PHP Wiki

[adz]

I was thinking...there are a whole lot of posts here, a lot of very useful information. Why not better organize this info onto a wiki?

 

If we have a team of people constantly scouring the forum for useful tips and tricks and then dumping them onto the wiki we can have a pretty good wiki in no time. I have wanted to do something of this sort for a while, so you can count on my help. I have used MediaWiki for a while and can write the needed templates to get everything going.

[.josh]

That's kind of what the main site is for, though it is still a work in progress, officially lacking some features in the works/on the drawing board.  Some things are best resourced as tutorials.  Some as blogs.  Some things in a faq, some as a code repository.  We are even working toward a system much like a wiki, where a broader range of people can contribute, without opening the floodgates.

[adz]

That's kind of what the main site is for, though it is still a work in progress, officially lacking some features in the works/on the drawing board.  Some things are best resourced as tutorials.  Some as blogs.  Some things in a faq, some as a code repository.  We are even working toward a system much like a wiki, where a broader range of people can contribute, without opening the floodgates.

Well the main site is really disorganized-looking. You can't find what you need fast. Besides the reason behind wikipedia's success is that ANYBODY could edit it. PHPFreaks should have a similar system. If somebody has something cool to add...they should. FAQs are nice, if categorized, but I have never seen a FAQ base successfully grow past 400-500 articles.

 

Also why reinvent the wheel. MediaWiki is a good solution. It's open source. And it exists. Why not just use it and mod it as the wiki gets more popular. Or migrate later on using a simple sql query.

[xtopolis]

The problem with wiki's is that ANYONE CAN CONTRIBUTE.  It wouldn't be much better than the forum is now IMO.

 

Then again, I'm not a person who considers the wiki system successful.  Popular?  Sure.  However, it often puts a "educated" face on material that is prone to bias or inaccuracies.  It has succeeded in making people seem more credible than they actually are.

[.josh]

exactly.  The thing that makes wikis popular is the same thing that is its biggest thorn.  Double edged sword.  It is popular because anybody can contribute, yes.  But at the end of the day, nobody uses it as a real resource.  100% free speech == 100% white noise.

[Daniel0]

The reason why anyone can edit it is also why it has zero credibility in the academic world. There it's pretty much a requirements that you accurately can reference to an author, but if 100 people have edited a document, who wrote what?

 

Maybe you should explain how you're having trouble finding stuff on the main site? There is a horizontal navigation bar saying Tutorials, Blogs and News. That is primarily what is offered there at the moment. There is also a search box on that same bar so you might search for regex and immediately find our regex tutorial.

 

Unfortunately, only a small subset of our users are interested in actually helping other people. Most people just come, ask one or two questions and then never return (unless they again have a new problem). Then there are people who do want to help, but who don't know what they're talking about. It's easier giving write permissions to people who are qualified than banning people who are not from writing.

[Zyx]

The biggest Polish website about PHP has been running a wiki about PHP called "PHPEdia". It is open for anyone who registers, and this is how it looks like: there are currently 271 articles, some of them really good with lots of useful information. Unfortunately, most of them are very short, outdated or are article stubs that need to be extended. The main problem is not that it is open for everyone, but:

 

* Very few people contribute.

* Not everyone knows, how to write a good article.