The Irrlicht Wiki or "What the heck is a Wiki?"

saigumi · Post by **saigumi** » Fri Apr 01, 2005 1:56 am

The Irrlicht Wiki is at http://irrforge.org

I figured many of us have no clue what a wiki is and what it's for.

So, lets ask the source - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wiki

Other than that, what's the real benefit?

Basically, anyone can post (depending on permission) and edit anyone elses posts. So, information can be shared easilly and dug up easilly. A good wiki requires no search box for the most part because the information should be easilly dug up.

Why use a wiki instead of a forum?

Wikis and forums have their strengths. Forums are great for short term collection of information, but posts end up becoming redundant.

Person 1 asks a question, get an answer.
Person 2 asks same question, gets a link to question 1.

This is where a wiki is better. It's one souce of information that can be easilly updated and kept in an easy to browse format. Instead of pages and pages of posts on a list of 3rd party libraries and FAQ posts, you would have one wiki page that gets updated whenever anyone has some new information.

My company currently uses an internal wiki for just this reason. Nearly every facet of software development and system administration is posted by the person with the knowledge. That way, if a new developer needs to find out why something works in some fashion, in 3 clicks they can be on the correct wiki page and be on their way without having to disturb the original author.

Well, if I haven't sold you on adding to the wiki, I probably never will. Just like open source software, a wiki gives what it takes and takes what it gives.

niko · Post by **niko** » Mon Apr 04, 2005 12:13 pm

Maybe we should replace the 'FAQs, Howtos, and tool lists' entry of this forum with a link to the wiki.

afecelis · Post by **afecelis** » Mon Apr 04, 2005 1:34 pm

The wiki kicks butt!

Grats Saigumi!

yup , I think the wiki can easily replace the FAQ's and even other sections qith questions that get repeated so much.

My questions is: what prevents someone from simply erasing everything off the wiki? (since anyone can edit it). And, does it get backed-up on a regular basis? (in case the formentioned idea happens)

anyway, great work!

bal · Post by **bal** » Mon Apr 04, 2005 2:41 pm

afecelis wrote:My questions is: what prevents someone from simply erasing everything off the wiki? (since anyone can edit it). And, does it get backed-up on a regular basis? (in case the formentioned idea happens)

From the MainPage of the Wiki:

"Backups of the database are run nightly as well as the basic security."

afecelis · Post by **afecelis** » Mon Apr 04, 2005 3:28 pm

bad reader I am!

saigumi · Post by **saigumi** » Mon Apr 04, 2005 5:20 pm

Also, what stops someone from F-ing everything up? Nothing. Well, nothing automatic.

Mostly, being able to pop back old versions and banning the user stops most crud.

Also, pages can be protected. I've done this with the main page because it is the one that everyone would see and shouldn't change often. Any admin can unlock or edit the page though. I've been checking this page.
http://irrforge.org/index.php/Special:Recentchanges

Also, any new pages have a "patrolled" flag which shows up for admins to say that the content has been read over.

Speaking of which, I've been adding admins, which are called sysops. I've also started tagging bureaucrats, which are admins that can add other admins. It's sort of random right now, but if you log in and start seeing a lot more options, your a sysop. I'm trying to make sure we aren't to top heavy either. There is only a certain limit of admins that we need until the amount of people grow.

As for ditching the FAQ forum, it's possible. I'll make a go through this week and pull what I can. We can then put up a sticky redirecting to the wiki and lock the forum. I found an old copy of my tutorials and have been fixing them for the current version of Irrlicht and will have them posted in the wiki tonight.

Also, I'm looking into plugins for spell and grammar checking.

afecelis · Post by **afecelis** » Mon Apr 04, 2005 6:08 pm

whoa! interesting admin. options!!!

so nothing can be done anonymously! sounds cool and secure.

niko · Post by **niko** » Sat Apr 09, 2005 6:28 pm

Another great feature of wikis is that they usually keep a version history of all pages. So backups and acess restrictions are not really necessary. Unless spammers don't get too nasty and it is too much work to erase spam posts. But it looks like we are living in difficult times.

saigumi · Post by **saigumi** » Thu Apr 14, 2005 5:39 pm

The wiki is offline right now. Seems I got disconnected while securing the server (basically, I was turning off the ability for root to log in directly) and the server was locked. Technical support is being a pain in the butt and I need some confimation number that I have at home to finish getting it fixed. Hopefully, it will be back by about 8 PM (GMT-6/CST)

niko · Post by **niko** » Thu Apr 21, 2005 12:12 pm

Looks like it is up again

saigumi · Post by **saigumi** » Thu Apr 21, 2005 1:18 pm

It was up at the time I said it would be. Heck, I even posted about it with a warning to other administrators out there Link

I'm surprised that there as many additions as there are. I've looked at a few other wiki's out there and they died early due to things like "Only Admins can post" and "only registered users can read".

I'm proud to say that we haven't had any bad edits at all. About the only admining I have done is to fix some formatting issues that a new wiki user might not know, add some suggested categories, pulled some more links to the front page, etc...

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niko · Post by **niko** » Fri Apr 22, 2005 7:07 am

Yes, that's quite nice. If it works so well without a guest options, I maybe could have turned guest off for this forum too. But looks like the spammers have given up..