Wiki moderation

[Richard Watkins]

I have decided I am willing to be a general moderator/administrator of the MB wiki, subject to any objections.

I will do this under the following conditions (which may change in the light of input from other people):

(a) The NAWCC executive appoints one or more people asap who, with me, will form a Wiki Committee and will have control of the development of the MB wiki. Maybe these people have already been chosen?

(b) Two MB forums will be established immediately: Wiki Administration and Wiki Problems and all temporary/ephemeral discussions will be held in these forums.

(c) The Wiki committee will establish basic guidelines for articles and a category structure (assuming the wiki software allows creating a satisfactory structure).

(d) People are found to moderate different areas. I am happy to moderate almost anything to do with watches, but I will not moderate clocks, sundials, electronic timepieces, ....

(e) Moderators need to be given administration rights over the Wiki base so that they can put their decisions into effect (for example, moving, deleting articles and changing article names - deletion is included because some articles will be created which later are no longer needed, because the information is incorporated elsewhere or the article is an orphan stub, etc.)

(f) The Wiki committee will examine the relationship between the MB wiki and wikipedia and determine policies in this area. This will include how to incorporate worthwhile articles into wikipedia or to direct wikipedia articles to the MB wiki.

 

[harold bain]

Richard, sounds like a great idea to me. Thanks for volunteering.

 

[Steven Thornberry]

JMHO, but I would like to see the Wiki separated from the MB umbrella as a discrete NAWCC entity. I think the two serve separate purposes. I would think it would not be two difficult to establish a link from MB to Wiki. Yes, yes, I know, Thornberry's just trying to upset a perfectly upright apple cart. As I said, JMO.

 

[Kent]

Richard, you also have my thanks for volunteering!

I agree that principles need to be developed and that some form of control is exercised over the content of articles to be posted, or the editing thereof. Should this come to pass, you'll have my full support.

 

[Richard Watkins]

JMHO, but I would like to see the Wiki separated from the MB umbrella as a discrete NAWCC entity. I think the two serve separate purposes.

I totally agree.

 

[kirxklox]

Richard and ALL: I get a kick out of all your answers.

I will try to answer all of you about VaultWiki. It is an Add-On program to vBulletin just like the Blog system that is also available for this MB. There is no separate Admin functions for anyone.

Moderators with the correct permissions can do everything that Richard is asking for except the new Forums. That is up to the Executive Director if he desires.

There are also two other CMS systems that is operated by the NAWCC. The Joomla system and the Higher Logic system. Each one of those has some amount of User Interface that would allow direct posting of Information. This was put together to allow more Information concerning Horology to be available for the PUBLIC and/or for the NAWCC Members.

Sure, we could use other systems like WikiPedia, Image Hosting systems, and YouTube but that does not provide a greater Internet Presence for the NAWCC.

Right now, too many members are having problems accessing the IMIS System, let alone the problems that would be encountered by using multiple Systems like a BLOG Engine or another Stand-alone Wiki. Having it all on the MB makes it easier for the PUBLIC to access it and view it.

If it was up to me to pick who the MODERATORS are, I would pick those that would be Dedicated to the NAWCC, Unbiased, and able to help those MEMBERS that are having problems.

 

[Tom McIntyre]

Vault Wiki as it is implemented here is integral with vBulletin. It uses quite a lot of vBulletin code in its internal operations.

Wikimedia is available for anyone to deploy a Wiki with but, in my opinion, the vBulletin environment is easier to use than the Wikimedia environment.

I have been working on some user level documentation for Vault Wiki and would hope to have that available soon. I have quite a few irons in the fire right now and have not been able to complete some of these tasks as quickly as I had hoped.

The Valut Wiki drop down menu in the navigation bar has an entry called "Special Pages" which in turn has information available on the extensions to vBulletin that are available both in the wiki articles and in regular conversational posts due to the presence of Vault Wiki.

One significant feature of Vault Wiki is automatic linking of wiki articles in the Default Namespace to references in the forums. Thus, if someone refers to Waltham Watch Co. in a regular post, it will provide a link to the Waltham Watch Co. article and generate a Java based popup in the forum posting.

One can also explicitly reference articles in other namespaces from within the forum posts. Thus you can make a reference to a book or a category in the respective Book and Category namespaces and you will see the term underlined in the article and a popup will be provided with a link to the wiki content. The category Watch Cases is an example of a category reference while the book Illinois Bunn Special is a book example with 4 chapters that are each wiki articles.

I think the integration between conversations and in-depth articles provides a valuable tool.