Football Merge Wiki:FAQ

What is The Football Wiki?

 * The Football Wiki is a free content, freely editable online encyclopedia about everything football, including the leagues, players, stadiums and rules.

Who owns The Football Wiki?

 * The Football Wiki is hosted by Wikia, a free wiki hosting service operated by Wikia, Inc., a for-profit organisation founded by Jimmy Wales and Angela Beesley. Wikia receives all profit from the Google AdSense advertisements on The Football Wiki. Wikia is responsible for technical issues with the site; it also sometimes provides legal advice and is our legal Designated Agent.


 * However, The Football Wiki's content, licensed under the GFDL, is not "owned" by anyone in the traditional sense. Anyone can reuse it elsewhere or even download the database dump and make a mirror or "fork" (not that we would be very excited in the latter case, though).

When and why was The Football Wiki created?

 * The Football Wiki was started in February 2006 as a project that would provide a more complete coverage of football than Wikipedia.

Who is responsible for The Football Wiki content?

 * You are! In fact, you can edit this very FAQ! However, note that since The Football Wiki is an unofficial, community-driven project, edited by hundreds of people unfamiliar with each other, we cannot possibly guarantee (and explicitly disclaim) any degree of accuracy and validity, although we do strive for both accuracy and verifiability; this means that everyone should be able to verify the facts mentioned in every article.


 * You can find who contributed to a particular article by looking at its edit history.

What keeps The Football Wiki from being destroyed?

 * Every article contains an edit history (accessible from the "history" tab by default), which records all edits to the article since it was created. In case someone makes a bad edit (intentionally or not) by vandalizing the article or inserting non-canon information, anyone can revert (restore) the article to an earlier, better revision.

How can I contact the project?

 * The Community Portal is the general place to ask questions about The Baseball Wiki or give feedback, although if it by its very nature only concerns the administrators, try contacting the Administrators instead through their talk pages.

Is The Football Wiki copyrighted?

 * Yes, all contributions are copyrighted by the people who made them. This means that if you edit an article, you hold copyright for the edits you made, but not for edits made by other people contributing to the same article.


 * The GNU Free Documentation License, which we use, leverages the legal institute of copyright to ensure that everyone will have the right to freely access, modify and redistribute licensed content, no matter what. Therefore, do not contribute if you do not want your edits to be in turn mercilessly edited by others.

Can I use The Football Wiki content on my site/elsewhere?

 * Yes! However, this only applies to the text, licensed under the GFDL, and a select few free images. Most of our images are copyrighted to either a football league, club or player or one of many photographic/press agencies, and used under the fair use clause for identification purposes, and using them for other purposes or in countries where fair use conditions do not apply may be illegal.


 * If you use The Football Wiki articles elsewhere, all you are legally required to do (by the license) is to add a copyright notice saying that the article is copyrighted and licensed under the GFDL, and a link to the original article. You can freely modify and redistribute the material, provided that you license your modifications under the GFDL as well. You cannot license it on other conditions or put it in the public domain, nor can you claim copyright for content you did not write yourself (everyone only holds copyright to the contributions they themselves made).

Can I use The Football Wiki content on another wiki?

 * Yes, if the said wiki is itself licensed under the GFDL. This includes all of Wikia (with the exception of Memory Alpha and Uncyclopedia, which are sister projects licensed under Creative Commons licenses) and most Wikimedia Foundation projects, including Wikipedia. In this case, the aforementioned copyright notice goes to the talk page of the said article; the restrictions still apply.

Can I use content from other sites on The Football Wiki?

 * No. By default, every work is copyrighted and the author holds exclusive rights to it, unless they explicitly release all or some of them. You can insert GFDL or public domain text into articles verbatim, but not anything else.

What wiki software does The Football Wiki use?

 * The Football Wiki (and the rest of Wikia) uses MediaWiki, the same software as Wikipedia and other Wikimedia Foundation projects. Wikia also uses some third-party extensions, which are available to all hosted wikis. The exact details can be found at Special:Version.

Do I have to register?

 * While registration is optional, it is strongly recommended. You can view and edit pages as an anonymous user, but registration hides your IP address and gives you the ability to upload files, move (rename) pages, and edit so-called semi-protected pages (after a few days).


 * Most importantly, registration gives you an identity and makes you a full-fledged member of The Football Wiki community. After you register and make your first edit, another user will usually greet you on your talk page and give links to some useful information pages. Registration is the first step in earning reputation and respect, and who knows, maybe one day you will be nominated for an administrative position!

What are namespaces?

 * Namespaces are large "storages" that group pages according to their function. Placing a page in a namespace causes the MediaWiki software to treat it in a special way. For example, this page is in the "Football" namespace, according to its prefix (Football:FAQ). Every namespace except Special (whose pages are generated by scripts on the fly, rather than being stored in the database) has an appropriate talk namespace, unless it is itself a talk namespace. For example, the talk page for the article named Ronaldinho (located in the default namespace, without any prefix) resides at Talk:Ronaldinho.

Only the Wikia staff can add or remove namespaces or special pages. Neither regular users nor administrators can do that.

Editing questions

 * See also Football:Editing FAQ

What is the difference between red, blue and light blue links?

 * Blue links point to existing pages (like Main Page), red links point to nonexistent pages (like MediaWiki:Nonexistent), and light blue links are either external or interwiki links: in short, links that are supposed to point outside The Football Wiki.

Where can I discuss pages?

 * Each page has a built-in discussion (talk) page, which can be accessed via the "discussion" tab. While discussing articles, please limit your posts to the article content, not the article subject. For example, the Talk:Ronaldinho page should not be used to find out who thinks that Ronaldinho is the greatest footballer ever, but discussions whether (and how) it should be expanded, whether a certain image should be replaced or a section reworded are perfectly acceptable. For discussions about football in general please use the Forum.

Fancy signatures
Here's how to make a fancy signature for your talk posts:

Click on the "preferences" tab at the top right of your screen.

On the Preferences page, put this in the Nickname box, with your User name and real first name plugged in:


 * — Firstname  ( talk )

Then check the "Raw signatures" box underneath, and hit the "Save" button at the bottom of the page.

Then, when you sign your talk posts, you just have to type the four tildes, and the new signature will appear. You can tweak that code in a bunch of different ways; feel free to play around with it!

Somebody reverted my edits, what should I do?

 * Generally, not revert to your version in turn. This can start a revert war (also known as edit war), which is seen as disruptive because it prevents other contributors from improving the same article. Instead, question yourself whether the revert was justified, look at the edit history for the reason given, and try to settle the case on the talk page.

What is a minor edit?

 * A minor edit is an edit that it is so non-noteworthy that users monitoring the article can usually skip it. Examples are spelling and grammar corrections, corrections of formatting and template usage. Addition and omission of content, as well as factual corrections, are not minor edits and should not be marked as such.


 * If you accidentally marked a non-minor edit as a minor one, make a dummy edit (an edit that affects the source wikitext but not the output, like changing one space to two or vice versa), mark it as non-minor, and explain the problem.

What is a semi-protected page?

 * Semi-protected pages are pages that can only be edited by registered users that have been registered for 4 days or longer. It is done to prevent pages from being vandalized by anonymous or very new users. Like full protection, it is only used in extreme cases. If full protection is a last resort measure, semi-protection can be thought of a "penultimate resort".

Can I become an administrator?

 * Administrators hold much power, but also have much responsibility. There are a number of prerequisites for becoming an administrator, and whether or not a nomination succeeds largely depends on what other users think of you.