Wiki

[Tim]

Well, this didn't have a good place, so here in social it goes. I just learned we have our own wiki at diybookscanner.org/wiki
It's a Mediawiki wiki which means the syntax is like Wikipedia. That has some advantages, but in another thread James has mentioned the possibility of some more appropriate software in the near future. I don't think it will be too much effort to transfer content from our wiki into the new one though, but it's something I'll check on. Either bit of software will allow us to implement Daniel's idea to build a manual that contains the good ideas from this site with the option to sell it to support the community.

One important thing to decide on right away is a collaborative license on the text. By default anything anybody writes is copyrighted by them and without a license it is released under that allows it, you can't edit and improve that text and republish it. Unless someone has any big objections, one of the most appropriate licenses is the Creative Commons Attribution Share Alike 3.0 license. CC-by-SA-3.0.

[daniel_reetz]

I've made Tim a Wiki Admin, and if others here need admin access to do special work, either Tim or I can assign that status. I know KoulevPrime was talking about doing some serious wiki editing at one point, but I suspect other commitments ate up his time.

I support using the CC-BY-SA license.

I'll update the front page to reflect the presence of a wiki tonight or tomorrow. Hopefully we can integrate other stuff, like Ben Varadi's helpful scanner links or my del.icio.us commented/tagged bookmarks of most every useful thread in the forum (last updated two weeks ago)

[univurshul]

How many languages is this translated into?

[Tim]

So far there is almost nothing there. There are only two pages and only in English right now. Any translating to be done would best be done by hand or with translation assistance software at most. The mediawiki software supports multiple languages in various ways, and we can consider which of them we want to use. I don't know how to do the software configuration changes, but I can try to find out.

My thought for setting up the Wiki was to have a build page and a software page, then subpages for each of the parts of a basic or variety build and each software package that warrants it. Then we could have pages on camera selection and techniques and build techniques. These could then be put appropriately into a book form by choosing the parts and the order.

Daniel, can you upload the image from the diybookscanner.org mainpage that marks the parts of a scanner to the wiki and note it as being released under a CC-by-SA-3.0 license? I also have to admit I'm a bit confused on how to get the copyright notice changed. I think you have to do that in the LocalSettings.php file according to http://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Copyright but I can't find the decent documentation page again that showed more about how to do that. There was one help page that showed what to specifically cut and paste if you want a creative commons license. If I just change it in a system message, as I did manually for now, it won't work for other languages for example.

[daniel_reetz]

Tim, the image is [img=http://www.diybookscanner.org/BookScanner_2.jpg]here[/img] and I consider it public domain, so it can be relicensed and reused however you wish. I am working on my talk for Google so I can't get much else done ATM. Next week when I get back (monday) I can take a crack at modding the wiki and/or getting you shell or ftp access to do so yourself.

[daniel_reetz]

I changed that line in the LocalSettings.php file, but don't see any changes as a result.

[daniel_reetz]

spoke too soon, the main page now has a link to a copyright page.

[Tim]

No problem on the timing, I've got a stopgap worked out for now. Shell/ftp would be great when you get a chance. Though it would put me beyond my skills, I won't do anything dumb. I know my way around a shell, just not the mediawiki configuration.

The Copyrights page had the text
Content is available under $1.
I set it manually for now, but if anyone could figure out where the $1 variable is set at, that would be great.

[Misty]

I wonder if we might be able to benefit from Semantic Mediawiki. SMW is a set of extensions that basically turns wiki pages into queryable database entries, and which provides structured ways to enter and display data. How useful that is depends on what we're doing, but if the wiki would have pages for every build and lots of metadata it could be useful. On the other hand, if you're thinking of doing a how-to guide, that might not be as useful. If you're not planning on doing a page for every build though, I'd be interested in taking a look at putting that together.

I use the semantic tools a lot on my Library's wiki. Here's an example I just made that gives a good idea of what it's useful for: http://ourbrant.wikia.com/wiki/Dutcher

That page is the main page for Dutcher Cemetery. The body of the page contains a table with every person buried there, sorted by physical location. If you look at any of those pages (say, Henry Dutcher) the individual grave's data is located in the infobox, and is all stored in a standardized way. The main Dutcher page is built by querying all of the people with the "Buried in" property with a value of "Dutcher", then sorted by other properties on those pages. It's pretty flexible, so users can build their own queries too. So for example, you could also search for burials in Dutcher sorted by age at death if listed, or anything else using the entered data.

[daniel_reetz]

It might be smart to have one wiki or CMS as a "builds database" and one as a "let's make a how-to guide".