Frequently asked

What is an article alias?

Another name for an article. "Alport syndrome" is an alias pointing at the Hematuria article, which has a section on hereditary nephritis. The cross-reference linker matches aliases as well as titles, so when any article writes "Alport syndrome" the words become a link to the article that explains it — even though no article is called that.

It is not a redirect, and it changes nothing inside any article. It adds no section, moves no text, and the target article is untouched. Search does not need it either: search reads article bodies, so a term written anywhere in the prose is already findable. The alias exists only to make the linker generous.

Aliases are managed as a set — PUT /articles/aliases deletes the whole table and rebuilds it from the payload — so a partial payload is a deletion of everything left out. Article ids in the payload that no longer exist come back in an ignored list rather than failing the batch.

Not to be confused with a redirect

An ArticleRedirect really does move a reader: old slug in, current article out. It is followed exactly once and never chased through a second redirect, and a redirect whose target has since been binned does not resolve at all.

A question is filed under a category that gives its answer away. Is that a bug?

No. The bank is browsed by topic, so the topic of a question is not a secret. What is worth fixing is a question filed under a category it is not about — Nasal Fracture on a maxillary sinus fracture, say.

Why does a question show a blank explanation?

Because it is outside your grant. The bank shows every question's stem to everyone and nulls the answer side — correct answer, explanation, per-option reasoning, key points, attending tip, explanation image — for anything you may not edit. The response says so explicitly in its can_edit field.

The question manager asks for only your own questions, so you should not normally meet this; opening an out-of-scope question by its URL says so plainly rather than showing empty boxes. See Answer-side redaction.

Someone holds a grant but cannot create or delete anything.

That is the rule. A grant is permission to change what is there. Creating, deleting and publishing decide what the library contains and stay with moderators, on both the question and the article side. Controls a grant does not carry are not drawn at all rather than shown and refused. The full list is in Grants.

Where does someone with a grant do their work?

Editorial (/editorial). It is open to any grant holder, shows the same queues a moderator sees over the branches they hold, and carries the library browser below them. Reading is a learner's surface and has no editing controls at all.

Can a deck be made from more than one article?

Yes. A deck links to every article its cards came from, and one of those links is marked as the source — the article the cards were generated from. Both the source article and any article sharing the deck's category show it on their page.

Who can start a deck?

Moderators and administrators. A deck grant is permission to look after the decks it names and to write cards into them — not to add another deck to the tree. may_start_a_deck returns bool(user.is_moderator) and nothing else.

An article has no category. Why can nobody edit it?

A grant covers a branch, and an article in no branch is in nobody's branch. can_edit_article returns False for a non-moderator the moment article.category_id is null, before it even looks at the grants. Moderators still see and can edit it. Filing it under a category is the fix; it also lets a deck be generated from it, since a deck takes its category from its article.

Does removing a figure delete the picture?

Not immediately, and usually not at all. A grant holder only ever unlinks — the figure comes off their article and the picture stays live in the library. A moderator can additionally bin it, which puts it in the image library's 30-day bin where it can be restored. Only the daily purge removes bytes, and only from assets binned more than 30 days ago. See What can be undone.

Can a grantee publish an article they wrote?

No. POST /articles/{id}/status and POST /articles/{id}/publish both require is_moderator, even though can_edit_article would let the same person rewrite every word of that article. The asymmetry is deliberate: editing is editorial work, publishing is a decision about what the library contains.

Somebody changed a role and got a 409.

Roles come from the identity provider's groups on this site. Change the person's group there and it applies at their next sign-in. See Roles come from the identity provider.