a forest wiki, rfc

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milk
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a forest wiki, rfc

Postby milk » Mon Dec 17, 2007 9:09 pm

just wondering what peeps thoughts were on the idea of a forest wiki? i'd be very much in favour of using mediawiki, primarily because if users have had any experience of a wiki before, it'll have been with mediawiki through wikipedia (both for general use and and it's formatting syntax), and also due to the number of features and extentions avaliable that other wiki's don't have (templates, embedding flash video in articles, etc).
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Martin
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Postby Martin » Tue Dec 18, 2007 9:24 am

There is certainly a lot of information currently stored in the BB which would be a hell of a lot easier to navigate if it was in a wiki. That said the BB does work and people do use it, and trying to get people to use something else as well could be both difficult and counterproductive unless the two are well integrated.

At a bare minimum we'd want to patch up MediaWiki to authenticate users with the same logins they already use on the BB, indeed preferably to recognise the same cookies.
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milk
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Postby milk » Tue Dec 18, 2007 7:04 pm

good point. *googles* this extension should do just that.
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Postby chombee » Sun Jan 27, 2008 6:32 pm

I don't think it's a good idea to have a wiki on top of our existing website and bb (and other forest stuff online, like facebook, myspace, the 23hq account, yahoo mailing lists). Both for reading the sites to get info and for posting info to the sites, it is too much different stuff to learn, information is too scatterred.

But, I personally think it might be a good idea to replace the existing site with something simpler like a simple wiki or, I think, go even simpler and use a blog if it can be done.

Incidentally does anyone know of a good not evil public wiki host? I know of https://luminotes.com/ which is awesome but that is for private, personal wikis. By not evil I mean independent, free accounts are available, no adverts, supported by the users e.g. by voluntary contributions or upgrading to paid accounts, runs on free software. Something that hits all or most of those.
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Postby martinmckenna » Wed Jan 30, 2008 12:07 am

I think a better use of the sticky function that the bb offers for storing important info would be helpful as a start , and updating who is moderators so people can make stickys , which i think is discussed somewhere else on this board.
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chombee
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Postby chombee » Wed Jan 30, 2008 10:10 am

And organising the board so that it's easy to know where to find stuff.
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Postby Gandhi » Wed Jan 30, 2008 10:54 am

can someone explain the advantages of a Wiki website over a normal website?
I don't really know what Wiki is :?
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chombee
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Postby chombee » Wed Jan 30, 2008 11:20 am

It makes is quicker and easier for lots of people to add stuff to the site without having to know much technical stuff. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wiki

Actually I've changed my mind, I think a wiki would be a bad idea for the forest, as it's not fundamentally any easier to use than the CMS we have. A blog is fundamentally easier, because making a blog post is as simple as making a bb post, for example. You just click the Add Post button, get an empty text box, type away, then press Save and the blog does everything else. So it's very easy for everyone to contribute. A group blog might be a good thing for a forest website. Whereas with our existing CMS, and with a wiki, adding content is more difficult, you have to edit pages created by other people, you have to organise it yourself by linking the pages together, you have to deal with complex-looking wiki markup, etc.
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Postby Gandhi » Wed Jan 30, 2008 11:50 am

surely Wiki will also mean that the site is a lot more accessable to spammers to shove loads of crap on, and would only be deleted when a moderator checked?

Anyways, i'm out of my depth with this stuff so I'll leave you guys to talk tech. :D
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chombee
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Postby chombee » Wed Jan 30, 2008 2:03 pm

That can happen, it's a major problem for someone like wikipedia say, but you can also set it up so that only people with accounts can edit it and then only give accounts to people we know. It depends what we want to do. It could be public like the bb, where we attempt to let random joe publics get accounts and yet still try to keep the spammers out, or it could be private where we just give accounts to ourselves and our friends and probably don't get spammed.

Also I ran a wiki once which any visitor could edit without needing an account. You needed a password to edit it, and I wrote on the front page of the site 'the password is fairtrade.' Amazingly this completely stopped the spammers.
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Postby milk » Wed Feb 06, 2008 12:53 am

Incidentally does anyone know of a good not evil public wiki host?


not off hand i'm afraid (i got my personal wiki for doing bugtesting for the author) but this seems an interesting list, plus check the wiki farm list on wikipedia (link at the bottom)

But, I personally think it might be a good idea to replace the existing site with something simpler like a simple wiki or, I think, go even simpler and use a blog if it can be done.


lets look at it this way - what does the forest need from a web site? is joomla up to the task using it's core+plugins? what better solution or combination of solutions might be available out there to use?

what do people find annoying with the site? what would people like to do that they can do on other sites but not on theforest.org.uk?

to start, could we change the 'bb' link to read 'forum' as i've heard of a number of people who have visited the site before and never noticed there's a msg board section?
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Postby ravanwin » Wed Feb 06, 2008 12:36 pm

we need a clearer hierchy of information for the MAJOR and important work of the forest. Events Workshops and Forum Should be really easy to get to from the front page. everything else can stay more hidden and people can find it if they hunt. it would also be great if, for instance, i updated the events or my personal page - it would be great if any updates were reflected on the front page somehow so that a person visiting the site could see the new content immediately.

also - it should be clear that we welcome ANYONE to come and add stuff to our web site - especially if they are doing an activity or project. it is a great shame, for instance, that we do not have a page for forest vinyal... people need to FEEL that the forest site, like the cafe, is part owned by them.

it would be great if pockets uploaded recorded live tunes from the golden hour and if others added videos. like we have the monstor bike video on the facebook but NOT on our own website. (actually, i may try to fix that now....)

r
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