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DevNet Improvement (Wiki => FGK <= Forum)

Posted: Mon Oct 30, 2006 6:19 pm
by Ollie Saunders
I've been thinking recently about forums and how they could be improved. In particular I've been thinking about DevNet, no surprise there, and how the collective knowledge of all the great minds here could be put to real use.

When somebody comes on DevNet, posts about some problem they are having and we find a solution to it, neither the problem nor the solution are actually properly recorded so as to be accessible and easily understandable by others. The best we have is the phpBB search, which really isn't that great. So I got thinking about how we could use the power of this here community forum to build a working, breathing, well-organized, body of PHP and web knowledge.

For now I'm going to call this "Forum Generated Knowledge" (FGK)
  • Wiki: Enables the creation and maintenance of accessible information by a community
  • Forum: Enables a community to directly exchange thoughts, ideas, problems, solutions.
  • FGK: Enables a community to directly exchange thoughts, ideas, problems, solutions AND contribute to the creation and maintenance of accessible information
FGK sits in between a wiki and a forum and is in some way both at once:

Code: Select all

+------+    +-----+    +-------+
|      |    |     |    |       |
| Wiki | => | FGK | <= | Forum |
|      |    |     |    |       |
+------+    +-----+    +-------+
I've got a whole load of ideas about how such an application might work, but firstly:
  • Does anybody know of an existing application that does this?
  • Do you think this is a good idea?
  • Would you be willing to people DevNet in this direction?

Posted: Mon Oct 30, 2006 6:21 pm
by RobertGonzalez
I believe there are both forum plugins for wikis and wiki plugins for forums. This would require a serious discussion on the part of the Mods and Admins before it was ever considered.

Posted: Mon Oct 30, 2006 6:31 pm
by LiveFree
For what it counts, I like the idea with proper control over content and tinkering on the part on Admins

Posted: Tue Oct 31, 2006 12:28 am
by timvw
Afaik there have been many attempts to organize the many useful questions and answers at phpdn... Unfortunately most of them never got further than 'a great idea' and some intial planning phases...

Posted: Tue Oct 31, 2006 2:38 am
by patrikG
We had to shut down our Wiki because of incessant spamming, unfortunately.

Posted: Tue Oct 31, 2006 3:17 am
by Jenk
I've always noticed that FAQ's, Useful Stuff, Wiki's and good old Help Files get ignored completely. Which is unfortunate.

Posted: Tue Oct 31, 2006 3:30 am
by CoderGoblin
As mentioned it is a frequent problem that when people can read through stuff or ask a question, they are more likely to ask the question. Look at how many people don't even perform a search and how many times "this topic has been discussed before..." is shown. Things which immediately spring to mind are pagination and "headers have been sent".

Posted: Tue Oct 31, 2006 12:51 pm
by Ollie Saunders
Everah wrote:I believe there are both forum plugins for wikis and wiki plugins for forums.
I don't think they will provide what I'm thinking of, although I could be wrong.
Everah wrote:This would require a serious discussion on the part of the Mods and Admins before it was ever considered.
Well lets discuss it here first, eh? :P
patrikG wrote:We had to shut down our Wiki because of incessant spamming, unfortunately.
Hmm yes that is a real problem. My idea should mostly deal with that.

OK here the idea:
  • All users are still required to register in order to post as per usual.
  • Registered users can "rate" the posts of others.
  • Registered users have a "rep" count that is based on the ratings they have received for their posts.
  • The ratings for posts are a choice of 'poor' => -0.3, 'good' => 1 and 'excellent' => 2. Admins can additionally award 'superb' => 3.5. The points for each of these ratings are awarded to the of the post being rated.
  • The ratings of users with a high rep have greater value than the ratings of users with poor rep. For instance an established user giving an 'excellent' => 2 rating to a new user might look like this:

    Code: Select all

    $rated+= $rater / 60 * ($rating * 2);
    A 60th (can change) of the rep of the rating user multiplied by the rating being awarded doubled is added to the poster being rated.
  • All posts that earn above a certain threshold of rep for the poster automatically go into a wiki inbox.
  • Users with total rep above a certain threshold have permission to edit and create content in the Wiki. They will be able to see the inbox and the Wiki will automatically suggest which existing topics the post, or parts of the post, might belong in by searching the post's contents for words recognized by the Wiki.
  • Admins have the power to change the "require rep for wiki edit" and "required post rep for inbox" thresholds and can also suspend privileges or delete users' accounts if necessary.
  • All code posted on the Wiki is tokenized and users can choose to display it in their preferred code layout style.
  • The above can be used on the forum too with a special [tphp] (t for tokenized) tag.
  • Code detection assesses all new posts for occurrences of common PHP structures and asks whether they meant to include them inside

    Code: Select all

    [php/]
    tags. :P
To summarize what is happening here:
  • Posts are rated
  • Users earn rep
  • Users with high rep have more clout and can edit the wiki
  • Posts that earn good rep for the poster are copied to the wiki inbox
  • Tokenized code and custom code layout
  • Code: Select all

    [php/]
    tag suggest

Posted: Tue Oct 31, 2006 3:53 pm
by Christopher
If I understand correctly, you are proposing a software system that would extract the useful/good part of online discussions and turn that extract into some kind of article that would be available to read. It sounds like what a human writer or editor does, but you want to use participant and post ratings to be the basis for the decision-making.

I think it is doable. It is similar in concept to the relevance that search engines apply to web pages when doing searches, but you are using a different pool of data. Definitely an interesting idea and probably not that difficult to implement if you constrain it to well behaved participants who would enter reasonable posts and ratings, and did not try to subvert the system.

However, a real-world system might only be able to roughly organize the information, and still require an editor to make the final judgements. That would be a worthwhile system though.

Posted: Tue Oct 31, 2006 4:46 pm
by jayshields
It sounds like a good idea, but the kind of idea that would need ALOT of thinking through and planning before anything could be finalized.

Some questions which instantly pop up to me are...

Would the "wiki" contain:
- Solutions to common problems
- Hints
- Tips
- All of the above

Which subject?
- Just PHP
- Every (programming) language with a current (sub)forum @ PHPDN
- Every subject

What happens when someone wants to discuss something, like what a forum is actually for?

Would comments be allowed on the wiki pages?

That's all for now.

Posted: Tue Oct 31, 2006 6:03 pm
by Ollie Saunders
arborint wrote:If I understand correctly, you are proposing a software system that would extract the useful/good part of online discussions
The system allows users to decide what is valuable or not. The extraction is not done algorithmically.
arborint wrote:and turn that extract into some kind of article that would be available to read.
Nope just accumulate the data in a place where mods can put it together.
arborint wrote:I think it is doable. It is similar in concept to the relevance that search engines apply to web pages when doing searches,
Yep, that's where I got the idea.
arborint wrote:Definitely an interesting idea and probably not that difficult to implement if you constrain it to well behaved participants who would enter reasonable posts and ratings, and did not try to subvert the system.
The social aspects of it would need to be considered certainly. Things like, would people bother to rate? Would people bother to edit the wiki-side? Would it still function as a forum? Although, being my idea, I am quietly confident.
arborint wrote:However, a real-world system might only be able to roughly organize the information, and still require an editor to make the final judgements. That would be a worthwhile system though.
see:
I wrote:Users with total rep above a certain threshold have permission to edit and create content in the Wiki.
jayshields wrote:It sounds like a good idea, but the kind of idea that would need ALOT of thinking through and planning before anything could be finalized.
Yes it really would but we can certainly talk it out here.
jayshields wrote:Would the "wiki" contain:
- Solutions to common problems
- Hints
- Tips
- All of the above

Which subject?
- Just PHP
- Every (programming) language with a current (sub)forum @ PHPDN
- Every subject
Anything that anybody asks and someone answers can enter the wiki. So potentially everything. Somebody could tell a good joke and it would go in. What I reckon would happen is that very common problems would be fleshed out over time to be incredibly detailed. Anything else interesting would appear but wouldn't be as complete as say a normal wiki unless somebody took it upon themselves to actually dedicate time to the wiki specifically. The idea is that with a minimal amount of effort (maybe a bit extra for those who are respected in the community) a documentation resource is produced on anything that people rate highly.

The forum remains pretty much as it is and would continue to save the purpose it already does. The only thing that changes is you have a "rate this post" thingy and a rep'ometer instead of a post count.

Posted: Wed Nov 01, 2006 2:54 am
by Ollie Saunders
Had another idea: I think it would be much better with just Good => 1 and Bad => -0.3 ratings. It worked for Digg after all. I don't think you can trust people to award responsibly. Having very clear cut, black and white, choices sorts a lot of that out.