This is perhaps too much of a redirection from the topic at hand, but *is* a wiki a possible future feature? That'd be a fantastic addition to the site.
Open ZooChat Wiki?
- Thread starter CGSwans
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This is perhaps too much of a redirection from the topic at hand, but *is* a wiki a possible future feature? That'd be a fantastic addition to the site.
The trick is to determine exactly what we want such a feature to achieve.
Wiki's are marvellously free-form and unstructured tools which you can use to do anything you like ... but that can work both ways and you end up with a mess of incoherent and loosely coupled content which has no real organisation and unclear purpose.
You need to start with a very clear goal in mind to ensure you move in the right direction.
It has been a few years since I last evaluated Wiki software - but when I did I found them to be largely poorly written, cumbersome to use (from an editors/maintainers point of view) and incredibly difficult to maintain (from a technical point of view). Not sure whether things have improved.
I did just start a new thread about the Resources section which I feel gives us a bit more structure we can work with to achieve many of the same results a Wiki would offer: Resource section - Trip Reports / Zoo Reviews?
I just found some Wiki software that integrates with the forum software and seems fairly well supported.
I'm not going to implement it without a clear and well thought out goal and plan in mind for what we are trying to achieve - but the option is there.
Keen to hear ideas and suggestions on how we might put this to use.
I concur that it could become very messy without a clear concept of what it's for - and perhaps a gentle editorial hand as well. Where I think it could be very interesting is as a repository for zoo history. Very few Wikipedia pages for zoos have detailed history sections but it's an area in which some of our members have considerable expertise.
Yes, that kind of aligns a bit with what I was thinking - there's a lot of information on Wikipedia already, but we have an opportunity to fill in the substantial gaps that aren't covered by Wikipedia.
Detailed collection lists would be very useful as well. Particularly on show lists that could be updated by regular visitors.
Just one note before we get too excited about anything like this.
The main thing that attracts me to the wiki software I found, is its integration with the forum software, which will make it much more seamless for members to access and update content.
The downside to that is that when we upgrade the forum software to the new version in a few months, the wiki software will also need to be completely rewritten to work with the new forum software - which may delay things and if the developers of the wiki software decide that it's too difficult to re-write their software, we're not going to be able to upgrade at all, which will cause problems for other parts of the site.
I may have to look at implementing a standalone wiki solution instead - which will mean no integration and people logging in to edit it will need to maintain a separate user account in the wiki software - but the benefit will be that we can do what we like without waiting for the software to be upgraded.
I'll have to investigate further options.
The main thing that attracts me to the wiki software I found, is its integration with the forum software, which will make it much more seamless for members to access and update content.
The downside to that is that when we upgrade the forum software to the new version in a few months, the wiki software will also need to be completely rewritten to work with the new forum software - which may delay things and if the developers of the wiki software decide that it's too difficult to re-write their software, we're not going to be able to upgrade at all, which will cause problems for other parts of the site.
I may have to look at implementing a standalone wiki solution instead - which will mean no integration and people logging in to edit it will need to maintain a separate user account in the wiki software - but the benefit will be that we can do what we like without waiting for the software to be upgraded.
I'll have to investigate further options.
Wouldn't it be a relatively simple matter to then just migrate the existing content across into a new integrated wiki, once it's available?
LOL ... "relatively simple" he says
Nothing is ever relatively simple. The whole point of a Wiki is to maintain an edit history so you can undo changes made by other people if they "break" things or accidentally add/change/remove content they shouldn't have. Migrating that history is very much a non-trivial exercise.
Similarly, the markup used to format the content typically differs from software to software - so you need to go through a conversion process (which at worst means manually editing every page), which again is non-trivial.
Of course, if the software you're migrating to has a conversion mechanism built in, it should theoretically be straight forward - but there's no guarantees there.
I think a wiki would be great for lists, as they are very difficult to manage within the forum. For instance:
* Species lists for zoos
* Zoos with a particular taxon
* Zoos in a geographic area
*Closed zoos
* Species that used to be in zoos
* Species that have never been in zoos
The variety of lists could go on and on. But Wiki lists are easy to update and edit so this is an obvious use.
Personally if people are going to spend time on detailed histories I would like to see them do that on Wikipedia, as that is where the largest audience is and where it is important that an accurate story is presented.
* Species lists for zoos
* Zoos with a particular taxon
* Zoos in a geographic area
*Closed zoos
* Species that used to be in zoos
* Species that have never been in zoos
The variety of lists could go on and on. But Wiki lists are easy to update and edit so this is an obvious use.
Personally if people are going to spend time on detailed histories I would like to see them do that on Wikipedia, as that is where the largest audience is and where it is important that an accurate story is presented.
That's the problem - sure you can copy and paste the content, but once you lose all the formatting, it can be a huge task to reproduce it accurately. It depends on the nature of what you're doing. Large blocks of text are pretty straight forward, but once you start getting into lists and links and tables and so on, it becomes a lot more difficult.
That's true - but at the same time it's a much bigger and more unwieldy community with practices and conventions that I've always found too much to deal with. For a project with a defined scope and a pre-existing community of interested people (ie Zoochat) I think a separate wiki is a good option. Given how wikis work there's nothing stopping Wikipedia users from simply lifting the content to place there as well.
You mean like this? Australia - Zoo Satellite Maps | ZooChat
I disagree. Wikipedia has a particular agenda (not in a nefarious way) - I just mean that the people who are ultimately in control over what content is allowed to be posted aren't necessarily of the same opinions that we are on certain topics or how important some content is to the pages they are creating.
There's no reason we can't become the authority source on certain topics such that Wikipedia actually references our site as a source!
I'm not sure it's necessarily true that it's "important" that the history is represented on Wikipedia. If anything, you are likely to only get a brief summary - since there is so much other content they would want to display. There's a huge opportunity for a site like ours to provide a much more detailed and comprehensive history than what you find on a typical Wikipedia page.
There's plenty of sites out there doing a better job than Wikipedia does on certain niche topics.
You mean like this? Australia - Zoo Satellite Maps | ZooChat
You see the problem is i am not spending all my time exploring this site... (I would have put a smiley face in here too but the button wouldn't work)
Seriously there are a lot of lists, including geographic lists, which would be better managed in a wiki format. BTW I couldn't see how to edit that list you linked to, but you will now probably now tell me how (missing smiley face again) (ooo goodie can see how they work now
)That's fine if you think there is a demand for it go for it. But if you were looking at priorities I do think lists would be first.
By the way, Wikipedia deems wikis to be unreliable source so excludes them as a source for articles.
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You see the problem is i am not spending all my time exploring this site... (I would have put a smiley face in here too but the button wouldn't work)
Seriously there are a lot of lists, including geographic lists, which would be better managed in a wiki format. BTW I couldn't see how to edit that list you linked to, but you will now probably now tell me how (missing smiley face again) (ooo goodie can see how they work now
Actually, no - anything which involves structured data (name, country, latitude, longitude, etc) is actually far better represented by an actual database - which is where that information for the Zoo Maps comes from. Because it's in a database format, we can do all sorts of things with it programmatically that you simply can't do with a wiki.
I haven't really publicised the Zoo Maps database - it was there on the old site too (with a bit of extra functionality), but I haven't had time to do everything I wanted to do with that yet since I rebuilt it for the new site.
However, you can't edit it - at least not directly (it would be too difficult to give members access to edit the database directly). The database is maintained by @jobalba and is based on the information she gathers (from her own research) when people request new galleries.
I should start a thread about it to let people know the feature is there and to document how people can request edits because I'm sure there's a lot of data that should be added or updated.
That being said - there is value in a Wiki based structure as well - but Wikis excel at free-form content which doesn't necessarily have such strict rules dictating the relationships between content or where you don't need programmatic access to that content - whereas structured databases excel at defining strict rules such that you can access it programmatically.
By the way, Wikipedia deems wikis to be unreliable source so excludes them as a source for articles.
At the end of the day, we would mostly be collating data from other sources ourselves - so we aren't exactly the "source of authority" on the subjects.
The Zoo Maps are certainly a powerful and useful feature. I used it almost instantly to help plan a trip I am making to the US later this year.
However Zoochatters seem to delight in making lists. There are five pinned to the top of the Australian forum alone. My point is simply that a wiki would be a much easier tool for the community to make and maintain lists with than a forum thread. Whether you want to implement such a feature is of course up to you. I would be the last one to suggest you should unnecessarily burden yourself with more work.
However Zoochatters seem to delight in making lists. There are five pinned to the top of the Australian forum alone. My point is simply that a wiki would be a much easier tool for the community to make and maintain lists with than a forum thread. Whether you want to implement such a feature is of course up to you. I would be the last one to suggest you should unnecessarily burden yourself with more work.
Absolutely - forum threads are fantastic for discussing things, very much not ideal for just about anything else and trying to use the forums as a database or content store is less than ideal.
My goal would be to try and integrate everything fairly consistently so everything is cross-referenced.
My vision is that for any particular zoo, you should be (easily) able to:
- view the discussions from members about that zoo (forums)
- see photos uploaded by members of the zoo and discuss those photos (gallery)
- see the zoo in Google Maps (zoo maps database)
- see details about the zoo and links to other information sources (Website, Twitter, Facebook, Wikipedia) (zoo database)
- see trip reports and reviews of the zoo (resources)
- see zoo history, lists and other collated information (wiki)
The point is to use the tool that is best suited to the type of information and what we'd want to be able to do with it, and yes - a wiki is ideal for collating some types of information.
I'll do some more research and pick something to trial for the site. Worst case scenario, we will have to manually migrate the data to a new tool if it proves to be unsuitable.
I think something like a wiki would be cool. I say something like a wiki, because zoo history can be easily be found by Google searching. It would be nice though, if every zoo had a page where people could edit a species list for that zoo though.
