new Boat Design Wiki (beta)

[Jeff]

A new Boat Design & Boat Building Wiki (http://www.boatdesign.net/wiki/) is currently in the beta phase.

The idea of this "wiki" is to provide a collaborative knowledgebase relating to boat design and boat building. The Forums will of course remain the key location for active discussion, but the Boat Design Wiki (http://www.boatdesign.net/wiki/) will hopefully complement the forums by providing a collaborative article database where members can work together to create an organized source of articles by topic. Major concepts and interesting topics that develop over time in the forum can be summarized in the Wiki to provide new members and existing membera alike a nice reference of categorized information.

The Boat Design Wiki (http://www.boatdesign.net/forums/../wiki/) will be built on MediaWiki software. It's a bit different than the forum software, but fairly easy to get the hang of the syntax with a few minutes working with it. All members (with more than 5 posts on the public forums here) are welcome and invited to give the software a spin and we would of course be greatful if you can help get the Boat Design Wiki (http://www.boatdesign.net/forums/../wiki/) started by adding a topic or two.

As we are testing things out, if you encounter a bug, issue, or have any questions, please start a new thread in this forum so I can investigate. Many thanks in advance.

[yipster]

takes me a few more minutes to get the hang
a forum search gives me sometimes no results
Boat Design Wiki seems to do better on first sight
bringing relevant treaths up but isnt like wikipedia
please elaborate the working a bit more and/or
i check it out better later, really good idea tho !

[Jeff]

isnt like wikipedia
Actually, the idea is very much like wikipedia -- a smaller, focused boat design wiki to be created and categorized by the members of the forum community here. It certainly will be no small effort to create, but hopefully will become a nice source of information over time. Possibly calling it "beta" is jumping the gun a bit, as what exists now is potential to create something and the mediawiki software up and running with the shared login/password database with the forum... the content will be the beautiful part, and we need some brave members to start adding some topic pages to the wiki to get things going :)

[SamSam]

I don't find anything, but I suppose that's because nothing has been entered. It's kind of neat, a vast, uncharted www sea. I think a nautical and/or marine related terms/dictionary would be good, but I guess that's what the whole thing would eventually be. Did Wikipedia start from 'nothing' or was it jump started from some sort of basic database? Well, I just read about it on Wikipedia itself...
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia
Since they both run on MediaWiki software, could any marine/nautical postings on Wikipedia be transferred to Boat Design Wiki, or would that be 'illegale'?
Sam

[Robert Gainer]

OK, to get it started I added a page for displacement. Short and to the point so now you get to work and make it something worthwhile. By the way don’t laugh when you look at the page. There isn’t much I can say about the subject so its up to you guys.
All the best,
Robert Gainer

[Jeff]

I'm not entirely sure Sam, but I think with some work the community here will be able to produce better and more content focused on yacht design than what already exists there in any case.
OK, to get it started I added a page for displacement (http://www.boatdesign.net/wiki/Displacement)
Thanks Robert! Very succinct ;)

The hardest part is getting started... if every member contributes 5 pages, then we'll really have something in no time!

[Crag Cay]

I'm new to this Wiki. I thought you added extra contributions as in the forums, which were then combined by an 'editor'.

However rather than add to Robert's displacement contribution, I seem to have over written it. Sorry.

[Jeff]

Yes, the wiki aims to present one "latest, greatest" version of any one given topic, so when you click edit on an existing topic, you're actually editing that page. All versions are keep in the history (tab history) and can be compared or rolled back if ever necessary though: http://www.boatdesign.net/boat-design-wiki/index.php?title=Displacement&diff=1429&oldid=1428

[Doug Lord]

Well, I gave it a shot: a small overview of hydrofoil sailboats.....
Great idea, Jeff.

[Mikey]

Great idea, just miss one thing;

There should always be a reference link to who the poster of the information is, the hull speed page has that but the displacement one doesn't.

Mikey

[Jeff]

Excellent point Mikey - working on it now.

There are still some questions to be answered. For example: if one member posts an article, do we in wiki-fashion allow other members in the future to add to and edit the article as things change or new information comes forth? If so, what then happens to the byline? (obviously if small typos or one number in a formula is corrected at a later date, the byline shouldn't change, so that will all need to be worked out, but I believe that won't be a big deal using the minor edit vs. major edit. Just need to pull the info onto the article page from the history tab where the authorship is currently shown.)

For now if you are so kind as to post an article to help get it started, please manually ad a byline at the top or signature at the bottom until we get it automated.

[Willallison]

Righto - I've been to and fro for a couple of days now - and I'm afraid this Wiki thing (what's that stand for anyway?) has me completely bluffed.
For those less...err... geeky (oops...did I say that out loud?...) I mean less IT competent, can we have a short "Wiki for Dummies" please...?
I can't even find the other threads!

[Mikey]

There are still some questions to be answered. For example: if one member posts an article, do we in wiki-fashion allow other members in the future to add to and edit the article as things change or new information comes forth?

I would say no, if I add an article, then I would not want others to be able to edit it. Boat design is all about compromise and the edit may very well not correspond with my opinion of what an appropriate compromise is :)

Still, there must be a way to correct and add to articles or the article subject, either in a controlled way, or as a discussion in a thread directly linked to the article.

Mikey

[Mikey]

Will, Wiki stands for quick in Hawaiian, and is a form of web-based collaboration tool. In other words, it is a webpage that everyone can modify and extend. Makes for quick expansion of articles as many people easily can contribute.

I won't use Wiki in its original form, I spend some time writing before I post and I don't want others to change what I write, what is written in my name.

Mikey

[Jeff]

Thanks Mikey (and sorry Will for not replying, was away today.)

The Wiki concept has been around since the 90's, but I think wikipedia has really made the name and concept popular this year and last. And now a number of sites have their own smaller subject-focused wikis (simply meaning sites/software where many people can contribute and/or update)

Mikey, one option may be to use the Protect feature. Currently I've set it so 'Senior Members' can protect and unprotect pages, but this is not quite as well implemented as it could be yet.

It's a fundamental question. On one hand, I definitely see your point. No one wants to submit an article and then have someone else come in and edit it to change the meaning or contents of a well written piece. On the other hand, many pages may be works in progress that cannot ever be finished -- for example a wiki page listing all current surface drive models & manufacturers and some advantages/disadvantages with a paragraph or two of concise information about each, or a page on current core materials with a quick paragraph on each... as new materials or models come to market, or things are discovered, these pages might always be works in progress. So we might have to simply develop a set of rules in conjunction with protected and unprotected pages.

[TerryKing]

..(Snip)..
Mikey, one option may be to use the Protect feature. Currently I've set it so 'Senior Members' can protect and unprotect pages, but this is not quite as well implemented as it could be yet.
It's a fundamental question. On one hand, I definitely see your point. No one wants to submit an article and then have someone else come in and edit it to change the meaning or contents of a well written piece. ..(snip)..

This open editing is a thing that takes a little getting used to, but I believe it won't be a big problem. It may even be less of a problem than the typical quick flame-job forum entry, because it IS more 'serious' and 'professional'. We hope.
I have 4 Wiki's running, and I haven't had any editing wars yet. But I'm not covering something highly controversial. See:
http://living-in-tunisia.wikispaces.com/ for an example.
This brings me to a point about THIS Wiki. I find it difficult to FIND the "Other Wikis" unless I search for them.
WhatIf: The Main Page has links in it's "Navigation" sidebar to the various Articles?? Or, the main page can have content that discusses and organizes the various WikiSubjects and has embedded links to them..
Jeff, what do you think???

[TerryKing]

...

-- The links on the main page work fine.. thanks!

[SmithCraft64]

I'm not sure that this is a good idea. It's just going to lead back to the open discussion forums. I don't mean to sound negative.I just don't think that it will work. The concept just doesn't click with me. It looks like the way it will be will take the meaning of open forum and turn it into closed discussion with some opinions accepted. I'm sorry but why change a good thing? This is a great site already why take a chance of fooking it up? Leave the discussions open to all. If you start adding a bunch of rules on what you can post your opinion on your going to discourage the very thing your trying to encourage.
Just my thoughts.
SmithCraft64

[TerryKing]

Am I missing something? I don't see anything on the regular forums that points at the Wiki. AT least not obviously. I have a bookmark, but I bet it would be
more used if there was something right at the top of the forums that went to it....

[Jeff]

A rather good point :P I've added a link to the footer and header now as a first step, and will continue to increase visibility as it fills out more.

--the chicken or the egg

[TerryKing]

That works well, Jeff...