Wikispooks:Wikipedia+

This page is a work-in-progress. An alpha version of the extension is immanent and volunteer testers are needed. If you would like to try it and provide feedback use this Email form

Wikipedia+ is a Browser Extension which augments Wikipedia pages with links to additional relevant information unlikely to be covered adequately, if at all, on Wikipedia itself. Wikispooks is a Wikipedia+ - enabled site.

Important Note: The Wikipedia+ initiative is entirely outside the ownership, management or control of the Wikipedia Foundation or Wikipedia itself.

Rationale

Wikipedia is a vastly popular on-line encyclopedia. Anyone seeking information, on almost any subject, will find that links to a relevant and useful Wikipedia page will invariably appear in the first few results of any Google search. However, in common with all mainstream media sources, there is a well-documented problem with Wikipedia:

To the extent that a subject is judged threatening to established power and the widespread acceptance of 'official narratives' of events, the reliability and ultimate accuracy of Wikipedia articles touching on it is likely to be compromised. At the extremes of power and perceived threat, Wikipedia's 'Neutral-Point-of-View' principle pretty much guarantees that the compromise will be fundamental. (See The Problem with Wikipedia for a fuller discussion)

It is this problem that Wikipedia+ addresses.

How Wikipedia+ works

Wikispooks and a number of other sites maintain indexes of Wikipedia pages whose subject matter renders them likely to suffer from the problem outlined above. The indexes contain links to additional information which is unlikely to be treated adequately, if at all, on corresponding Wikipedia pages.

Whenever a Wikipedia page is accessed by the browser, the page name is checked against a user defined list of those site indexes. If the page name exists in one or more of them, a pop-up bar containing links to the additional information is displayed.

If the extension does NOT pop the message bar, it indicates that additional information relevant to the current Wikipedia page is NOT currently available (or rather not currently indexed as being available) on the alternative sites list. In this circumstance you have the option of creating an appropriate index page on one or more of the alternative sites, by clicking the extension status-bar icon and selecting the required site. Template:Wikipedia+Info

Users

Download

Note: The extension is currently available for Mozilla Firefox only. It should work with all versions from 3 to 5 inclusive. A decision on implementing it for other browsers will be made following experience with the alpha and pending beta Firefox implementations.

• Latest alpha version of the extension can be downloaded here

Installation

• Firefox versions 4 and 5: Select Tools/add-ons on the browser menu. From the drop-down box next to the search box at the top of the page, select "Install add-on from File....". Browse to the downloaded .xmi file and select it. You will be presented with a window warning you to "Install add-ons only from author whom you trust" and detailing the extension name and file selected. Click the "Install now" button. The extension should install and you will be prompted to restart your browser.

• Firefox version 3: Select Tools/add-ons on the browser menu. A dialogue window will appear. Drag and drop the downloaded file to the window. You will be prompted to proceed/cancel the installation. Following installation a browser restart is required to use the extension.

Setup

After successful installation the extension icon and some text will be present on the browser status bar (bottom-right).

• Clicking on the text toggles enabling/disabling of the extension with the current status indicated by text and text colour.
• Clicking on the icon will pop-up the WikipediaPlus Preferences dialogue window. The window comprises 3 tabs plus OK/Cancel buttons.

The Options and About tabs are self explanatory and intuitive. The Sites tab usage is as follows:

• There is a set of reasonably intuitive navigation, information and editing buttons to the right.
• The window contains a list of default site names and their corresponding url's.

Selecting one of the list items and clicking on the pencil icon to the right, or clicking on the right-hand + icon brings up a dialogue allowing editing of the selected site or entry of a new site. The dialogue is fairly self-explanatory. The Wikipedia entry is required, should not need any editing, and should always be the last in the list.

Contacts

• Wikipedia+ web site