Wiki for Wilders?

Discussion in 'Forum Related Discussions' started by iwod, Aug 21, 2005.

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  1. iwod

    iwod Registered Member

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    I think we should start up a wiki for wilders......... Any views or comment?

    Since the orginal Wilders.org is outdated and no one is updating it......
     
  2. rdsu

    rdsu Registered Member

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    Could be a good idea... ;)
     
  3. The Hammer

    The Hammer Registered Member

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    Is this what you mean? http://wiki.org/wiki.cgi?WhatIsWiki
     
  4. gerardwil

    gerardwil Registered Member

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  5. The Hammer

    The Hammer Registered Member

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  6. Close_Hauled

    Close_Hauled Registered Member

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    I don't see why they could not add a Wiki to the site. There are plenty of us who could add content. It would make things a lot simpler for people looking for general information. It would also be a good spot to find standard practices, procedures. We could post how to's there.
     
  7. HandsOff

    HandsOff Registered Member

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    Well I don't get it...

    If anyone could post anything, what would stop people from just destroying all the information or misrepresenting the views of others? Doesn't there have to be some lines drawn? For the most part we are not creating here, we are distributing information. If what I present can be changed, or made obscure, then one's contributions would be lost, and so would the reason for making them.

    I guess I obviously don't understand the concept. if this was a wiki, then I could rename the thread blonde jokes, and move it to 10-4?


    -HandsOff
     
  8. bigc73542

    bigc73542 Retired Moderator

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    If you want a difinitive answer on your wiki just ask LowWaterMark or Paul Wilders they are the final word here.
     
  9. iwod

    iwod Registered Member

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    The idea to make a wiki for wilder is too keep those repeating question in wider to minimum........ And make search for information a lot easier.
     
  10. HandsOff

    HandsOff Registered Member

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    Oh, now i begin to see.

    I'm still not sure I like the idea, but I have never tried one, so I would have to reserve judgement.


    -HandsOff
     
  11. iceni60

    iceni60 ( ^o^)

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    most/some? Wikis have a password, so it could only be available to members.
     
  12. Zhen-Xjell

    Zhen-Xjell Security Expert

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    I think it is a noble idea, but that isn't why a Wiki ought to be started IMO. In fact, that is not where a Wiki excels at.

    A knowledge base would probably be best, however, even with a single source of information available, folks in need of assistance won't search those locations unless they rank well in search results at major engines.

    I've seen many "READ THIS FIRST" announcements in forums, and folks still don't read them. Its the common issue anywhere there are humans...

    How about the men who buy a tool but don't read the instructions? Or buy a put together yourself furniture and don't read the instructions (of course I tend to fall in this bracket).

    You can only help those who want it.
     
  13. HandsOff

    HandsOff Registered Member

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    Well that occurred to me too, but I didn't want to chime in before actually trying one, but since the door is opened, and two have already used it, my other thought was that I never have like the structure of help files, with indexes and searches....the bottom line is I could find things much faster just skimming. also (with help files, you end up following different links and ending back in the same useless page. And yet another complaint is often the contents of a topic, are basically not any deeper that the topic title, much of the time. a fact you don't find out until you waste time opening in up.

    My fear is that Wiki could be much the same. round, and round and chasing the empty promise of poorly written topics.

    Then there's the web where you see what you want, but you don't have permision, or have to join...

    Plus a forum gives you the sense of "what's New" and what is a "commonly held oppinion."

    Mind you, I'm not saying I wouldn't love to see a Wilder's Wiki. But should it come to pass, hopefully this things could be minimized


    -HandsOff
     
  14. Pollmaster

    Pollmaster Guest

    The main reason a wiki would never work is that, wilders would never allow it.
     
  15. HandsOff

    HandsOff Registered Member

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    In all fairness to Wilder's, it seems to me that more is being asked than for Wilder's to allow it. Are they not being asked to pay the freight?


    I doubt very much that Wilder's would take steps to prevent anyone from creating a website of their own liking. Let's not be spin doctors!





    -HandsOff
     
  16. Pollmaster

    Pollmaster Guest

    The proposal is to build a wiki for Wilders, how can Wilders not be involved? Seems to me if the wiki is going to bear the name Wilders , they would have to be involved. Let's be sensible here!
     
  17. HandsOff

    HandsOff Registered Member

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    I will try being sensible if you try to be considerate.


    This topic attracted my attention, and I am interested in seeing it, or something like it. I have not used wiki, but it could be great, and I'd love to try one, and I agree, I don't see how it could work unless it had the support and administration of people that have the right combination of resources, commitment, and administration. And, yes, I think Wilder's would be my first choice of a team that could do it.

    But the fact is that it would be a huge commitment. I feel like Wilder's is being criticized for not sharing the same vision that someone else has, and then not committing their own time and money to see it happen.

    I love the notion of free access to information. Maybe you think Wilder's has become institutionalized, and does not serve the online community as well as it could. No doubt there is some truth in that. However, they are on the whole, helping and educating a lot of people...a lot more than either you or I, most likely. It's not that I'm content to sit back and wait for them to make a decision. The fact is that it their decision, and by sheer coincidence I am sitting back, and am not apprized of their intent on this.

    Maybe even, you would take it a step further and imply that not supporting a WIKI would be evidence that providing computer security help is not what this site is about. I would not agree, however, it is somewhat irrelevent. I have to do the best with the resources I have. If I want something from Wilders that Wilders does not want to give, my approach would probably be to stick to positive arguments. If I had a real commitment, I would probably want to talk to the site administrators offline, in order to try to discover what their concerns might be, without putting them on the spot, so to speak.

    However, until I have established myself as someone with good knowledge and judgement, who has the best interests of this site, as a whole, I do not expect them to care much what I think.

    and further still, I think the very lack of your having presented a case for the advantages of WIKI show that you consider so obviously superior to the forum that you don't even feel that a case needs to be presented. I can't speak for Wilders, but for myself, I do not share your view however obvious it may be to you. I haven't used WIKI, but I'm not inclined to guess that it will be very useful. I'd love to find out, but my guess is that it would end up like other things that i don't like.

    Example: Microsoft download, and support pages. Theoretically, you can go straight to what you want and download and get your answers. The reality, for me at least is that unless you already know what you want, and where to find it you can spend for ever going around and around in circles. I don't really like resources where you can find your answer...pretty much if you already know the answer.

    I a broader sense WIKI sounds like it strives to present information in the same way that a computer does. a sort of a tree structure with branches, and sub branches, and eventually some leaves. Well, while this is a fine way for a computer to look for information, i do not see it working well for humans. If this structure was so natural for me, I doubt I'd have most of my computer problems in the first place. The fact is, where the files are, why they are there and how they are related, is ultimately do to the decisions of people who are arguably experts in computers. What makes sense to them, doesn't make sense to me. Can I expect a new set of experts to suddenly present computer technology in a way that parallels my own? I liked to believe. Like Fox Mulder said, "I want to believe".

    Sorry about editorializing so much. It is not so much to spark a debate as it is frustration with understanding these issues. Take this as it is intended. My sincere point of view, as someone who has had his own computer since the eighties, and has a significant amount of computer programming knowledge. When I want to find something out about the computer, my very first line of attack is to find someone who knows more than I do, and ask them. Most people are far less lazy, and many know a great deal more than myself, but even most of them would prefer the same methods. Even geeks do this, or so they say!


    - HandsOff


    P.S. - any site admins who come across this...does anyone at Wilder's hold the title of "Site Editorializer" yet? I think it would be a great honor. I am thinking....maybe Dog?
     
  18. Close_Hauled

    Close_Hauled Registered Member

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    I would like to see them post an opinion.
     
  19. LowWaterMark

    LowWaterMark Administrator

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    So far, there hasn't been much said about what exactly a Wiki would do here, how it'd be managed, how it'd be laid out, and what its benefits would be. Zhen and I talked a bit about it and I agree with his opinion in this post (also requoted below). If the expectation is that a Wiki is going to suddenly cut down on repetative questions in the forums; answer all "How To's" that people might have; or be the solution to some other problem... well, I just don't see it yet. As said, people do not read sticky threads, FAQs for the supported products at their source websites, and rarely even the first page of topic titles in a sub-forum before they ask a question that has already been answered in those places before.

    I find it hard to believe that if I acquire a product, install it here, assign team members to oversee it, (contrary to the misconception, spammers, trollers and those with large amounts of misinformation, do go into Wiki's just like any other web medium, so they need moderation, too), and make a page called wiki.wilderssecurity.com, that suddenly people will know that is where all the answers are, if indeed, "all the answers" do manage to get written into such a place, somehow.

    To me a Wiki is just the newest "in thing" that people are all excited about, thinking it is some great thing in and of itself. That it will lead to answers. But like anything, you need to put a lot into it to get a lot out of it.

    Threads in the forum are themselves not vastly different than a Wiki... multiple people contributing to an evolving discussion on some topic. People can write How To's there, though they rare do. We actually once had a "How To" forum section here at Wilders and offered prizes to people writing content for the section. I think it was there for a year or so, and in all that time, Paul said there was only one submission.

    I've seen the different Wiki tool demo sites, and my response is... okay, cool tool, but so what? I don't see any explanation of any real and practical benefit this would provide, why it would cause more valuable content to be developed then is being written in forum threads now, or why/how exactly new visitors would suddenly look there instead of all the other places where those answers already exist.

     
  20. HandsOff

    HandsOff Registered Member

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    On the other hand, I think the people proposing a WIKI site have defined a problem that I see as getting worse at a rate that is even outstripping new malware. The problem of finding any information on the internet, much less something as complicated as computer security.

    I hate searching the web anymore. Spamming and advertising have pretty much wiped out my chance of finding anything I want, any time soon. I just wanted to mention that it was mentioned in another thread, the phenomenon of "social bookmarking". I am sort of nosy, but I'd love to know what some of the people here have bookmarked. I know its a bit off topic, but in the broadest sense, you want information? I guarantee you'd be getting some!


    -HandsOff
     
  21. Pollmaster

    Pollmaster Guest

    Considerate of what exactly?

    That's the problem, as Watermark mentions before, so far in this thread most of the people (including you) advocating a wiki don't have any idea what they intend to do, or even articulate why a wiki is a good idea, except that's it's a cool new idea.

    Now you are going off a tangent here. So far all I have seen is the equalavant of a couple of people going "A wiki is cool, wilders should do the same", is there are wonder why there is no response from the people who know what is going on??


    Exactly.

    What are you talking about? I never said a forum is superior. A wiki has its place, but thus far you have not even started to make a case for it.

    Yes, you haven't used a wiki, you dont even think it will work, yet you are making a case for it. Very reasonable.


    Do you even know what a wiki is? A wiki is simply a website with pages that can be edited by members. It can be in any shape or form or format.

    The main problem is this even if a wiki leads to a superior and more frequently updated informationative web page, who are the ones allowed to edit it?

    If it is restricted only to a few moderators, it has little or no advantages compared to a private website where the password is owned by a few indidivuals. Ideally the more people allowed to edit the wiki, the more useful it becomes assuming the negative aspects can be handled.

    Opening it up to more members, say "Frequent posters" might be a better idea, opening up the wiki to more members and helps prevents spammers. On the other hand, I doubt if Wilders would be willing to risk their reputation on postings even from such members.

    Wilders certainly isn't going to risk their image and reputation. Advise added to a wiki that *bears their name* might conceviably cause damage to a computer either accidently, or through malice.

    A posting on a forum is risky enough but at least it's clear postings do not reflect the opinions nor positions of the board/ Vut a wiki where posted are endless edited by different members, attributing responsibility is hard, and opens a whole new can of worms when it comes to legal responsibility.

    All these problems are not insurmontable, but the fact that these points are not even discussed, leads me to believe that the proponents of a wiki have no idea at all what they are getting into, except for the coolness of the idea.

    Worse yet, I have not yet seen a convincing case made for why a wiki would be desirable.
     
  22. HandsOff

    HandsOff Registered Member

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    Pollmaster? Is it really you?

    I guess I may have misjudged what your position was when you said:

    "The main reason a wiki would never work is that, wilders would never allow it."

    What I thought you meant was that you felt that a WIKI was a great thing, but there was no use suggesting it because the people at Wilders are too closed minded to consider it.

    what I was trying to say was: If Wilders doesn't like the idea, why should they dedicate their time and resources on it.

    I was trying to say that, for all I know, a WIKI may be as good as (I thought you and) others say. It would be worth a try, but that my expectations are that I would not like it.

    I further inferred from the attitude that I assiciated with the phrase "Wilders would never allow it", that you were asserting that the vast superiority of the WIKI was obvious. I then made a number of commends that I intended to convey the meaning: Any such superiority was, at best, not obvious to me.

    Then I wanted to convey that I agree completely with the premise that it is getting very difficult to find relevent information on anything via the internet. That I welcome anything that would make it easier...If anyone has the answer, please say it!

    ------

    Now, to your original question,

    "Considerate of what exactly?"

    I guess I owe you an apology. I could not have understood your statements any worse than I did, and the interpretations that I gave them, I can see, are not ones that you are likely to appreciate. I did try to be careful not to assign these misinterpreted opinions to you, but the implications were there, and I am sorry about that.

    Additionally, you did mention some new points that I had not even considered. I think I'll try to cut my losses, and just say, sorry!


    -HandsOff
     
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