Energypedia - Uploading of Files

Energypedia is a wiki platform allowing registered users to create and edit articles. Furthermore, users can upload all sorts of documents (in different file formats) to energypedia in order to refer and link to them in articles.

However, we would kindly like to remind you that energypedia is not a file sharing / storing platform.

A Wiki Needs Articles, Not Files

The strength of a wiki like energypedia is that information can not only be shared with others in a static way but is continuously changed, updated and evaluated by its users. This interactive information flow relies on active energypedia users who create and edit articles. Documents which are uploaded on energypedia hamper this flow to a certain extent since other users can not comment or add valuable additional information to the document.

Advantages of Wiki Articles

Of course, it takes more time and effort to create, edit and update articles on energypedia than quickly uploading an existing document, however, we strongly believe that it is worthwhile. Providing information via wiki articles instead of documents has some clear advantages:

Traceability of Information

With energypedia's internal search mask you can not only search the page titles for specific key words but also the whole article. This full text search allows you to find any reference to your preferred topic in the whole wiki platform, however, the content of documents is exempted from this due to technical reasons. As a result, information in articles is easier to find for other users than information saved and uploaded in files.

Information Creation

A collection of ten uploaded documents contributes very little to information creation especially if all files had already been available on the Internet. In contrast, if the main aspects of these documents are summarized and compared with each other in an energypedia article, this condensed information will not only be helpful for other users to get a quick overview (without having to read ten different documents) but also new insights and questions might arise due to the content comparison.

Hence, please restrain your uploading behaviour to a minimum and think first if it is really necessary to upload a file or not.

So what should you do?

Instead of uploading documents, we like to encourage you to apply one of the following methods to incorporate content on energypedia:

Link to the Online Available Document

The easiest way to draw attention to an interesting document is to link to the respective file on the Internet. For example, you can add the link to a “Further reading” section at the end of a suitable article already existing on energypedia.

For more information on how to include links in articles, click here

Quote Little Extracts

Little extracts (not more than a few lines) can be quoted in energypedia articles. However, these passages have to be clearly marked as quotes by using quotation marks (“) and indicating the source. Missing references are a case of plagiarism which is a serious issue we can not tolerate on energypedia. Suspicious articles or files can be reported by writing an email to energypedia.

For more information on how to create footnotes and references, click here

Summarize in Your Own Words

Clearly the best option is to summarize relevant content in your own words and include these passages into existing articles. For example, you can try to incorporate facts, arguments, results, recommendations, etc. in an existing article or – if the topic has not yet been touched upon – you can create a new article. But no matter what you do, please make sure to cite properly in order to avoid plagiarism.

For more information on how to create and edit articles, click here