CF wiki

This is going to be another one of those ideas that will require some time and effort. We know what that means...
 
The easiest (and arguably best) way would be to set up a mediawiki instance. It's the same thing used to run wikipedia and it's used all over the place in other wikis so it's good, stable and free. The install itself is dead simple too - if you want to skin it so it's more like the CF theme then that'll take a bit of design effort, and if the accounts were going to be linked directly with the accounts on this site that'd probably be a bit of a challenge. Overall though it really shouldn't be too hard (and I don't see a huge need for the accounts to be linked anyway, it's only a 2 second job to create a new account over on the mediawiki instance.) :)
Apparently this allows you to run MediaWiki with your vBulletin database, allowing you to integrate the users, etc.
http://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Extension:VBulletin/Users_Integration
 
This is going to be another one of those ideas that will require some time and effort. We know what that means...

If members can be the ones doing the bulk of the work, I don't see there being a problem. Now, if this is something that the Mods are going to have to oversee and do the bulk of the work, then yes, this idea is going to go down the proverbial shi**er.
 
First off, thanks all for backing this idea - I'm glad I'm not the only one that thinks it'd be cool to have!

If members can be the ones doing the bulk of the work, I don't see there being a problem. Now, if this is something that the Mods are going to have to oversee and do the bulk of the work, then yes, this idea is going to go down the proverbial shi**er.

This is the great thing about a wiki, it's up to anyone and everyone to do the work! Yes, some mods will need to oversee what's going on, monitor users and ban those who are partaking in vandalism and suchlike, but the overall maintenance should be low. Vandalised pages will need to be restored yes - but because it's a wiki anyone can do that, not just mods :)

The bulk of the work will be getting the thing up and running, and the mediawiki install is pretty painless so I don't see that being too much work. Extensions are again pretty easy to install, usually just a case of adding a few lines to the localsettings.php file and dragging a folder into the extensions folder :)

Part of the reason I suggested this was because it really doesn't take a huge amount of effort to set up, but could well be an invaluable source of information in the future! :)
 
The only thing holding me back is the question of would it really be used? We have a stickied thread that links to a bunch of references (http://www.computerforums.org/showthread.php?t=40515) that no-one seems to use. I add threads to the list when I see a good one or someone asks it to be done.

Don't get me wrong, i like the idea, but I can see this taking the route of that reference thread.
 
Well, for some reason, I just find it more "professional" or "cool" if we could link to a Wiki thread, plus, we wouldn't need to run things by mods or get things "stickied"...we could all contribute if we have something to contribute. I mean, if it's free and easy to implement, we could at least try it; if we don't like it we can take it down.
 
Don't get me wrong, i like the idea, but I can see this taking the route of that reference thread.
It's a fair point, but I honestly think it would be used. I don't really use the above thread either, but would definitely use a wiki if there were to be one. There's a number of reasons for this:

- Primarily, while the thread does have some good guides in it, it's organisation is quite haphazard - it's really got no structure at all. It looks like it might have started out with the intention of just having a single post with everything neatly categorised but certainly hasn't stayed in that form! A wiki on the other hand would by its nature be far more structured, and it'd be easier to find what you need.
- Some people might not even know it was there. It was sure a while before I stumbled on it, whereas if there's a wiki I'd hope there would be a clear link somewhere on the front page?
- It's only editable by mods. And yes, while people can suggest things to be put there, I'm guessing most people just don't go to the effort of asking, or just plain aren't sure if they should ask at all.
- The whole philosophy of a wiki means that things aren't just written once, they're constantly revamped and edited by different people. So with this method we'd arguably get far more robust and better articles and tutorials than just one person writing them then forgetting about them.

Yes - I guess you could be right, it could flop. I don't think it will, but I'm not going to pretend I know this is going to be a huge success, at the end of the day it might not be. Personally though I reckon it sounds like there's enough support to give it a go. As said above, if it flops and ends up being useless so be it. But unless we try we'll never know...:)
 

Without wanting to sound derogatory - in fairness it does look like the whole idea, conception and execution of that idea was a bit rushed. It was on a separate domain, done completely separately from the site and only ever pointed to in one single thread (at least as far as I can tell.) Since that thread was only active for about 4 days, I struggle to see how people would've known it existed! I certainly had no idea it did - and if that's the same for most members that may well have been its downfall!

So I'd say at a quick glance the failure of that particular wiki was probably due to its execution rather than the overall idea.
 
Same here berry. I had no idea that existed, and I don't think you can really expand on an idea that lasted only 4 days and 2 pages of posts.
 
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