What about an Endless-sphere wiki?

[jonathanm]

I agree with the "no single source" concept. I don't think anyone who would like to see a knowledgebase expects it to be the definitive, "don't waste yer time reading anything else" kind of resource.

Wiki's are good for facts......Articles are good for informed opinion. Forums are good for discussion, debate, and other banter. FAQ's are good for....well, FAQ's. Horses and Courses.

eg I wouldn't want to see a "how to choose the best motor" in a wiki...would make a good article though. In a wiki I *would* like to see a Crystalyte page with a list of all the motors available or previously available, comarisons, specs, some pictures, known issues, links to articles and discussions on them.

If a wiki is done like this then you don't have to be such a great writer or an expert on the subject matter...you just need to be good at researching and compiling info and data....or trawling for photos, etc.

Not to say you couldn't *store* articles and FAQs in the wiki structure, making them easy to search, find etc.

[Tiberius]

Maybe it's just a question of indexing.

If the search worked better, or people were better at using it, then most of the problem would go away. Peeps would be able to find a stack of info on whatever subject; they could then work out what to use and what to dismiss.

At the moment it's people like TD and Miles who are acting as the search and index by posting links to past threads when a topic gets repeated.

Nick

[jonathanm]

I saw a wiki on another site recently (can't remember where) that had been constructed out of forum posts (ie without any additional software, scripting, or any need to fart about with user tables, permissions etc) - That could work here, I would think.

Anyway - I have been compiling the most useful posts I have come across, but going back more than a few months - a year or so is difficult.

If anyone has their own set of bookmarks and useful posts from before that time, and would like to share them with me, that would be extremely cool. Whether I do anything useful with them remains to be seen, but I intend to if at all possible.

For example, right now I have read in a few places about a 20 page thread on shunt soldering, which I can't find. Also I would like to find posts that directly compare more than two hub motors, with some actual testing if possible.

Cheers,

J

[fechter]

Unfortunately, the phpbb software does not make it easy to pick individual posts and copy/move them. You can copy/move a whole topic thread, but weeding out the useless posts is extremely time consuming.

Using google search tends to work much better than the forum's built in search function. It also allows you to do image search.

[auraslip]

ES image search is the sauce

[heathyoung]

Only if half or more of the images weren't corrupted

[HAROX]

Been tried a couple of times.

The folks who have the most knowledge have the least time. The folks with the most time have the least knowledge.

Bad enough that noobs are trying to write FAQs.

We who study the forum are valuable. I really gain a larger impression of what it takes to get the job done, the job being, to build a well balanced machine.
It takes a reasonably well balanced person to edit this information, and, an extremely well balanced person to conduct the testing in the first place. I don't expect I'm either.

[SamSpeed]

This be a great idea. There is a wealth of great information here but it is not organized. There is also some not so good information, and lots of opinion -- and even more questions asked over and over.

I'm a bit of a Wikipedian. My first edit was years ago when I spotted a hilariously ambiguous sentence. The meaning was clear from context so I got bold and just made the obvious edit. One does not have to be a subject matter expert. One don't even need no grammar or writing skills. The idea is that little by little, edit by edit the wiki gets better and better. The key is participation. One could fill in a section, or create a page just by finding worthy posts, summarizing and providing good links. If your work is not quite right or incomplete, have faith that eventually someone will come along behind and make it better.

One important wiki feature is the powerful Undo ability. Nothing can be done that can't be undone. Armed with that, folks should go forth boldly and just edit. Yes, Wikipedia has it's share of vandalism and what are called Edit Wars. But over time, resolution of these issues has just made Wikipedia stronger. It's an evolutionary process.

I just spotted the ES Wiki last nite and already made a couple contributions.