Sage
 | |
| Trading name | Sage |
|---|---|
| Type | Online Encyclopedia |
| Industry |
|
| Founded | 1658 AN |
| Headquarters | Stonewall, Wrighthaven, Ciric Confederacy |
| Key people | Jeremy Seiver |
Sage is an online encyclopedia owned and operated by the Andromeda Tech Corporation that uses a user-based volunteer editing system to maintain articles with an open-collaborative system. Sage is entirely free to use, and does not use advertisements or sponsorships at all; while not labeled as a non-profit company, Sage is maintained as a volunteer project and therefore does not make real revenue. Sage is the head company of the Tealeaf Foundation, which is a strictly non-profit organisation (though its member companies are not necessarily non-profit themselves) that organises and finances similar user-based online encyclopedic content. The Tealeaf Foundation offers an open-source encyclopedic system called Tealeaf-Common that can be used to create new websites with a "Tealeaf-style" collaborative editing system.
Sage was founded in 1658 AN by Jeremy Seiver, who coined the name based off of the classical vision of a scholarly sage. The encyclopedia was originally founded only with articles written in Seiver's native Common Tongue, but the userbase quickly began to translate articles into many different languages, though the Common Tongue sector still possesses the largest number of articles, having just over one million articles written in fifteen different languages, and 2.1 million articles written in Common Tongue. Sage has received over seven billion pageviews over its life as of 1680 AN, making it one of the most viewed online databases in the world.
Despite criticisms of Sage's user-based editing system, Sage routinely proves to be nearly as accurate as encyclopedias written by professionals, while possessing a vastly greater number of articles in many more languages. Sage has partnered with other confederate-owned websites, such as Transmission and ChatBoks, to prevent vandalism and the spread of fake articles with these platforms helping to link to trusted and accurate articles. Employees of Andromeda Web regularly go over the most visited Sage articles on the Andromeda web browser to search for inaccuracies and prevent the spread of false information.
Sage offers articles in the following languages:
Editing
The editing security of Sage is taken very seriously by its staff. The initial openness of the encyclopedia contributed to vandalism and purposeful spreading of misinformation in its early stages, which forced Jeremy Seiver, its founder, to take a more active role in the encyclopedia's development. Soon after its founding, Seiver became Editor-in-Chief of Sage, and appointed a number of his trusted friends to roles as senior editors. A policy was enforced wherein the editors of Sage would look over the most viewed articles for inaccuracies, and also assure that important facts on articles are provided with references. Furthermore, the most viewed articles are restricted so that only registered users can edit them, to prevent acts of vandalism.
Review of Changes
Changes and edits, while not systematically reviewed by senior editors due to the sheer number of edits that occur every day, Sage does provide a number of tools in its software to assist in the detection of surreptitious, false, and vandalous edits. Every article has a "history" tab allowing any user to view the edit history of a particular article, and allowing registered users to revert the article to a previous state. Users can also view the recent changes to an article, and can add articles to a "watchlist" in order to receive notifications when those articles are edited.
Vandalism
Any edit made to an article knowingly providing false information or degrading the article's integrity as a whole is vandalism. Vandalism is the largest problem Sage faces, and is a direct result of its collaborative editing style. Typically, vandalism takes the form of various profane or obscene jokes and phrases inserted into otherwise normal articles, or other edits designed to make an article more humourous. These acts of vandalism are usually removed by other users quickly due to the ease of spotting the vandalism, however other malicious edits are not so easy to catch, such as edits adding information that sounds possibly true but is not. Occasionally vandalism will be accomplished by a vandal simply removing information or blanking an entire page, though this is extremely easy to repair. Vandals also occasionally add irrelevant categorisation, such as interfering with the semantics of the page's title, categories, or coding, or use irrelevant or disruptive images.
Most vandalism is repaired with in a few minutes, however vandalism has been known to last for months without being fixed.
Trivia
- The first article on Sage was an article on the Tealeaf Foundation.
- The largest article on Sage is an in-depth article about the political history of the Ciric Confederacy.
- There was an incident wherein a vandal changed all of the verbs on the article for Ray Jaymie, a Wrighthavanian actor, to be hypothetical.
