Frequently Asked Questions
Everything you need to know about using, improving, and contributing to Ancient Philosophia. Don't see your question here? Email us at support@ancient-philosophia.org .
- What do the green, yellow, and red citation indicators mean?
Every content paragraph on this site displays a colored left-border indicating citation quality — how closely the text is grounded in credible academic sources. This system exists so readers always know how much trust to place in what they're reading.
Green — Well-cited
The paragraph directly cites credible academic works. Over 80% of the content is source-verified — only phrasing has been changed for readability, with no semantic difference from the original scholarly sources. You can treat green paragraphs as reliable summaries of established scholarship.Yellow — Derived from sources
The paragraph has citations, but the meaning and description are interpreted or synthesized from those sources rather than directly quoted. The information is broadly supported by scholarship but may include editorial interpretation. Check the cited sources for precision.Red — Needs citation
The paragraph has poor citation or lacks citation entirely. The information may still be accurate, but it hasn't been verified against specific academic sources. Treat red paragraphs with caution. We welcome contributions that add proper citations — see How can I contribute?.Our goal is to move all content toward green over time. The color system is deliberately transparent: we would rather honestly show you where citations are weak than pretend everything is equally well-sourced. If you spot a red or yellow paragraph and know the relevant scholarship, please edit the page on GitHub — your change will automatically open a pull request for review.
- How do you verify that citations actually match the content?
We use an automated semantic similarity evaluation to objectively check whether each cited reference is genuinely relevant to the paragraph it supports. This is an independent, machine-scored process — no human on the team grades their own work.
How it works
- Each green paragraph is paired with the reference it cites. Each yellow paragraph is checked against all references in the file.
- A cross-encoder model (
cross-encoder/stsb-roberta-base, from the Sentence-Transformers project) scores the semantic similarity of each pair on a 0–1 scale. - Green paragraphs need a score ≥ 0.25 (moderate topical match) to pass. Yellow paragraphs need any reference ≥ 0.20 to count as covered.
- Paragraphs that fail are automatically downgraded — green → yellow, yellow → red — so the colored indicators you see always reflect the latest evaluation.
Transparency
We do not claim this is a perfect system. Semantic similarity models compare surface-level meaning between a paragraph and a short bibliographic reference string — they cannot verify factual accuracy, check specific page numbers, or assess whether a scholar's argument is faithfully represented. The current model (
stsb-roberta-base, 90.17% accuracy on the STS benchmark) is a reasonable starting point, not a finished solution.What we're working on
- Experimenting with newer models and cross-encoder architectures as the field evolves
- Exploring NLI-based (Natural Language Inference) evaluation alongside STS
- Investigating retrieval-augmented approaches that compare against full-text source material, not just bibliographic strings
If you have experience with NLP evaluation, citation analysis, or computational scholarship and see ways to improve this process, we genuinely welcome your input — please open an issue on GitHub or reach out at support@ancient-philosophia.org. The evaluation tool is fully open-source in our repository.
- Why isn't a particular civilization or language included?
- We are constantly improving our coverage. The ancient world is vast — thousands of years, hundreds of civilizations, and dozens of languages across multiple continents — and comprehensive coverage takes time to research and write responsibly. Many subjects not yet covered are already on our future roadmap, and we add new content regularly. If you'd like to see a particular civilization, language, or topic covered sooner, feel free to open an issue or pull request on GitHub.
- I found an error or misleading information. How do I report it?
- We take accuracy very seriously. Ancient history is a living field — scholarship evolves, translations are revised, and archaeological discoveries change the picture. We understand that misleading information can be genuinely harmful to learners, so we want to hear about any mistakes as quickly as possible. Please email us at support@ancient-philosophia.org with the specific page, a clear description of what appears to be incorrect, and, where possible, a reference to a reliable academic source or primary text. We aim to review and correct reported errors promptly.
- Is the content free to use?
- Yes. The site code is released under the GPL-3.0 license. Original editorial content (articles, descriptions, and commentary written for this project) is licensed under Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International (CC BY-NC-SA 4.0). You are free to share and adapt the content for non-commercial purposes, provided you give appropriate credit and distribute any derivative works under the same license. Where we cite or summarize third-party works (academic books, journal articles, digital corpora), those works retain their original copyright. We always include source attributions in our articles so you can trace information back to primary and secondary scholarship.
- What sources do you use?
- We draw on peer-reviewed scholarship and major digital humanities projects in the field. For Mesopotamia this means ORACC, CDLI, and ETCSL alongside standard works by scholars such as Thorkild Jacobsen, Marc Van De Mieroop, and Benjamin Foster. For Egypt we consult the Thesaurus Linguae Aegyptiae and UCLA ’s Encyclopedia of Egyptology. For Greece and Rome we use the Perseus Digital Library, Logeion, and the standard corpus of classical texts. Each article includes a learning resources section listing its key sources. If you believe we have misrepresented a scholarly consensus, please let us know.
- How can I contribute?
- Ancient Philosophia is open source and welcomes contributions. Every article page has an "Edit this page" link that takes you directly to the source file on GitHub. Clicking it will automatically create a fork of the repository where you can make changes, and when you're done, submit a pull request for review — no special setup needed beyond a GitHub account.
You can help by:- Improving red or yellow paragraphs with proper academic citations
- Writing or expanding civilization, language, and mythology articles
- Adding learning resources and fixing broken links
- Correcting factual errors or improving clarity
- Can I financially support the project?
- Yes, and it is genuinely appreciated — though entirely voluntary. The site is free and will always remain so, but running it does carry modest ongoing costs: domain registration, CDN hosting, and infrastructure as the project grows. If you find the site useful and would like to help cover those costs, you can buy me a coffee via Ko-fi. No account or commitment required. Every contribution, large or small, goes directly toward keeping the site online and improving.
- Some ancient script characters appear as boxes or question marks. Why?
- Ancient scripts like Sumerian cuneiform (𒀭), Egyptian hieroglyphs, Linear B (𐀀), and others require Unicode-supporting fonts that may not be installed by default on all devices. We recommend installing Noto Sans (which includes extensive ancient script coverage) or GNU Unifont. Most modern operating systems will display these characters correctly once appropriate font support is installed.
Still have a question?
Reach out directly at support@ancient-philosophia.org . For bug reports and content corrections you can also open an issue on GitHub . If you find the site useful, you're also welcome to support the project — it's entirely voluntary and greatly appreciated.