We need a real wiki-Site

[paulakreuzer]

@huskers

Still, I would also prefer a solution that offers better findability for key terms.

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.

@Sonne

On this site alone there is the forums and the blogs

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.

@Sonne

Probably one easy solution would be to make a wiki section in the forum?

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

[Sonne]

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

[paulakreuzer]

Yes those are categories.

[Stefan]

@paulakreuzer

Yes, but the tagging function is broken atm.

It is not broken at all: Topics tagged wiki

@huskers

Still, I would also prefer a solution that offers better findability for key terms.

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

@paulakreuzer

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

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

@Douwe

What other ways could we think of? Maybe adding Community generated How-To’s to the Fairphone support with proper attribution and link back?

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

@Douwe

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…

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.

[BeMiGro]

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.

[paulakreuzer]

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:

[tphysm]

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.

@Spielmops

I know and that’s the reason I wrote this first post: to complicated! Even the look of it!

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).

@Douwe

I prefer systems where old topics slowly are pushed away by new input

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

@huskers

One reason against a seperate wiki would be that we now have everything in one place.

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.

@Sonne

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?

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

@paulakreuzer

Why have blogs with comments enabled where you need a different login than the forum

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.

@Stefan

@Douwe

What other ways could we think of? Maybe adding Community generated How-To’s to the Fairphone support with proper attribution and link back?

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

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 …

@Stefan

Also people expect to find everything in a proper wiki and expect the information to be correct.

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)

@paulakreuzer

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:

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.

[Stefan]

@tphysm

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

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. It’s also possible to mention wiki.

[tphysm]

Sounds reasonable.

[danielsjohan]

@Stefan

huskers:
Still, I would also prefer a solution that offers better findability for key terms.

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

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.

[merci]

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

[erlend_sh]

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.

[paulakreuzer]

That’s awesome! Let’s do that!

[Douwe]

I asked @anon48893843 (our Support Tsaar) to shine his light over all these ideas.

[Douwe]

I just stumbled upon the wiki of OSMC and kinda like the way they did it.

What do you people think?

Contribute to the wiki

[tphysm]

I like the seperate wiki site and its nice integration into the whole website (via the menu on the top). It’s similar to @paulakreuzer’s suggestion from above and needs certainly much less effort than to set up a standalone wiki.

However, what I’m missing in the article view is a table of contents, though it might not be that hard to include this?!

But what about @erlend_sh’s suggestion? I like it a lot as well, it has tables of contents and looks as if it could also be integrated easily (at least easier than a standalone wiki) with the existing discourse infrastructure.

[tphysm]

@Douwe: I guess, you have enough work load, but I just wanted to ask if there’s a decision or plans for any of the proposed wikis? Do you need more user opinions about it?

Feel free to say that this is not your priority at the moment and you postpone it to some time in the future. I just wanted to hear about the current status.

[Douwe]

Hey,

I am happy to tell you that this is something we have on our ‘need to have’ list for our website update.
As a good implementation needs some time and thinking it won’t happen overnight… but it will happen soon.

We currently have a website update planned for mid may (don’t hold us to that date; it could change) and better integration of forum wiki’s and support articles is something we hope to be part of that update.

[tphysm]

Great news, thanks a lot for this update!

[Spielmops]

@Douwe

this is something we have on our ‘need to have’ list for our website update.

Anything new in this “case” ?