Help:Introduction

Contributing to RiskiPedia

Creating a RiskiPedia article is only a little bit harder than creating a WikiPedia article. The easiest way to create a new page is to find a page that is similiar to the one you want to create and copy it. Most RiskiPedia pages are split into two parts-- the main page, and a subpage containing data and calculations related to the risk (e.g. "MyRisk" and "MyRisk/Data"). If you are copying a page to start, be sure to copy both.

The second easiest way to create RiskiPedia pages is to ask an AI to do most of the "grunt work". Copy and paste the prompt from Help:AIPrompt to start. Fact-check the results! Read the references that the AI comes up with, and make sure data matches the references.

If you want to create a page from scratch:

1. Find a study or studies or data about some risk that you're interested in. For example, maybe you're interested in the risks of skydiving, BASE jumping, and other parachuting activities-- use Google Scholar and find the best research with data on the risks.

2. Insert the relevant data from the research into a RiskiPedia page. If the article about the risk will be called "Parachuting", create a page called "Parachuting/Data". How? Just search for Parachuting/Data in the RiskiPedia page search box (at the top of the screen), and then poke the "Create the page Parachuting/Data" link that appears in the page-not-found result. Data goes inside <datatable2> tags. Include references to the studies somewhere in the Data page (or in the data table), and add any relevant comments about the data right on the Data page. For example, the table of risks for skydiving and BASE jumping might be defined as:

<datatable2 table="skydiving" columns="variation|mean_fatality_rate|mean_injury_rate|reference">
Skydiving|0.000011|0.00044|[https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC9859333/]
BASE jumping|0.0004|0.004|[https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/17495709/]
</datatable2>

Your favorite AI chatbot is likely very good at re-formatting the data for you-- just give it the data and ask it to produce a MediaWiki-formatted table with the description of each row as the first column.

Whenever possible, copy data verbatim from the original source(s) so it is as easy as possible for other people to confirm that the data is accurate. Data conversions or calculations should happen in RiskModel calculations.

3. Insert one or more "RiskModel" using the <RiskModel> tag into the /Data page. RiskModels define how to combine the various risk factors (as described in the data tables) to come up with an overall risk. They also define how to display the risk. The simplest RiskModel might just look up a single value in a single data table:

RiskModel name="fatality_risk_per_jump" calculation="mean_fatality_rate">Your chances of dying, per jump, are {{One_In_X|{result}}}</RiskModel>
<RiskModel name="injury_risk_per_jump" calculation="mean_injury_rate">Your chances of being seriously injured, per jump, are {{One_In_X|{result}}} in 1,000</RiskModel>

Many risks will have multiple risk factors; calculation can be an arbitrary expression with as many risk factors as you need, combined using arithmetic.

The One_In_X template takes a not-very-understandable floating point risk (like 0.0000152543) and converts it into a more human-friendly form, like "13 in a million".

4. Now you can create the page visitors interested in the risk will see. Create the parent page (e.g. "Parachuting"), again by searching for it and poking the Create the page link. Put text about the risk along with interactive UI elements that let the user select or type in the risk factors that the RiskModel uses to calculate risk. If the risk factor comes from a data table, use a <DropDown>. Give the DropDown the name of the table on the /Data page and it will let the visitor choose one of the rows in the table. For example:

<DropDown title="What kind of jump?" table=skydiving></DropDown>

The final piece that puts everything together is the <RiskDisplay> element. Put one or more of them on the page where the "Your chances are..." text should appear, and once the visitor has specified all of the relevant risk factors the text will appear. RiskDisplay has a model attribute that refers to a RiskModel on the /Data page. For example:

<RiskDisplay model="fatality_risk_per_jump"></RiskDisplay>
<RiskDisplay model="injury_risk_per_jump"></RiskDisplay>

Working example

Here's the data:

Skydiving	0.000011	0.00044	[1]
BASE jumping	0.0004	0.004	[2]

... and the RiskModel:

  RiskModel: Help:Introduction:fatality_risk_per_jump
Calculation: mean_fatality_rate
    Content: Your chances of dying, per jump, are about {{One_In_X|{result}}}

  RiskModel: Help:Introduction:injury_risk_per_jump
Calculation: mean_injury_rate
    Content: Your chances of being seriously injured, per jump, are about {{One_In_X|{result}}}

... and this is what a visitor would see:

Your chances of dying, per jump, are about {{One_In_X|{result}}}

Your chances of being seriously injured, per jump, are about {{One_In_X|{result}}}