Re: A new web authoring wiki?

Jukka K. Korpela wrote:
Toby Inkster <usenet200605@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> scripsit:

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.

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- they still have a huge number of questions and answers, though largely due to duplication, and often with _wrong_ (or outdated) answers.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.
.

Relevant Pages

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  • Re: A new web authoring wiki?
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