English > Feature Suggestions
Reviving the Wiki
rick.ca:
--- Quote ---I think nostra looked at it when the wiki was first proposed and decided the time investment it would take him to move the forum to a platform which supported a wiki would be too demanding on his time. So the wiki was hosted on different software, by a PVD supportive user. (Actually there were separate English and Russian wiki if I remember correctly which were then combined into one.) If this was to be reconsidered I have no idea what software would be used as the forum in tiki wiki looks inferior to what is currently used here.
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This is not an accurate characterization of the history of the wiki. I strongly suggest reading PVD Wiki is now online! There's also important information there that is being overlooked in this discussion and in the changes being made or contemplated.
--- Quote ---A way of making the wiki appear to be part of http://www.videodb.info would be to make the home pages identical.
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A similar look and feel would be desirable, but making them appear identical is not feasible, necessary or desirable. The wiki theme can easily be changed, but the theme has to support the unique and fully-integrated feature set of TikiWiki. Having multiple links back to PVD is silly, remember? Generally, having "one way in and one way out" has to be the cleanest and least confusing approach. Any link that goes directly a specific section of this site should only be used in a specific context where it will be understood and helpful. For example, "If you require further assistance, please ask in the Support forum." But even this has to be considered carefully, as it assumes the reader is already registered here, or would be able to figure out how to do so. This is just one of countless examples where successfully pretending to be the same site will only cause problems.
I've already recommended using a TOC as the homepage for the wiki. This is what users expect to see when using the wiki link here. A similar look and feel would be nice, but there's no advantage to making it look identical. It's a completely different system on a different site—and the user has to understand that.
Please bear in mind that whatever "structural" changes you make compel Russian users to do the same (which may just be translating your work), or doing it their own way (I don't know—it might be easy for them just to keep their existing version). I think you should at least give them a heads-up about any significant changes you plan to make. You should be able to seem from the logs who you should be communicating with.
--- Quote ---Nostra would then be able to later move new useful functionality back here later if he thought some new features had merit.
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As I've suggested, you should probably let nostra speak for himself on such things. I suspect he'd strongly prefer a user-managed solution that didn't require his attention or time. That might rule-out hosting TikiWiki here. Using anything else—including a properly integrated SMF solution—probably means only the existing wiki content would survive. And speaking of a properly integrated SMF solution, we should be looking at what might be possible with the soon-to-be-released SMF 2.0. If the much simpler solution I proposed is unacceptable, this is probably the next best thing.
patch:
--- Quote from: CAD on September 04, 2010, 03:29:25 pm ---look and feel should be technical feasible.
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Was thinking mainly in terms of adding a Wiki site header with tabs on it similar to http://www.videodb.info and linking to locations here such as Download, forum, Donations.
This should remove the need for a whole pile of links which imply the user is at the wrong site.
Would be good to have a search box there to.
We would need to label the login as "Wiki Login" so as not to confuse it with the forum login here.
Similarly the title should be something like "Personal Video Database Wiki"
--- Quote ---for me content, in a an accessible, logical format comes first - bells and whistles second.
+ there is the learning curve of making it happen.
I think what i have done so far is a good start and should make it a bit easier for users to find stuff.
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I would really like to get toc / structure functionality working. That way displaying parts of the toc become trivial and ultimately easier to maintain.
The page ranking suggests that other users have found this format useful too.
I can see the structures OK. The PVD-Manual Structure is also visible apparently in edit mode, but I can not work out how to add any new pages.
I wonder if it is a protection problem as edit structure rights are probably off by default for wiki users.
Would be worth trying to run the clean structure comand at some time to see if it fixes the numbering problem cwdean was having.
CAD:
--- Quote ---I would really like to get toc / structure functionality working
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the TOC can be added at any time. what makes a toc work is a logical structure first.
Get the content in. lay it out so it makes sense and is easy to find. Build TOC.
any new content then gets added logically and TOC.
Search is good - i guess that will come as i come to grips with new wiki.
sphider is a good open source search engine.
rick.ca:
--- Quote from: patch on September 05, 2010, 05:11:12 am ---Was thinking mainly in terms of adding a Wiki site header with tabs on it similar to http://www.videodb.info and linking to locations here such as Download, forum, Donations.
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Don't do this. It's a bad idea—for the reasons I've already stated.
nostra:
I do not see much difference between forum and wiki in regard of providing help to the users. Both can be configured to provide similar functionality and it is equally easy to implement links to any of those in the application.
Rick has a good point: providing help topics in the forum is definitely less work to do. At the current state of things I would tend to use forum, but naturally, if some has time to provide a well structured wiki page I could reconsider this.
I do not have time to study different wiki engines and such, so maybe I just do not see some kind of easy solution thou. Also, if someone has a step by step instruction of adding wiki functionality to the existing forum engine, then it could be of great help.
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