We need a real wiki-Site

@paulakreuzer: I know and that’s the reason I wrote this first post: to complicated! Even the look of it! What do you mean why there is this topic (german) “Root, GAPPS, noGAPPS (Ich blick nicht durch)”?
@dowe: Yes, something this way.

Spielmops

Because many people don’t understand the concept of root. Doesn’t really have anything to do with wiki topics though. :confused:

Unlike douwe I’m a big time fan of wikis and I’d definitely see the point of a real wiki. A better wiki plugin for Discourse would be best I think.

1 Like

I also sometimes find it hard to find knowledge entries. Is it possible to use tagging for wiki articles in the forum? Searching with keywords that are not contained by a wiki entry doesn’t lead to a good result by now, does it? :smile:

Also: When I enter “root” in the search box, I get a list of different topics, but no link to the forum wiki. If a user does not know that a wiki exists, they won’t find it this way.

3 Likes

Do you want to elaborate why? Especially the possibility to easily connect different articles would be great, I think, so why to use something else?

I’m really curious, are there reasons against wikis?

1 Like

My main reason is that wikis are very high maintenance.
I prefer systems where old topics slowly are pushed away by new input (like this forum, or even better: stackoverflow.)

As wikis grow, it is hard to go back to every page and update information. But then again, maybe this community is big enough to do that…

But indeed, Discourse works well for live discussions, and less to keep relevant information visible and easy to find.

1 Like

Yes, but the tagging function is broken atm.

You can find all wikis by searching for :pencil2: ( = :pencil2: ).

That’s because the topic is called superuser and discourse’s search function is really bad. Some basic synonyms should be recognized.

I’ve been trying to make wikis more visible, because if people read those before creating a new help topic that would help a lot. Pinning it in the #meta category was not really helpful.
I think it should be here:


Or here:

Sorry for the bad mockups.

Since there is no good way to do it with discourse how about Miraheze? @Douwe do you think we could integrate it on the Fairphone page?

2 Likes

One reason against a seperate wiki would be that we now have everything in one place. Still, I would also prefer a solution that offers better findability for key terms.

Another way might be to create an own topic for every term explained in the Forum Dictionary so they can be found separately by searching through the search box, instead of looking it up in a list like it is handled now. (just an idea, nothing more)

1 Like

Ok that is possible, but I think if you want a “database” this will be a problem not matter the system.

Actually I really don’t feel that way. On this site alone there is the forums and the blogs, and I think on FB there is also a lot of activity (I’m not active on FB so I don’t know exactly). So it is already split up.

Probably one easy solution would be to make a wiki section in the forum? Collecting all the useful wikis from the forum there and deleting evtl discussions? (Could also be copys so that in the orininal threads the discussion is still alive)

One thing that would be really great is if we could quickly link to specific predefined topics or posts. So if e.g. I type GravityBox, Touchscreen Test or Battery while writing a post, I automatically get a popup asking me if I want to link the word to GravityBox, Touchscreen Test or Battery.

That bothers me too. Why have blogs with comments enabled where you need a different login than the forum if you could simply start a topic discussing that blog post in the forum and link it to the blog post.

You mean a Category for Wikis? I suggested that a long time ago but could never get a majority behind that idea.

Are they called categories? Yes I mean like “Community” or “Meta”

3 Likes

Yes those are categories. :smiley:

It is not broken at all: Topics tagged wiki

You can always use Google’s onsite search:
site:forum.fairphone.com - Google Zoeken (Click on “search help” in the forum search.)

The reason is that such a solution would be inconsistent. Why should software-related topics not be in the software category?

I really like this idea! Fairphone could show how much it values the community, by incorporating community generated wiki articles in the knowledge base.

At least not yet (it will never be for FP1). Also people expect to find everything in a proper wiki and expect the information to be correct. Such a small userbase cannot guarantee either of both.

PS: [quote=“paulakreuzer, post:6, topic:13671”]
Because many people don’t understand the concept of root. Doesn’t really have anything to do with wiki topics though.
[/quote]
I agree with @paulakreuzer on this and would like to add that this isn’t even Fairphone-related. It’s about the various terms and could be discussed on any platform.

Although I’m (same as @paulakreuzer and in contrary to @Douwe) a wiki fan, I could live as well with a wiki, a forum category for (selected) wiki’s (w/o the discussions parts or link to original posts) or the suggestion to provide those (selected) topics in separate how-tos elsewhere on the FP site.
In case of providing the information via real wiki, I strongly recommend to also implement a good search function. Without that searching (more exact: finding) something can get cumbersome.

1 Like

Ok here’s an idea. How about we get someone to develop a plugin for discourse that lets you pin topics in a tags view like wikis and then we integrate the wiki tag in the menu bar like this:

3 Likes

I’d really really like to have a Wiki as well. Very good idea, @Spielmops!

@All: For me, the Wiki discussion is not really related to the discussion about improving the search function. If you agree, let’s try to separate these subjects.

I agree. I also don’t like the Wiki posts and their look is not very clear. IMHO, widespread Wiki software such as MediaWiki is far better in this respect (so I like @paulakreuzer’s suggestion of Miraheze).

Actually, I find this rather annoying sometimes as there are quite a few topics I’d like to have faster access to.

Do you mean separate from the forum or separate from the FP-site? I can understand the drawback of the latter. However, I think, it should be possible to link to the Wiki page in such an obvious that nobody should miss it.

I’d rather vote for a Wiki separated from the forum for better clearness (concerning look and content).

Is there a comment function / possibility for blog posts? I haven’t recognized this yet. If so, the splitting of forum and Blog into two logins doesn’t make sense to me as well.

I like this idea as well, though I would prefer the features of a Wiki. Moreover, this raises some questions:

  1. Are people expecting Community generated content on a Company’s support site? Maybe, this could be solved with proper attribution, but I’m not sure about that.

  2. Who will have access to generate and edit the Community HowTos? Every registered user or only exclusively selected ones? How to select them?

Well, just now I’m recognizing that the second question will also need to be answered for a Wiki …

I wouldn’t agree on that. In fact, no matter on which site or topic, I would never expect to find everything in a wiki. A wiki is always work in progress. And that’s not bad. However, I do agree that it’s hard to pre-estimate whether there are enough people to contribute as to get a critical amount of articles.

I don’t agree on the second aspect as well. The term (community) wiki means by itself (at least for me) that not only experts are allowed to edit (who could make mistakes as well) and that you shouldn’t put 100% trust in it. This even (or maybe in particular?) applies to Wikipedia.

Moreover, a Wiki start page is a perfect place to

  • inform the reader about the Wiki being work in progress and not complete
  • encourage the reader to correct mistakes if he/she spots one (which is also a hint not to expect every detail to be correct)
  • and even to make it explicitely clear that the articles may contain mistakes due to the construction of a wiki (if the second point is not obvious enough)

The overview is nice. I could arrange with that, though I’d prefer a wiki. But of course, this is also a question of costs and benefits. :wink:

3 Likes

Everyone should be able to contribute (after a log-in). If it’s in the company’s knowledge base, support staff could approve of posts. If there will really be a MediaWiki-like wiki, some trusted members could approve of the posts there.

Edit: You can even search only topics tagged with “wiki”, by entering tag:wiki into the forum search bar. :smiley: It’s also possible to mention wiki. :smiley:

1 Like

Sounds reasonable. :slightly_smiling:

Do you think people who have a problem with their FP will think of this option? If they already use the search function, they will often not find what they are looking for on the forum. PErsonally, I can’t blame them: if you don’t know it already exists, you often can’t find it if you’re not lucky.

2 Likes

+ for me at least google is no option at all…

2 Likes

If you put all wiki topics in the same category, you could do something like this:

https://meta.discourse.org/t/using-discourse-to-host-a-knowledge-base/34036/9?u=erlend_sh

I also recently interviewed Coinbase and we talked at length about how they balance their Discourse forum & support resources. They’ve integrated Discourse with their knowledgebase so that every article comes with a dedicated topic for comments.

5 Likes