ShowEQ Wiki

[GregChant]

Some (most?) of you may not know who I am; for those of you who don't know me, I am a regular/operator in the #showeq channel on trifocus. I haven't contributed anything to the project.

Anyways, it has come up a couple of times in the channel that ShowEQ could benefit from a Wiki system for frequently encountered problems or rapidly changing information (keys, md5sums, whatever). I have taken the liberty to address this suggestion, and have created one for everyone's amusement/use.

For those of you unfamiliar with the Wiki way, I encourage you to check out http://www.wiki.org/wiki.cgi?WhatIsWiki to find out more. Basically, if you don't want to read it, Wiki is a web page/site which can be edited by everyone.

How does this help ShowEQ? Well, it can be used in a variety of ways. For starters, you can use it to act as a FAQ site, where newbies can ask questions, and anyone can answer them. Additionally, you can use it to post latest keys, etc.

How does this differ from the message board? The message board is structured in such a way which makes finding information at-a-glance near impossible. Would you rather go to a forum or view a HOWTO when you want to set up a device? Personally, I'd just like to see the HOWTO. I could care less about what User001 did in a patch recently.

This can then allow the boards to be used for development/what-have-you rather than addressing every newbie question.

Anyways, that's my plug. I'm not sure how you all feel about this, so please, feel free to bash/flame/insult me to your heart's content.

Finally, I just want to apologize in advance to whoever designed the layout for the ShowEQ message boards... I ripped your layout entirely. I did this for integration purposes, should you guys choose to accept the system. Please don't hurt me!

And, without further ado, the ShowEQ Wiki System can be found at: http://www.gregchant.com/SeqWiki .

[GregChant]

You can also access it at http://seqwiki.gregchant.com for your convience.

While I'm writing a reply, I've noticed a few people have voted no to the system. Any reason why?

[Spook]

I like the idea of working towards a better way to find information for all levels of previous knowledge. I am concerned a bit about Wiki's and the ability to lose good information, defacing, vandelism etc. I'll check out any sample sites I run across but would like to hear comments about those concerns from those who use Wiki type sites already. SEQ, you just know, is going to attract that.

I was thinking something along the lines of a knowledge base where people can contribute information but not change layout. A server side list of truely helpful keywords for a dropdown list to help suggest paths of search having new posts auto-parsed for these keywords for faster indexing would be good. That as well as freeform searching. I'm trying to remember a free 4G "english" search engine but coming up blank. Typing in keywords and having a list of subject lines containing those words would be tremendous. Oh, as well as that, a rating system for posts so users can rate the posts' helpfulness. Whatever helps people search for answers when they don't know the projects "language" to even really start a real search would be tremendously helpful.

Greg, you said to be free with flames, bashes, etc. This isn't really a flame about your idea but maybe you can take the following as constructive critism and there is no heat what-so-ever behind these words - just typing out some obervations:

The IRC channel tends to be real rough. Yourself has been observed being belligerent, arrogant, egomanically and really narrow minded on what you assume of others. Not just you but others as well. Once in a while some decent discourse comes about but it seems if a person logged in is not part of a small clique then that person is just a target for abuse. I would hope on the lesser evil this is just what has happened as a result of a few years of people popping in wanting all kinds of crap and vanishing rather than those there being full time assholes.

The point of the above is maybe those who voted 'no' did so just because your name (or mod of the irc site) is attached and figure no real help would come of it but rather some sort of elitism would occur.

Your idea and effort on trying this Wiki approach may work out. I agree, that if the community can self police information then, great!

[Ratt]

I still think the idea is good, the implimentation still is troublesome.

As far as Wiki goes... is it possible to put a comment system on non-editable pages instead? Leave the FAQ up, but people can comment on each individual topic, or submit change SUGGESTIONS that must be approved by a moderator (or perhaps even a community vote?)

Regardless, it's a good start and definitely a step in the right direction, just need to refine it now.

[GregChant]

On the possilbility of losing valuable information, you can go back a few diff versions (on the bottom, to the right of EditText, there is a info, which tells the ip of who last edited it, and a diff, which outlines the last few changes to the page).

The admin account has the ability to lock pages to prevent editing, as a simple measure, but I'll see what I can do with making it more secure.

[GregChant]

I just had a thought... I have been using the geeklog system for some time now as a frontend to gregchant.com (http://geeklog.sf.net for information, www.gregchant.com for my implementation)... it allows people to submit main articles to moderators, who can then edit/approve them for public viewing, as well allow comments to be posted on any article.

If this is what you mean Ratt, I could probably have a ShowEQ implementation up by tommorrow.

Let met know what you think.

[Mr Guy]

I'm not sure Geeklog is exactly what they are shooting for either.

I think the general idea is that in order for it to work properly it would have to

A) Be able to roll back through a multiple troll attack, even ten versions may not be enough.

B) Preferably be able to be locked by user. No anon edits.

C) Have part of the screen "locked" with part of the screen open. (md5sum shouldn't be edited except by Ratt/Casey/Fee, but the offset is fair game)


The wikkipedia does work quite well and has fended off numerous attacks. The only way it works though is if the versioning is robust enough to prevent the good copy from being pushed off the stack.

Is there a way to have "approved" versions that are always remembered, so even in the worst case there is a 'safe' point to roll back to?

[GregChant]

I'll see what I can do.

If anybody wants to help with this, you can find the latest source tarball of my edits to the wiki at http://seqwiki.gregchant.com/seqwiki.tar.gz .

If you want to start from scratch, I'm using the PhpWiki system, found at http://phpwiki.sf.net .