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PVD Wiki is now online!
cwdean:
--- Quote from: rick.ca on March 18, 2009, 11:43:22 pm ---Oh, well. Maybe the competition will help. :-\
Hmmm... Maybe that's why Reset is cranking-out page translations at an astonishing rate! ;D
--- End quote ---
My only concern is it may be diverting resources from contributing to a comprehensive solution, and perhaps cause some confusion for our clients (i.e. which wiki am I supposed to go to?). I don't want to undermine the effort of the other wiki...but having two wikis doesn't seem practical to me. Just my opinion. :-\
nostra:
Having two wikis is definitely not practical. The other wiki is installed and partially set up, but it is not filled with information. I think we'll see what comes out of the new Tiki customizations first. I'll also spend some time investigating features of both wikis and decide which one is the best for PVD.
rick.ca:
--- Quote ---Having two wikis is definitely not practical.
--- End quote ---
The issue is bigger than that. I've always been amazed that you're able to service two user groups, making each feel they are "it"—to the point of each forgetting the other exists. But what's happening now is clearly a symptom of this "two worlds" approach. One of the most important purposes of a user-created-and-maintained wiki was to remove that burden from you. Now you're slipping toward the role of referee between groups of feuding geeks who can't even talk to each other.
You might hope this will be resolved by your decision as to which wiki to use. But I think there are two better choices. One is to continue with the "two worlds" approach, and let each user group do its own thing. The other is to find some way to get the two groups communicating, and ask them to work out their differences. I prefer the second approach, especially considering building a truly international wiki reminds us all our "world" is not the only one, and gets everyone focused on communication/translation issues.
I have to wonder... If we were one group using one forum in one language, would the result be the same? I don't think so. I can't imagine anyone reading cwdean's introduction to the wiki and responding, "Bullshit! Your engine sucks, your site is slow and your wiki will never be what I want it to be—so I'm going to make my own! BTW, may I have your content?" But that's not what happened. As far as I can tell, the Russian group was not given that introduction, nor were they given an opportunity to discuss the implementation of a wiki ahead of time. Neither were users here, but that's beside my point ;) —which is this situation could have been avoided with a little trust and communication.
Now I don't know if this line of reasoning is going anywhere near a practical solution. I certainly do not want you spending any time on it (BTW, when will 0.9.9 be finished?). But perhaps there's a user who is fluent in Russian and English who would be willing to facilitate some communication between the two groups. They could be a moderator of a forum in which they provide a translation of each message. I don't know if this is an option in SMF, but it might be the type of forum where nothing is posted until it is "approved" by the moderator (in this case, in order to add the translation). It would also be nice if SMF could be configured to display or mirror one forum on the two boards. Otherwise, the moderator would have to repost all original messages to the other forum. A moderator could easily be overwhelmed with this sort of arrangement. But it might work if there were limits placed on topics discussed, and perhaps on the number of posts (although requiring moderator approval would put a damper on that).
Now here's an irony: Another long-winded post for you to deal with when you should be coding. Maybe you can Google Translate it, post it on the Russian board, and let them deal with it. ;D
patch:
--- Quote from: rick.ca on March 19, 2009, 09:40:19 pm ---
--- Quote ---Having two wikis is definitely not practical.
--- End quote ---
The issue is bigger than that. I've always been amazed that you're able to service two user groups, making each feel they are "it"—to the point of each forgetting the other exists.
...
Maybe you can Google Translate it, post it on the Russian board, and let them deal with it. ;D
--- End quote ---
Very interesting.
IMO there are two choices
1) Maintain 2 communities, in which case both should look at establishing their own Wiki.
2) Integrate both communities, in which case all posts need to be automatically translated from the authors language to other supported languages, both on the PVD forums & the Wiki.
The later seams preferable to me but that is going to take significant input from nostra to achieve, so maybe overall I would prefer a continuation of two separate communities until 0.9.9 is stable. At which time the forums could be integrated and the wiki moved to www.videodb.info
In the mean time, I just found a new support forum for PVD ;D ;D
http://translate.google.com/translate?prev=_t&hl=en&ie=UTF-8&u=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.videodb.info%2Fforum_ru%2Findex.php%3Faction%3Dforum&sl=ru&tl=en&history_state0=
cwdean:
--- Quote from: rick.ca on March 19, 2009, 09:40:19 pm ---The issue is bigger than that.
--- End quote ---
Looks like I've somehow stirred up a hornet's nest. :'(
Causing a fracture amongst the PVD community was not my intent, nor the intent of the PVD Wiki. And lack of communication wasn't my intent either. The whole purpose of the wiki is to pull the community together in order to collaborate on documentation. Several of you have really embraced this intent, while others have not. It really shouldn't matter what language a page is in...if it isn't in your preferred language then take a moment to translate it. You don't even have to know the page language to run it through Google Translate or Babelfish to translate it to your preferred language. Copy and paste that output into the PVD Wiki and you're done. The only reason I don't automatically do this for the community is becuase I only know English and have no means to validate the accuracy of the Google or BabelFish translation. But perhaps that isn't a big deal. Anybody could run the page through translation and post the output to the appropriate language page (patch illustated this in his post).
And the choice of Wiki software shouldn't matter either. It either works as a wiki or it doesn't. The debate of the best software to use is very subjective, non-productive and is likely never to end. The reason I chose TikWiki is because of it's feature-set and tight functional integration. With the flip of one configuration option, I can turn on Forums, Articles, Blogs, File Galleries, Photo Galleries, etc. -- and each feature set is complete and fully integrated with every other feature set. Right now, the only requirement is the need for a Wiki...so that is all that is turned on (and file gallery). But as the community evolved I wanted to be prepared to support it.
The ultimate decision is up to Nostra. I'd really like to see the community focus on developing and translating wiki pages and content, rather than debating about which wiki software is better.
And for my international friends, I'm terribly sorry if I've somehow alienated you by posting only English language pages. It took me a few days to figure out how to configure all of Tiki's multilanguage support features. And I was really counting on our multi-lingual members to assist with translating pages. I might point out as well that there are now more non-English pages than there are English pages...so somebody out there doesn't mind translating and adding pages (thanks Reset!) ;D
Again, I'm open to suggestions for improving the site if you have any ideas. As requested, I've implemented the Tikipedia theme so that the site looks more like a Wikipedia site for those that are more comfortable with that layout.
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