of 56) Wikipedia, using autocomplete (after you enter the first characters the system suggests you pages that starts in this way);</li>
<li>(2) get a translation of this page into one of the 56 languages in which this page is available (sometimes a certain page has not been created in another language Wikipedia so the number can be smaller than 56 and sometimes the page is not available in any other language than the chosen one on the left side);</li>
<li>(3) you can also see the most popular comparisons (the wisdom of the crowd might be able to suggest you something interesting and attention-worthy), the latest comparisons (what the latest visitors before you compared?) and the featured comparisons (hand-picked by us, probably less wise than the sum of all visitors wisdom).</li>
</ul>

<p>On bottom of the page, there is XXX
please share!!!</p>

<h2>Can I click on links in compared Wikipedia pages? What will happen?</h2>
<p>We transform HTML links into searches on Manypedia so that, for example, if you are viewing page "A" from English Wikipedia compared with page "A" from Italian Wikipedia (translated into English) and click on the link to page "B" (in any of the 2 pages) you are going to be redirected to the comparison on Manypedia of page "B" from English and Italian Wikipedia. Uhm ... is it clear? Maybe it's easier if you just try and see that happens what you think should happen. Unfortunately, there are many types of links on Wikipedia pages (for example in namespaces such as "Special:" which are rendered in a different way) and so not all links are clickable but we estimate at least 95% of the links are clickable, hence just click it!</p>

<h2>Which information do you show about every Wikipedia page?</h2>
<p>For each Wikipedia page (left side in the original language and right side translated into the selected language), on top before the text, we show:
<ul>
<li>(1) images embedded in this specific Wikipedia page (move the mouse over them and you'll see a larger version of the image)</li>
<li>(2) word cloud of most frequent words (the larger the font, the most frequent the word) thanks to the <a href="http://johannburkard.de/blog/programming/javascript/dynacloud-a-dynamic-javascript-tag-keyword-cloud-with-jquery.html">DynaCloud jquery plugin</a> plugin. This feature is useful in order to get quickly an idea of the main differences in the text of the 2 Wikipedia pages, for example if the most frequent word on the left is "black" and the most frequent word on the right is "red", you quickly get an idea of the fact the 2 language Wikipedia communities have different point of view about the color associated with the concept.</li>
<li>(3) number of total edits (revisions) received by the 2 pages. This is useful to get an idea of the relative attention each page is receiving from each language community (take into account that the English Wikipedia community is much larger than, for example, the Japanese Wikipedia community that is much larger than the Swahili Wikipedia community). Moreover, if a page has received only few edits by only one or two editors, it is possible that it does not reflect an at-least-partially shared vision but only the point of view of the one or two editors. On the other hand, if it has received a large number of edits by a large number of editors, you can assume a little bit more that the current page is the up-to-date <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Neutral_point_of_view">neutral</a> result of the negotiation of the all significant viewpoints about the issue shared by the specific language Wikipedia community.</li>
<li>(4) creation date and creator. This is useful in order to ponder if the page has existed since enough time to get enough attention (Linus Law states <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Linus'_Law">"given enough eyeballs, all bugs are shallow"</a>, we would says that <i>given enough eyeballs, all significant points of view get represented</i> ;)</li>
<li>(5) date of last edit. If the last edit is very recent, it might indicate recent attention received by the page. Moreover, if you find any sign of vandalism or very biased point of view, it might be because the community didn't have enough time to react and fix the vandalism yet.</li>
<li>(6) number of editors. Similar consideration of number of edits hold: many Wikipedians involved mean the page is likely to represent most relevant points of view. On the other hand, if the number of editors is small, it might be that the page is biased towards the points of view of few Wikipedians.</li>
<li>(7) the 5 Wikipedians who edited this page the most, with a link opening statistics about them, thanks to <a href="http://toolserver.org/~soxred93/ec">X! edit counter</a>. This is useful in order to understand if there is one single user "owning" the page (Wikipedia clearly states that <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Ownership_of_articles">"you do not own articles"</a>). Moreover you can get an idea of the relative influence exercised by top editors of this page by comparing their edits and the total number of edits: again, a small percentage might indicate a more shared and neutral point of view.</li>
</ul>
<p>The last pieces of information (3 to 7) comes from Ajax calls retrieving information from <a href="http://toolserver.org/~soxred93/articleinfo/">Articleinfo X! tool</a> running on <a href="http://toolserver.org">toolserver.org</a> graciously made available by the <a href="http://www.wikimedia.de/">Wikimedia Deutschland e.V.</a></p>

<h2>I can't think of any interesting comparison of 2 Wikipedia pages. Can you give me some good starting points for my investigations?</h2>
<p>Sure thing!</p>

<p>list of ...</p>

<p>Popular</p>

<p>XXX</p>

<h2>Can I read this Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ) in another language?</h2>
<p>Sure! We rely on Google translate API for this as well! This text was written in English by us and gets automatically translated into the main language (Wikipedia page on the left side) on which you are viewing Manypedia.</p>

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