Nekochan Net

fu wrote: to be honest editing the wiki ain't easier than editing a phpbb thread. to me at least). i think it'll look better on the wiki though.

It's true that learning/relearning how to edit wikis can be a bit of a barrier, particularly for "one-time" or casual users. It's not difficult, but it is a little arcane. That's why I think it should be okay to put candidate items for wiki inclusion here on the thread. I'd rather have the information shared somewhere so that it can be incorporated later, rather than not having it shared at all because someone didn't want to sign up for a wiki account and learn a little wiki syntax just to add a one line item.

I'm happy to pitch in with the converting/editing. I'd like to hear a little more feedback about organizing the content (single page vs multiple pages within a wiki category) before spending time on it, though.

thanks for the offer jose

pretty much covers my wiki concerns too. no problem going through the wiki editing basics again. actually it works out nicely when i get full of the stuff i work with. let's wait to hear thoughts from the rest of the guys and discuss taxonomy.

josehill wrote:

fu wrote: to be honest editing the wiki ain't easier than editing a phpbb thread. to me at least). i think it'll look better on the wiki though.

It's true that learning/relearning how to edit wikis can be a bit of a barrier, particularly for "one-time" or casual users. It's not difficult, but it is a little arcane. That's why I think it should be okay to put candidate items for wiki inclusion here on the thread. I'd rather have the information shared somewhere so that it can be incorporated later, rather than not having it shared at all because someone didn't want to sign up for a wiki account and learn a little wiki syntax just to add a one line item.

I'm happy to pitch in with the converting/editing. I'd like to hear a little more feedback about organizing the content (single page vs multiple pages within a wiki category) before spending time on it, though.

http://www.nekochan.net/wiki/ ... ochan_Wiki
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/How_to_edit

If you get stuck, you can also ask someone who has worked on the wiki to post something for you.
There are about 20 people active:
http://www.nekochan.net/wiki/ ... ctiveUsers

The O2 page links back here anyway: http://www.nekochan.net/wiki/ ... er_Reading

R.

In all honesty, Recondas has been maintaining the Fuel aggregator too (Thanks Dave!). I sold the Fuel and haven't used an SGI in at least two years. I do drop in here once-in-a-while to see what's going on, but I'm not really active anymore.

I'm with Jose. Wikify the aggregators and keep the individual threads going for discussion purposes.

I'd like to know how Recondas feels on the subject, as he's been maintaining the Fuel aggregator on my behalf. Would moving to the wiki be easier or not?

Well, I really like how it looks when you wikify the kind of forum contents that one should consider permanent or stable, but I need to confess that I find myself very tedious the editing process for the Wiki pages.

So, if anyone else wants to do it, I'll be more than happy!

zafunk wrote: I'm with Jose. Wikify the aggregators and keep the individual threads going for discussion purposes.

Ditto!

I'm half-active with the MIPS/IRIX world, mostly because I'm doing almost all with PeeCees and Ubuntu, but I really want to keep the IRIX platform alive because here and there I spend time with it... sometimes, lots of time.

:D nice to see all the rockers here again (hey zafunky, long time no see)

yes, dave is a one-man research army but let's give him (even a small) brake kids. he (jose, or anyone else) may be able to update/help but asking him to do it from scratch sounds way much. we could always keep running the threads here.

i'll start playing again with the wiki, hope there's a way to temporarily store pages before they go live.

From a conceptual standpoint the wiki makes better sense - articles are more focused/on point than the ad-hoc entry style of a forum. Having said that, the formal presentation style of the wiki doesn't readily foster the level of social interaction that's found in the laid-back atmosphere of the forums - which might partially explain why the wiki has been slower to gain acceptance with some of the regulars.

zafunk wrote: Wikify the aggregators and keep the individual threads going for discussion purposes.

So for that reason I'd agree with zafunk's suggestion to keep a forum discussion in addition to wiki articles would be a good idea - it'll keep another route for input from anyone who might not know the in-n-outs of the wiki interface <or doesn't find the level of wiki peer interaction as socially stimulating>.

For now I'll split the tape drive conversation out to the general hardware forum. Some of that info may prove helpful to someone with an HP DAT drive <with an O2 or any other SGI/MIPS system with a SCSI interface>.

I think ideally, any kind of well stablished and highly mature forum as Nekochan is, should include some kind of bots army running in background to condensate/summarize the permanent and/or stable contents into some Wiki variant.

I've always thought it should be that way for many reasons. The more formal style from Wiki contributes to a higher degree of order and structuration, has hierarchical menue entries, and from a casual standpoint it looks clearer than any forums, to not mention that it will be probably indexed faster by Google and all the rest.

I guess the only caveat is... I don't know (at least yet) from any kind of bot capable to do such task... so, you got to go over these little dialect one has to recall each time some editing is required... and when you're not doing it too frequently at all, some people (me!) could find it a bit difficult to retain or recall...

So, to put it clear: I really like the Wiki style and/or look and feel for things like that... but I'd have to go and try again...

It seems that the folks who have been the main editors/owners of the Hardware Aggregators all agree that a migration to the wiki for article content makes sense, while keeping the existing forum threads alive so that people who are not interested in editing the wiki or who are uncertain about whether something belongs in the wiki can make proposals and sort out any issues.

Next comes organization.

A single, long article for each machine, or a collection of multiple, shorter articles in a category? (Note: PymbleSoftware reminded me that smaller articles can be incorporated automatically into longer articles, as in the "Kernel Rebuild" section of the Optimizing_and_tuning_IRIX article. The drawback there is that it would be easy to forget to add new "sub" articles to a master article.)

Since long articles can be a little unwieldy to edit, I suggest creating new sub-categories for each wikified O2/Octane/Fuel Aggregator within the wiki Hardware: SGI Workstations category. Something like:

• Hardware: SGI Workstations: O2 Compatible Hardware
• Hardware: SGI Workstations: Octane Compatible Hardware
• Hardware: SGI Workstations: Fuel Compatible Hardware

Within each of those categories would be individual articles for each class of component or peripheral. For example, in the Hardware: SGI Workstations: O2 Compatible Hardware category, there would be individual articles for each topic in the current O2 Aggregator:

• SCSI HardDisks
• SCSI PCI Cards
• Fibre Channel Cards
• FireWire (IEEE-1394) Cards
• Network Cards
• CD-ROM Drives
• CD-RW Drives
• DVD-ROM Drives
• DVD-R/RW
• DVD-RAM Drives
• DAT/DDS
• 3.5" Floppy Drives
• Removable Drives
• Magneto-Optical (MO) Drives
• Scanners / Printers
• Tablets/Mice/Spaceballs
• PCMCIA Card readers
• Monitors

Probably something like the "O2 Hardware FAQs" section of the current aggregator would best fit as a separate article in the SGI Workstations category.

What do you guys think? (Regan, since you, along with SMJ and a couple of others are the local wiki gurus, please do chime in!)

josehill wrote: Since long articles can be a little unwieldy to edit, I suggest creating new sub-categories for each wikified O2/Octane/Fuel Aggregator within the wiki Hardware: SGI Workstations category. Something like:

• Hardware: SGI Workstations: O2 Compatible Hardware
• Hardware: SGI Workstations: Octane Compatible Hardware
• Hardware: SGI Workstations: Fuel Compatible Hardware

Within each of those categories would be individual articles for each class of component or peripheral.

IMHO it is a very, very, nice idea! I always thought of the the aggregators as some kind of middle stage before to reach the state of a definitive Hardware Compatibility List or something like that.

josehill wrote: Next comes organization.

Yes, please . I personally have no real personal bias to how it is structured so long as it is structured. Always put a [[Category:____]] at the bottom of a topic if you create a topic... I spent two weeks several hours each day structuring the wiki by putting everything into categories. And topics can belong to multiple categories.

How exactly it is structured I consider a matter for personal taste. Josehill's suggested layout is as good as any I would come up with.

I also spent a couple of weeks removing most of the "red links" (links to topics that don't exist) by resolving them to existing topics, creating empty topics, putting in redirects or removing them from the page. I got this from well over 1000 to about 100.

In general, please keep it structured and don't make make a mess. Probably add "play nice" when editing a page someone else has worked on. Anything else goes. But mostly keep it structured.

josehill wrote: What do you guys think? (Regan, since you, along with SMJ and a couple of others are the local wiki gurus, please do chime in!)

These are just my $0.02...

Dave wrote: Having said that, the formal presentation style of the wiki doesn't readily foster the level of social interaction that's found in the laid-back atmosphere of the forums - which might partially explain why the wiki has been slower to gain acceptance with some of the regulars.

You can "discuss" a page... go to the "discussion" tab
Here is a not so good example of a discuss on our wiki.. Click the page tab to view the actual page.
http://www.nekochan.net/wiki/ ... arget_mode
Keep it civil in the discussion tab.

You know what I think a successful topic is...? I started a page on something I didn't know a lot about, I started it with some headings about things I wanted to know but otherwise blank, someone else came along and took a couple of bits out of wikipedia, Linux/MIPS wiki, techpubs and elsewhere mashed them up into something entirely new and added a lot of their own personal experience, into something indistinguishable from where it started.. I still go back to that and the links to external sites as a starting point into something I am still learning about. I wrote nothing but a couple of headings and gained a lot. Another page I started someone came through and converted data to a table... which was a big improvement on readability...

One point to make from the previous paragraph, don't worry about wiki syntax, and take no offense if someone messes with your topics reformatting and correcting spelling, it is usually evolves and improves over time.. It doesn't have to be finished, others can help with the polishing. If it becomes uncivil then pages can be locked, if not by the wiki admin then by the site owner and nekonoko is usually fair and reasonable arbitrator. Changes and spam can be rolled back and forgive my edits.. I reserve the right to put anything I find uncategorized into a category or remove or resolve broken links. Spelling and grammar is something I rarely have an issue with.

GeneratriX wrote: I think ideally, any kind of well stablished and highly mature forum as Nekochan is, should include some kind of bots army running in background to condensate/summarize the permanent and/or stable contents into some Wiki variant.

People are best at this.


R.

Hello guys,

I'm delighted to see such a discussion about wikifying the aggregators. I however have a thought I would like to share, please let me know if it sounds stupid or not…

Instead of having one aggregator for the O2, one for the Fuel, one for the Octane, wouldn't it make more sense to have one for each type of device? If there is a wiki page for compatible let's say DDS drive, it could contain a table listing all the DDS drives tested and a column for each system it was tested on. This would allow to quickly identify if that drive is compatible/not compatible/unknown with such or such workstation.

My points are:
- how likely is it for an O2 compatible DDS drive to also be compatible with a Fuel?
- if I'm looking for a PCI card for my Fuel, maybe it was already tested on an O2 and I don't have to go the O2 aggregator to find if it was compatible

I hope I'm clear… too early in the morning, need more coffee.

Michael

guys, i'm happy to see some mac os editors that support wiki-style formatting/highlighting (I've been wondering if i could do most of the editing offline)

one burning question though: does anyone know of a wiki-style (pre)viewer (that may be installed on a mac)?

being able to type/edit/preview would rock, as i won't have to worry about braking anything that's already there

It might be overkill, but you could always install a copy of media wiki locally. The main thing you would need is postgresql or mysql, as apache and php already exist in osx.

Geof

fu wrote: does anyone know of a wiki-style (pre)viewer (that may be installed on a mac)?

being able to type/edit/preview would rock, as i won't have to worry about braking anything that's already there

I hear you, fu. I think that the absence of a good, gui-mode MediaWiki editor that would allow wiki editing without requiring knowledge of wikicode is something that really limits the potential of Wikipedia and similar wikis. Again, wikicode isn't particularly difficult, but it is arcane enough to chase away a lot of people who might otherwise be willing to contribute to a wiki.

No doubt, of course, that if such a client existed, there would be no shortage of wiki mavens who would bemoan an influx of wiki contributors who couldn't be bothered to learn wikicode, much like the way people who used gui html editors were (sometimes justifiably) derided for not learning to handcraft html.

Of course, if a gui wiki editor were to create wikicode as poorly as some gui tools generate html, it would make it harder for others to edit wiki pages manually, which would be a huge step backwards. No good, broad-based solution in sight.

fu wrote: being able to type/edit/preview would rock, as i won't have to worry about braking anything that's already there

Don't worry too much about that... You can not really break anything too much.. You can click edit an article (edit tab once logged in) changes can be reverted and there is a "preview" button right next to the submit button.. You can edit text, hit prview, edit, preview as many times as you like and then hit cancel or submit when you are done.

90% of my wiki editing is plain old changing text, on the very very rare occasions I add a table or something then I look for another page in the wiki that already has something similar and copy the wiki code to a text editor locally and then use that as a reference, fiddle with it for a bit then hit preview. Adding images, look for a page with an image in the style that you want, paste the wiki code into a new topic and change the file name. That will give you a red-link, open the red link in a new window or new tab and that will give you an option to upload a file. Once that is done, hit preview on the topic once more and the image should appear. A bit more fiddling and previews and it should be good to submit.

If you want to do something that has not appeared on the wiki before and involves templates or something advanced then ask someone for help. I find it no more difficult than phpBB code most of the time.

There are several ways to create a new page, create a link within another page..
eg:

Save the change, click the red link, and it will say something like topic not found want to create it.

The other is to go to a topic remove the topic name in the URL in the browser and replace it with a new topic.
eg:
http://www.nekochan.net/wiki/13W3

delete the 13W3

type newtopic at the end of the index.php/
for it to become:
http://www.nekochan.net/wiki/newtopic

and it will say not found, want to create it....?

I hit preview about a dozen times writing this post and didn't need an external editor


... and also with the formatting, I started pages with really really plain text and someone came along after and fixed the formatting for me. You can't really break it and don't worry too much about wikicode and formatting.

R.

thanks for re-capping the basics + unbreakability guys

iirc, i didn't get any drama when doing the wiki-boogie back then, but i did all of it online. my question was mostly about time (spent online + the flooopy wifi links i have to deal with every so often)

after some bar-hoping google-hoping, your suggestions took me to Gwennel Web (win only, wysiwyg), MAMP (mac) & XAMP (win/mac/loon/solaris) for those who may want to run+test wikis locally). haven't tried any of them

fu wrote: after some bar-hoping google-hoping, your suggestions took me to Gwennel Web (win only, wysiwyg), MAMP (mac) & XAMP (win/mac/loon/solaris) for those who may want to run+test wikis locally). haven't tried any of them

Hey there, Fu!
...it seems after all here is something interesting to look at: Zim
I don't know if everybody here already knows this gem, but it is totally new for me, and I'm willing to try it.

Maybe another possible candidate for some IRIX port? I don't know what the dependencies are.

All the best,
Diego

(i think) i just created the relevant category O2 Compatible Hardware . i'll start working on articles (drives, monitors, etc) later

something else i just noticed (dave is right: wiki looks serious, threads are funky):

the aggregators include non sgi-made, community-contributed pieces of hardware (some require hacks, other are kinda sorta working). O2 Compatible Hardware sounds more formal (and may also include sgi-made hardware?)

we might want to think about that and tag each piece of hardware with some sort of disclaimer (dear user, please don't search for official drivers but take a look @ this hack) or select only the ones that work 100% hack-free

magellan, your idea sounds sleek, i guess with decent content ready, it'll take just some good (hyper)linking à la wiki.

I think hacks are fine, maybe even encouraged, as long as the hack is documented in the wiki entry or via a link to a forum post or other source of documentation.

fu wrote: the aggregators include non sgi-made, community-contributed pieces of hardware (some require hacks, other are kinda sorta working). O2 Compatible Hardware sounds more formal (and may also include sgi-made hardware?)

we might want to think about that and tag each piece of hardware with some sort of disclaimer (dear user, please don't search for official drivers but take a look @ this hack) or select only the ones that work 100% hack-free