A new web authoring wiki?

[Stewart Gordon]

Now that it seems decided that AllMyFaqs isn't going to be revived as a
wiki, has anybody undertaken to start a new web authoring wiki? Or is
anybody else thinking about it?

We might be able to start something on Wikia (fka Wikicities) or a
similar service. For that matter, I found this

http://html.wikia.com

however,
- it seems abandoned
- it seems intended to be an HTML reference, rather than an
advice-sharing wiki as AMF was
- it seems to be specifically an HTML wiki (except for an instance of
somebody thinking CSS is HTML), while I'm envisioning something that
could potentially cover all web languages and technologies, not to
mention web design

What I'm thinking of is something similar to AMF. Of course, we
probably don't need such things as the Usenetiquette articles that were
in AMF - while Usenetiquette is an important concept, it's off topic to
the field of web authoring and design.

What do people think?

Stewart.

 

[Toby Inkster]

Now that it seems decided that AllMyFaqs isn't going to be revived as a
wiki, has anybody undertaken to start a new web authoring wiki?

http://allmyfaqs.net/

(Read-only though.)

Of course, we probably don't need such things as the Usenetiquette
articles that were in AMF - while Usenetiquette is an important concept,
it's off topic to the field of web authoring and design.

But it's arguably useless as a FAQ unless such topics are covered.

 

[Toby Inkster]

We might be able to start something on Wikia (fka Wikicities) or a
similar service.

After the lesson of AMF, I think we need to go better than a service
hosted by some company somewhere which coule wind up at any time.

We need to register a domain name, host it with an established company.
Three or four people whould share the costs and each have a set of
login details to give them access to make updates, take backups, etc.

The host should be aware of this arrangement lest any one of the
caretakers try to gain full control of the site. Any of the caretakers can
choose to drop out of the arrangement at any time, in which case there
could be a vote on alt.html for who would replace them, with each existing
caretaker having one veto.

The site could have some minimalist advertising (e.g. Google Adwords) to
help cover its costs and reduce the financial burden on the caretakers.

Whatsmore it might make sense to share the site with some of our cousins
in comp.infosystems.www.authoring.*, comp.lang.php, alt.www.webmaster,
etc, many of which are also lacking FAQs.

 

[Jukka K. Korpela]

After the lesson of AMF, I think we need to go better than a service
hosted by some company somewhere which coule wind up at any time.

After the lessons of Tom Boutell's web authoring FAQ (which was once the
Great One, though mainly because it was the only one, then became very dusty
before it was decently buried), WDG's web authoring FAQ (which became almost
abandoned), and now AMF, I'm rather pessimistic about web authoring FAQs.
Oh, I had some experience with irt.org's FAQs too, though mainly only with
the JavaScript FAQ there, and irt.org seems to be virtually frozen now -
they still have a huge number of questions and answers, though largely due
to duplication, and often with _wrong_ (or outdated) answers.

New FAQs are born, they grow and then degrade, since people who created them
have to take some day job, or take their day job seriously, or they find
other issues more interesting. In particular, when new people get the idea
of contributing to the community via FAQs, they regularly start building a
new one, instead of giving help to something that exist, or volunteering to
take responsibility for them. (The wiki approach gives the illusion of
shared responsibility, but as we know, shared responsibility means that
nobody takes responsibility.)

So I guess my advice is: if you wish to work on FAQs, find one that has
chances of survival and reasonable existing content, and try to help with
it. Building yet another one would probably result in something that becomes
almost as good as some of the current dusty FAQs before you lose interest in
it.

 

[Stewart Gordon]

http://allmyfaqs.net/

(Read-only though.)

What are you talking about?

Do you have even a remote idea of the meaning of the word "wiki"?

But it's arguably useless as a FAQ unless such topics are covered.

Thinking about giving it FAQ status is a bridge that we can cross when
we get a little nearer to it.

Stewart.

 

[Stewart Gordon]

AIUI it was Jerry, rather than the hosting company, that wound up.
Moreover, I'm inclined to think that a wiki hosted on an established
wiki service is likely to survive longer than something privately hosted
that may die any time if the creator abandons it.

After the lessons of Tom Boutell's web authoring FAQ (which was once the
Great One, though mainly because it was the only one, then became very
dusty before it was decently buried), WDG's web authoring FAQ (which
became almost abandoned), and now AMF, I'm rather pessimistic about web
authoring FAQs. Oh, I had some experience with irt.org's FAQs too,
though mainly only with the JavaScript FAQ there, and irt.org seems to
be virtually frozen now - they still have a huge number of questions and
answers, though largely due to duplication, and often with _wrong_ (or
outdated) answers.

This thread is about wikis, rather than FAQs....

OK, so it might have some of the essence of a FAQ. But it could just as
well double as a FFTAQ (frequently forgotten-to-ask questions).

New FAQs are born, they grow and then degrade, since people who created
them have to take some day job, or take their day job seriously, or they
find other issues more interesting. In particular, when new people get
the idea of contributing to the community via FAQs, they regularly start
building a new one, instead of giving help to something that exist, or
volunteering to take responsibility for them.

Good point. I guess one of the reasons that people start their own is
that they want something that they have control of, rather than some
site maintained by someone else which may or may not be still actively
maintained, and to which their contributions may be rejected anyway. A
wiki would suit some of these people, if they would like to contribute
to a joint effort. Even if some of the time it has only one or two
people actively maintaining it, which may change from time to time, then
it's still better than a ghost site.

(The wiki approach gives
the illusion of shared responsibility, but as we know, shared
responsibility means that nobody takes responsibility.)

Good point there. But just because nobody is taking responsibility
doesn't mean that nobody is doing a good job of improving the content.

So I guess my advice is: if you wish to work on FAQs, find one that has
chances of survival and reasonable existing content, and try to help
with it.

Having such a thing in wiki form would make doing this very easy indeed.

Building yet another one would probably result in something
that becomes almost as good as some of the current dusty FAQs before you
lose interest in it.

That's true of privately maintained FAQs. Speaking of which, I set up

http://smjg.port5.com/faqs/web/

some time ago, and while it's indeed stale, I haven't given up on it - I
just haven't dedicated much time to it over my other assorted projects.

Indeed, a wiki could even bring together content from assorted dusty
FAQs. Copyright permission permitting, of course.

Stewart.

 

[David Segall]

Now that it seems decided that AllMyFaqs isn't going to be revived as a
wiki, has anybody undertaken to start a new web authoring wiki?

I think that this would be tremendous waste of the time and talents of
the major contributors to this group. There is more than enough
information on the web and in text books about the routine aspects of
web authoring. If someone posts here because they don't know what to
look for or they are too lazy to look then another web authoring site
won't help them. A beginner or a casual HTML user like me can usually
answer their question.

The experts should be encouraged to write essays on "xxx is harmful"
such as <http://www.cs.tut.fi/~jkorpela/www/click.html> or some
specialist aspect of the craft that interests them like
<http://nrkn.com/backgroundWidth/>. The latter is extremely helpful if
you need it and unlikely to appear in a general authoring Wiki.

Unfortunately, the most frequently asked question in this group cannot
be answered by a static web site. We need a site to which I could
submit a document and it would tell me why it renders "correctly" in
Internet Explorer but not in Firefox or Opera.

 

[Jukka K. Korpela]

This thread is about wikis, rather than FAQs....

Well, this is Usenet. You ask a question, we write something related or
unrelated. If it happens to answer your question, that's coincidental.

FAQs would be important if they were real FAQs with right answers. There
days, people don't read instructions, still less manuals. When they
encounter a problem, they want problem-oriented information - and a list of
frequently asked questions with correct answers, preferable organized in
some user-friendly structure and a search function, is what people would
like to use and would benefit from.

Whatever you mean by wiki (some people think wiki is an encyclopedia, some
think it's a discussion forum, etc.), it's something different. But since
you mentioned the AllMyFAQs wiki, it was natural to expect that you had a
FAQ-like wiki, or even a FAQ implemented as a wiki, in your mind. Such an
approach sounds easy but it doesn't produce a real FAQ.

OK, so it might have some of the essence of a FAQ. But it could just
as well double as a FFTAQ (frequently forgotten-to-ask questions).

It would undoubtedly become that too - just as many "FAQ pages" or even "FAQ
sections" on web pages are just collections of biased answers to questions
that the site owner would like his visitors to ask. Why would anyone read an
FFTAQ? If you know you need to _study_ things, you read a tutorial, or a
manual, or a book.

That's true of privately maintained FAQs.

I have even less faith on unmaintained FAQs, which is what a wiki FAQ would
be as far as you follow the original wiki principle "anyone can modify at
will".

 

[Stewart Gordon]

I think that this would be tremendous waste of the time and talents
of the major contributors to this group. There is more than enough
information on the web and in text books about the routine aspects of
web authoring. If someone posts here because they don't know what to
look for or they are too lazy to look then another web authoring
site won't help them. A beginner or a casual HTML user like me can
usually answer their question.

http://allmyfaqs.net/

AllMyFAQs is not:
* a replacement for newsgroups

Yet you seem to think that any new wiki would have to be a replacement
for newsgroups and nothing more.

Take a look at

http://webtips.dan.info/

Only a small handful of the pages deal with answering the kinds of
questions that people might ask in a web authoring newsgroup. And it
also goes into depth beyond that of the average HTML tutorial.

OK, so that isn't a wiki, but there's no reason that people can't write
articles for a wiki that are conceptually similar to these pieces. And
wikis have been used many times over for a lot more than answering
questions that are often asked on newsgroups. For some successful (so
far) examples, see

http://www.wikipedia.org/
http://www.prowiki.org/wiki4d/wiki.cgi

The experts should be encouraged to write essays on "xxx is harmful"
such as <http://www.cs.tut.fi/~jkorpela/www/click.html> or some
specialist aspect of the craft that interests them like
<http://nrkn.com/backgroundWidth/>. The latter is extremely helpful
if you need it and unlikely to appear in a general authoring Wiki.

Unless somebody adds it.

Unfortunately, the most frequently asked question in this group
cannot be answered by a static web site. We need a site to which I
could submit a document and it would tell me why it renders
"correctly" in Internet Explorer but not in Firefox or Opera.

How about

http://validator.w3.org/

?

Stewart.

 

[David Segall]

http://allmyfaqs.net/

AllMyFAQs is not:
* a replacement for newsgroups

Yet you seem to think that any new wiki would have to be a replacement
for newsgroups and nothing more.

I did not intend to argue that. I feared that the extremely useful
posters in this group might be distracted into writing yet another web
site devoted to web authoring. As a consequence they might not be
available to answer my questions or they might not produce a web
page of their own that illuminates a tiny corner of the subject area
that would otherwise remain in the dark.

Take a look at

http://webtips.dan.info/

Only a small handful of the pages deal with answering the kinds of
questions that people might ask in a web authoring newsgroup. And it
also goes into depth beyond that of the average HTML tutorial.

Exactly. Almost all the information needed about web authoring is
already available. Google does an adequate job of making the
information accessible so there is no need for another web site on the
subject.

How about

http://validator.w3.org/

?

A necessary start but it would not solve the problem for most posters.

 

[Stewart Gordon]

Stewart Gordon <[email protected]> wrote:

I did not intend to argue that. I feared that the extremely useful
posters in this group might be distracted into writing yet another web
site devoted to web authoring.

In AMF's heyday, was this 'group really quiet? Not AFAICR.

As a consequence they might not be
available to answer my questions or they might not produce a web
page of their own that illuminates a tiny corner of the subject area
that would otherwise remain in the dark.

How is the latter a consequence of having a wiki? Do you feel that
private ownership of such a page is necessary for it to work? Why?

Exactly. Almost all the information needed about web authoring is
already available. Google does an adequate job of making the
information accessible so there is no need for another web site on the
subject.

<snip>

You appear to be arguing on both sides on the fence. One one side
you're claiming this, and on the other you seem to think that
individuals should just continue to create their own websites about web
authoring.

Indeed, IMO a wiki could _reduce_ the number of new web authoring
websites people create.

Case in point: If the wiki idea goes ahead, then I may well migrate the
web authoring section of my Unofficial FAQs site into it.

Stewart.

 

[David Segall]

David Segall wrote:

How is the latter a consequence of having a wiki? Do you feel that
private ownership of such a page is necessary for it to work? Why?

Because people are willing to publish some unfinished or arcane
information on their own web site. They would not submit it to a
"public" site because that would imply that the author thought the
work was polished and/or generally useful. I would still be waiting
for Nick Coughlin to put the final touches to a page that I found
extremely useful <http://nrkn.com/backgroundWidth/>. He quickly
constructed the page in response a question I asked in this group. The
world would never see a page on my web site

You appear to be arguing on both sides on the fence. One one side
you're claiming this, and on the other you seem to think that
individuals should just continue to create their own websites about web
authoring.

You asked contributors to this group to work on a new web site that I
believe will merely replicate information that is already widely
available. I think we are better served if they stick to writing the
pages that they feel strongly about.

Indeed, IMO a wiki could _reduce_ the number of new web authoring
websites people create.

Case in point: If the wiki idea goes ahead, then I may well migrate the
web authoring section of my Unofficial FAQs site into it.

I resile. You have the idea, you have some content and a server so why
not start it? My _only_ objection was to your desire to recruit some
contributors from this group that I thought would be better employed
elsewhere.

 

[Stewart Gordon]

Because people are willing to publish some unfinished or arcane
information on their own web site. They would not submit it to a
"public" site because that would imply that the author thought the
work was polished and/or generally useful.

<snip>

I'm not sure how you work that out. IMX, wikis attract a lot of
under-construction or otherwise unpolished pages. Just look at
Wikipedia, especially

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Newpages

for example.

You asked contributors to this group to work on a new web site that I
believe will merely replicate information that is already widely
available.

I don't believe so.

Firstly, look at

http://smjg.port5.com/faqs/web/design/thisisthewww.html

I have more ideas for this page. And I'll probably rewrite the first
section of it soon. But anyway, can you find

Secondly, as I started to say before, it might help to bring it
together. That's a little more than replicating it.

I think we are better served if they stick to writing the
pages that they feel strongly about.

If people want to write pages that they feel strongly about for the
wiki, then all the better.

I resile. You have the idea, you have some content and a server so why
not start it? My _only_ objection was to your desire to recruit some
contributors from this group that I thought would be better employed
elsewhere.

Where do you think I should look for contributors?

Stewart.

 

[Stewart Gordon]

Because people are willing to publish some unfinished or arcane
information on their own web site. They would not submit it to a
"public" site because that would imply that the author thought the
work was polished and/or generally useful.

<snip>

I'm not sure how you work that out. IMX, wikis attract a lot of
under-construction or otherwise unpolished pages. Just look at
Wikipedia, especially

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Newpages

for example.

You asked contributors to this group to work on a new web site that I
believe will merely replicate information that is already widely
available.

I don't believe so.

Firstly, look at

http://smjg.port5.com/faqs/web/design/thisisthewww.html

I have more ideas for this page. And I'll probably rewrite the first
section of it soon. But anyway, can you find a better source on the
topic that this covers?

Secondly, as I started to say before, it might help to bring it
together. That's a little more than replicating it.

I think we are better served if they stick to writing the
pages that they feel strongly about.

If people want to write pages that they feel strongly about for the
wiki, then all the better.

I resile. You have the idea, you have some content and a server so why
not start it? My _only_ objection was to your desire to recruit some
contributors from this group that I thought would be better employed
elsewhere.

Where do you think I should look for contributors?

Stewart.