wiki plz

[Manhattan Glutton]

In the IRC we all decided we want an open wiki full of artists and songs and stuff. Open as in, anyone can make an account and edit, until they become jerks.

There seems to be an abandoned one online, and then something hiding at songfight.net/wiki. The nur ein one seems unsuitable.

Looking for input with how to proceed.

Sincerely,
the irc

[JonPorobil]

Who's "we all"? I don't remember the last time I saw more than three active participants in the chat room at any given time.

Anyway, yeah, that wiki exists. The problem with it was that information on Songfight becomes obselete very quickly. Many of the people who were active or important in the community are obscure now, and many of the people who are active and important now hadn't yet joined the community when this wiki was edited.

I'm also not convinced that a wiki would add value equal or greater to the effort needed to set it up and maintain it. Lunkhead's Java-based Songfight Archive tool is great for pulling up statistical factoids and filters on the archive, and the the official music archive has bios and pictures of every Songfighter who wanted to self-report.

[EDIT: Of course, anyone who wants can set up and maintain a Songfight wiki themselves... It's not like anyone's going to stop you. I just doubt the usefulness of asking that songfighters put their valuable time and effort towards maintaining a tool that we've already gotten bored with and abandoned at one point in the past.]

[Manhattan Glutton]

That's the first time I ever heard of any sort of wiki. I think the problem is nobody knows about the Wiki to care about it. So, if this simple problem were resolved, we might have better luck.

Rather than email the webmaster and pray that my archive page gets updated, I'd rather just edit the wiki article myself.

[JonPorobil]

That's the first time I ever heard of any sort of wiki. I think the problem is nobody knows about the Wiki to care about it. So, if this simple problem were resolved, we might have better luck.

There was a time when everyone on the board knew about the wiki. JB, Spud, fluffy, Niveous, Sven, and I - to name a few - all contributed pages. Then we got bored with it and moved on to other things. We didn't make an intentional effort to abandon it, but eventually we moved on, and the reason that happened was because, at the end of the day, the wiki wasn't actually that useful.

I'll rephrase the problem. What use do you think you would get out of a Songfight wiki, assuming you could get the whole community to contribute to its population?

[Manhattan Glutton]

The whole point of an official open wiki is so that people who are motivated can add to it. Throwing it away because you guys got bored is not the correct approach. If stuff gets out of date, there should be guidelines as to what information is relevant for articles.

What I'd like to see is it take some of the burden off the webmaster for maintenacey things (artist bios, for one), take some of the burden off of new people to find their footing, and create a more transparent, integrated community.

Yeah, I could go off and make a wiki. It seems like people have. But what we need is an OFFICIAL wiki.

[fluffy]

It wasn't thrown away, it was just no longer updated. If you want to start updating it, knock yourself out. It is, after all, a wiki.

[fluffy]

Of course the problem with ALL wikis is

Screen shot 2011-06-30 at 12.48.26 PM.png (159.24 KiB) Viewed 3147 times

[Manhattan Glutton]

I'm not going to update something that isn't advertised and nobody knows about.

Just because you guys don't feel it's useful, does not mean that it's not going to be useful.

[fluffy]

Well the lack of advertising bit is easy to fix at least.

The maintaining community interest bit, however, not so much.

[Manhattan Glutton]

Wiki activity and prominence begets wiki activity and prominence. It's not that wild of a concept.

[RangerDenni]

I like the idea. I dont know how useful I could be though, except to bring some traffic to an existing place. I don't discuss songfight as much as I could but I would like to a little bit more, and not just about myself. I have a good group of followers that I've kept smallish and full of quality through selective promotion. It's nice to have worthwhile things to point to. I talked about Live in NYC quite a bit

[Manhattan Glutton]

Whoever's in charge of the admininstration, please open LocalSettings.php and add this:

Code: Select all

$wgNamespacesWithSubpages = array_fill(0, 200, true);

So that we can get subpages. Thank you.

[Billy's Little Trip]

Whoever's in charge of the admininstration, please open LocalSettings.php and add this:

Code: Select all

$wgNamespacesWithSubpages = array_fill(0, 200, true);

I am in charge. I'll get right on it. $wgNamespacesWithSubpages = array_fill(0, 200, true);....annnnnnd, click

Ok, you're all set.

[JonPorobil]

We didn't make an intentional effort to abandon it, but eventually we moved on, and the reason that happened was because, at the end of the day, the wiki wasn't actually that useful.

Throwing it away because you guys got bored is not the correct approach.

If the juxtaposition doesn't speak for itself, then I have this to ask: who decides what the correct approach is? Correct for whom? For what result? In other words, what purpose do you think this wiki will serve that isn't being served elsewhere on Songfight?

[Manhattan Glutton]

Like I outlined above, the more the community can run itself, the better it will be for everyone. Considering no one I talked to was aware of any wiki, I don't believe that you guys actually tried.

[JonPorobil]

You don't think we actually tried.... to do what, exactly? You keep saying in vague terms:

"...the better it will be for everyone." Better how?

"Wiki activity and prominence begets wiki activity and prominence." Yes, but to what end?

"Just because you guys don't feel it's useful, does not mean that it's not going to be useful." Useful to whom and in what way?

This site has been running a wiki for at least seven years. Four about one year of that it was quite active. The reason it's not active now is because the people who were using the wiki eventually realized that there wasn't much benefit to it.

That said, feel free to make that same discovery yourself. For me at least, you haven't yet demonstrated an actual need for a wiki so much as you've demonstrated your own interest in a wiki.

Furthermore, you write: Considering no one I talked to was aware of any wiki, I don't believe that you guys actually tried.

Who did you talk to? Scratch that last part, I don't actually care. The fact that no one you spoke to knew there was a wiki is only indicative of what has already been demonstrated - that it fell out of use. Those of us who do remember the wiki don't have any doubts about why it fell out of use, and those of us who weren't around during that time period would have no reason to know about it.

[Manhattan Glutton]

My pals in the IRC. You know them.

Can you point to a single link to the wiki anywhere on either songfight.org/.net, besides this forum?

Don't tell me gardening doesn't work just because your plant died in the closet. Of course plants die in the closet.

[fluffy]

The link used to be on songfight.net's front page, but was removed because the wiki was, get this, not being used.

The plants were moved into the closet only after they had died, decayed, and fossilized, and they were making the yard look ugly and the roots were invaded by parasites that kept getting into the drinking water.

[Manhattan Glutton]

Well, good, maybe we can try harder this time. Perhaps even put the link on songfight.org which gets more traffic!

Oh wait. We don't try and give up when things get hard. Good point, guys.

[fluffy]

Yes that's totally exactly what happens. That's why this site shut down in 2002 when the original guy who ran it disappeared without saying anything. And why there isn't a forum now ever since Dumbrella changed theirs around a bit. And why we never run annual local shows, because one went bad and it's HARD.

You still haven't answered the basic question of what the wiki would be FOR and why it would be worth it to the community to maintain one.

[Manhattan Glutton]

This morning, I was looking for information on a particular song fighter that I remembered from some website. I looked in the archive. I looked at the nur ein wiki. I looked at some random wiki that was started 5 years ago that google brought up. Ultimately, I think the only information about him is on one of Niveous's 900 random wikis.

The point is, even if I had found out-of-date information, I would have been satisfied. If we had a central place for this type of information, instead of information spread across random websites run by random owners, things could be a little different.

I still don't have the information I was curious about. Not that it's that important. But it's like, where is our history?

Because we certainly have a distinct culture and a community. For godsake it took me 6 years and I still don't quite 'get' it. How are new people supposed to? They don't. And that's why there aren't more new regulars: because the websites look like ass, there's no central repository for information, and everyone involved is a defeatist when it comes to improvement - even though I'd gladly take on some of those tasks, I'm not going to do it with everyone giving me 1000-word contrarian essays whenever I bring something up.

The nice thing about a wiki is it doesn't matter if it's out of date. Anyone who cares will update it. Eventually it becomes a life of its own. It's not supposed to be maintained in the traditional, laborous sense. Some expired information is better than no information. Useless information to you is not useless to someone else. Etc.

[JonPorobil]

My pals in the IRC. You know them.

Can you point to a single link to the wiki anywhere on either songfight.org/.net, besides this forum?

Don't tell me gardening doesn't work just because your plant died in the closet. Of course plants die in the closet.

In your metaphor, gardening represents wikis. I'm obviously not going to tell you that wikis don't work because ours didn't work. I use Wikipedia all the time, and sometimes I even consult Wikia pages when trying to discuss pop culture franchises with detailed universes.

But Songfight didn't need one. If Songfight had needed one, then the one we tried to maintain would have had more users, it would have had more editors, it wouldn't have fallen out of use, and we wouldn't be having this conversation.

Wikis can be useful. Songfight doesn't need one. You seem to disagree on this second point, but you haven't bothered to express your point, preferring instead to assume that we must all see the obvious value in having a wiki.

So I'll rephrase my arguments one last time:
If we maintain a wiki, what kind of information would you want to be on it? Who would you expect to edit it, and who would you expect to read it?
There's already a full archive of music and art, as well as an FAQ, linked from the front page. What info would you expect the wiki to have that isn't available using these resources?

Look, MG, I know you. I like you. In this case, I think you're wrong. If you can't engage these arguments on their own terms, then I clearly have no chance of convincing you otherwise, but Songfight doesn't need a wiki.