Magicpedia:FAQ

Come share your magic knowledge!

Do you:

• Have a favorite magician you would like others to know more about?
• Have a magic specialty you would like to share with others?
• Want to collaborate with other magicians on a topic?
• Have some knowledge about how a certain illusion or sleight came about?
• Want to provide a correction or update to a published magic book?
• Just enjoy researching?

Then come over to the free MagicPedia at http://geniimagazine.com/wiki/index.php/Main_Page where anyone can update and add their knowledge!

What is MagicPedia?

MagicPedia is an online free-content encyclopedia that anyone can update. It was made available to become a definitive Internet repository for all areas of the magical arts and a way to document the history of magic.

MagicPedia is NOT a place to post explanations of magic tricks (though performances of sleights and tricks are welcome via embedded video clips), but a living document, always changing, that reflects the background knowledge required for a thorough study of the art of magic in all its facets.

Who owns MagicPedia?

The articles hosted on this site are released by their authors under the GNU Free Documentation License (or a free license), so the articles are free content and may be reproduced freely under the same license.

Who owns the web-site?

MagicPedia is owned and operated by Genii, The Conjurors' Magazine. The site is run by the community of magicians.

Who is responsible for the articles on MagicPedia?

You are! Truthfully, this is a collaborative effort. Many magicians have contributed information to different parts of this project, and anyone can do so, including you. All you need is to know how to edit a page, and have some encyclopedic knowledge you want to share. The encyclopedia provides users with a certain amount of freedom.

You can learn who is responsible for the most recent versions of any given page by clicking on the "History" link. If you spot an error in the latest revision of an article, you are highly encouraged to be bold and correct it. This practice is one of the basic review mechanisms that maintains the reliability of the encyclopedia. As a result, we hope that MagicPedia will become one of the most extensive magic information libraries available on the Internet.

If you are uncertain, or find the wording confusing, quote the material on the associated "Discussion" page and leave a question for the next person. This helps omit errors, inaccuracies, or misleading wording more quickly and is highly appreciated by the community.

How can I contact an author of an article?

If you want to communicate with a specific user, you can leave a message on his or her personal Discussion page. The page for User:John Doe is located at User talk:John Doe. Many also registered their email addresses, which you can use by clicking the "Email this user" link on their user pages. In addition, each article has a talk page. Use the "Discussion" link on each article to get to its talk page.

Do I need an account?

Yes, you must create an account, it's free, and log in to make edits.

How do you prevent people from ruining articles? (Defacement or vandalism)

All changes to a page are registered in a 'page history', so any defacement can be replaced by an older version of the page, and all recent changes to MagicPedia in general are automatically listed on a special page for that purpose.

Any user interested in a particular page can add it to a personal 'watchlist' which shows when a page is updated, whether that update is a joke or a substantial contribution. Furthermore, any of the many readers who pass by can correct vandalism or any other erroneous information. So, the popular pages that people might be most likely to deface are also the ones which have the most editors watching and the most readers, all of whom can 'revert' vandalism. If there is a recurrent problem, an article can be temporarily protected from editing, or user accounts and IP addresses can be blocked from editing.

What if two people edit the same article at the same time?

MagicPedia will warn you if another person saves an update before you do.

Because edit conflicts are irritating and time-consuming, you may choose to alter your editing habits to render them less frequent: aiming to make more edits to pages that have not been edited recently.

Using the "Show preview" button also helps.

To reduce the chance of edit conflicts, MagicPedia has an "In Use" notice that people may use when editing a page over a long period of time. Simply put "{{inuse}}" on an article before proceeding with a major edit, and remove the template when the editing is complete.