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Does this site need a Wiki?


CADTutor

Does CADTutor need a Wiki?  

55 members have voted

  1. 1. Does CADTutor need a Wiki?

    • Yes, it would be very useful
      37
    • Maybe, I probably wouldn't use it
      10
    • No, let's just stick with the forum
      8


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As some of you will know, this site has an FAQ section where commonly asked questions about AutoCAD are given model answers so that beginners or others can be refferred to these rather than members having to answer in a thread every time the same question is asked.

 

It seemed like a good idea at the time to form a team to implement the FAQ and for a while it went well. However, members come and members go and it has been difficult to keep the project going - in truth, it has stalled.

 

So, my question to the community is: would it be beneficial to replace the closed (only editable by a small team) FAQ section with an open Wiki that any member could contribute to? Obviously, the content in the FAQ would be migrated but it strikes me that the community is so good at running this forum that an integrated Wiki could work equally well.

 

I'd love to know your views.

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Top Posters In This Topic

  • Lee Mac

    9

  • eldon

    7

  • ReMark

    6

  • Tiger

    6

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The problem that you will have with a Wiki is the information will differ from person to person. I think it would be a very useful thing to have but could take a long time to get up and running.

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with a wiki i find a discussion page for edits essential. otherwise, you will not know the logic used by a contributor, and the item gets changed back and forth. a good wiki, i expect, is a complex affair.

 

but i'm all for it - this forum is excellent at getting the right answer quickly.

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The problem that you will have with a Wiki is the information will differ from person to person.

 

Well, articles are collaborative efforts and the idea is that this results in a consensus - just as it does at Wikipedia.

 

How is information in a Wiki vetted?

 

By the community. Obviously, we may need to appoint editors to keep things in order but my hope is that it would be a light touch approach.

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By the community. Obviously, we may need to appoint editors to keep things in order but my hope is that it would be a light touch approach.

 

I think you may be looking at more than just a "light Touch".

 

I think it would be a brilliant idea and would love to see the finished product and think it would be really useful. I may be jumping the line but personally I think it may involve alot of work.

 

Just my view

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Maybe we could have a "test" wiki? My suggestion would be How to speed up AutoCAD. Maybe it could include information about benchmarking one's system and gauging AutoCAD's affect on virtual memory. Are links permitted in a wiki?

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ReMark - i could be wrong here, and generally your knowledge is leagues ahead of my comprehension, so it's possible (!), but don't you just stick up a question / topic and wait for people to answer and develop it?

if you want to include benchmarking, you add it, and wait and see if the community aggrees - otherwise it will be deleted.

i figured it would be just like the forum pages, regarding links etc. - if they are relevant, they stay, if not, they go.

 

or have i missed something?

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You bring up a good point. Since I have no "wiki" experience maybe I am under the wrong impression of what would/would not be included. I'll have to do some research on the topic.

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I think Links to an external source may be a bad idea but if you kept everything contained within the site (like wikipedia do) then it would work.

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also, when i have searched a topic in google and it's taken me to the FAQ here at cadtutor, i don't like it much

don't know why, but the format of the forum is much more appealing to me

 

like the autodesk help site - just doesn't seem as useful.

a wiki would help improve this (for me, at least)

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I think its a good idea.

 

Firstly it'll save a lot of hunting through the forums to get to the answer you want, and furthermore, you don't have to filter through forum posts to get to reliable information. Of course, with a Wiki there is always the issue with vandalism and clashing opinions, but then, the forums seem to cope without too many of these issues, so I don't see a Wiki suffering too much in this community.

 

Lee

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I don't know much about wikis, but I do use wikipedia from time to time. As long as everyone understands that there could be some less than perfect information posted it shouldn't be a problem. It might make finding answers, especially for the recurring issues easier to get at. If there's something I could do to help with it, let me know.

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From what I've experienced with wikis, the benefit of having multiple people post an answer would show how many different ways there are to achieve the same result. Then the reader could go with whatever method worked for them. I agree that it would have to be moderated by a select few, and I'm sure that any problems or wrong information would be taken care of quickly.

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From what I've experienced with wikis, the benefit of having multiple people post an answer would show how many different ways there are to achieve the same result. Then the reader could go with whatever method worked for them.

 

That sounds exactly like CADTutor. Is there any need to set up another system?

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It would greatly reduce the other chatter that goes on in a thread and remove the "oh no you didn't"s and the "oh yes I did"s. Some of these threads require people to read through a few pages of replies and that wouldn't happen with a wiki.

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