EA Wiki: FAQ - EA Forum

What is the EA Wiki?

The Effective Altruism Wiki (henceforth, the Wiki) attempts to build an online encyclopedia of effective altruism.

Who can contribute to the Wiki?

Anyone with an EA Forum account can edit the Wiki. A team of admins reviews new articles.

How does the Wiki relate to the tagging system?

Tags are labels that can be attached to posts, and that help us organize the Forum content. Adopting a clever innovation introduced by LessWrong, we allow Wiki articles to also serve as tags, and vice versa. Thus, clicking on a tag both generates a list of all posts sharing that tag and displays the contents of the corresponding Wiki article. Extending the tag system in this way allows us to integrate the Wiki with the Forum better.

Why is the Wiki valuable?

EA content currently exists scattered in countless blog posts, forum articles, scholarly papers and even social media threads. We believe that there is considerable value in presenting all this content in summary form and organized systematically in a single location.

This helps those new to effective altruism familiarize themselves with its core ideas, and allows experienced effective altruists to find additional publications on a topic of interest. It also contributes to making effective altruism concepts more notable and recognizable; makes this content more easily discoverable on search engines; and facilitates its inclusion in other reference works, such as Wikipedia or the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy.

How can I contribute to the EA Wiki?

If you think you may be a good fit for it, you should consider contributing to the EA Wiki.

The easiest way to become involved is to look at the list of entries in need of work. These entries are flagged with a variety of 'TODO' flags, which tell you what sort of action is required. You can also flag entries yourself, if you notice that the entry requires a particular type of improvement.

I have no experience with wikis. Can you help me get started?

Don't worry—it's pretty simple. Here's some basic guidance:

Organize the articles into sections. Start with a concise summary of the subject in the lead section, followed by as many sections and subsections as the article requires. Optionally, you may also include after those the sections Further reading, External links and Related entries.
When appropriate, provide references. Attach a footnote to the clause or sentence you want to reference. Do not worry about the proper formatting of references; we delegate this task to an assistant who is already familiar with our conventions.
Use internal links only (i.e. links to other EA Wiki articles, or "wikilinks"), except in footnotes and the External links section.
Write in an encyclopedic tone. Avoid slang, colloquialisms, legalese or unnecessary jargon. Avoid stating as facts claims that would be disputed by someone endorsing reasonable epistemic standards. Avoid making value judgments.

You can see examples of articles that conform to these standards here and here, and learn more by consulting our Style Guide.

Where can I find a list of all Wiki articles?

Here is a list of entries organized thematically, followed by a list in alphabetical order.

How can I see the most recent Wiki-related activity?

See the Recent Tag & Wiki activity section of the Wiki dashboard. It shows all Wiki edits and comments, sorted in reverse chronological order, and omits any other Forum activity.

I would like to add references, but it is tedious to do this by hand. I'm also confused by your citation format. Is there a way to make this whole thing less annoying?

You shouldn't waste time formatting references. Instead, either simply provide minimal bibliographic details for the work you want to cite (e.g. "Ord, Precipice") so that we can then give it the appropriate format, or use Zotero—a popular reference management software—in combination with our Citation Style Language (CSL) file, as explained in what follows.

Download and install the Zotero desktop app, the Zutilo plugin, and (optionally) the Zotero Connector browser extension.
Open Zotero and go to 'Preferences'.
Under the 'Cite' tab, click on 'Get additional styles'.
Search for the 'Effective Altruism Wiki' style and click on it. This will add it to your style manager.
Under the 'Export' tab, select 'Effective Altruism Wiki' in the 'Item Format' dropdown menu.
Go to 'Tools > Zutilo Preferences'.
Scroll down until you see 'QuickCopy items' line, then select a convenient shortcut key and click 'Apply'.

You are now ready to insert properly formatted references. With the cursor on the work you want to cite, just press the shortcut key you selected. This will copy the citation to the clipboard in the correct format, which you can paste into the EA Forum editor. Please note that the editor needs to be configured to use markdown. If you don't want to use markdown, you can instead convert the markdown to HTML, and then copy and paste the rendered HTML into the editor. To do this, you can use an online markdown to HTML converter, or your favorite text editor.

To cite a work not currently in your Zotero database, you have two options. First, you can import it from the EA Wiki public Zotero library (a database of all works currently cited somewhere on the Wiki). Second, you can add it with Zotero Connector. We recommend setting up a keyboard shortcut. In Chrome, go to 'Settings > Extensions > Keyboard Shortcuts', then scroll down to Zotero Connector. In Firefox, go to 'Settings > Extensions & Themes', click on the wheel, then 'Manage Extension Shortcuts' and scroll down to Zotero Connector.

If you don't want to install Zotero, you can still access our Zotero library and search for the work you want to reference. If you find it,

Click on it to select it.
Click on the 'bookshelf' icon on top ('Create Bibliography').
Select 'other styles available'
Choose the 'Effective Altruism Wiki' citation style.

Again, this will show the reference in markdown, which you can easily convert to HTML.

The Wiki is missing an entry on a topic I would like to see covered. Can I create it?

Yes! You can do this most easily by clicking “Add topic” on the topic line at the top of any post. However, to stay on the Forum for the long term, all topics are vetted by the Forum facilitation team.

When you add a new topic, ensure that:

The topic, or a very similar topic, does not already exist. If a very similar topic already exists, consider adding detail to that topic wiki page rather than creating a new topic.
Your topic tag is relevant to at least three existing Forum posts by different authors (not including yourself). Please tag these posts after you create your topic. The topic must describe a central theme in each post. If you cannot yet tag three relevant posts, the Forum probably doesn’t need this topic yet.
You’ve added at least a couple of sentences to define the term and explain how the topic tag should be used. If you like, you can write a full wiki page in line with this style guide. However, we won’t reject otherwise useful new topics because they don’t have a full entry.

Topics that don’t meet this criteria will likely be rejected.

Not fulfilling these requirements is the most likely cause of a topic rejection. In particular, many topics are written with the aim of establishing a new term or idea, rather than collecting terms and ideas which already exist on the Forum. Other examples of rejected topics include:

Topic pages created for an individual. In certain cases, we permit these tags, for example, if the person is associated with a philosophy or set of ideas that is often discussed (see Peter Singer) and which can be clearly picked out by their name. However, in most cases, we don’t want tags for individuals because there would be far too many, and posts about individuals can generally be found through search without using tags.
Topics which are applicable to posts on the EA Forum, but which aren’t used by Forum users. For example, many posts could technically be described as “Risk Management”. However, EA forum users use other terms to refer to risk management content.