Suggestion by basileus - Wikia for Crossbow building

Hi Ivo,

I think it would make sense to establish a Wiki (e.g. http://www.wikia.com/Wikia) for structured crossbow-building information. Forums are designed for communication, not for organizing information. Wikis, on the other hand, are designed with the latter task in mind and would make our work much easier. Editing Wiki pages is not hard: f.ex. Wikia Wikis have a graphical editor. Alternatively, one can use the MediaWiki markup language, which is simple enough in itself.

Creating a new Wiki is trivial and I could even do it for you. I already maintain the "Greek and Roman artillery Wiki":

http://ballista.wikia.com/wiki/Greek_and_Roman_Artillery_Wiki

One thing to note about Wikia Wikis is that all contributed content is licensed under Creative Commons (http://creativecommons.org/about) licenses. In a nutshell this means that the content we create can be used, modified and redistributed with only a few limitations. This helps ensure that the knowledge we gather will be available after, say, 200 years, instead of getting lost due to copyright law restriction (e.g. lack of right to redistribute the content). I already distribute all of my own crossbow-related content under a CC license (see http://users.utu.fi/sjsepp).

Anyways, that's my 5 cents for today. I'm more than happy to explain this in more detail, if there's interest in this idea.

Hi,

I agree with every word.

Glossary of terms can be just a basic dictionary and linking every word
to a more detailed wiki article would be awesome, but what advantage
does Wikia have over Wikipedia? or it's just the licensing that's
different.

All together...I like the idea with the wiki....however how do we deal with the existing wikis out there? I mean we can take advantage of those articles, but I never really dipped my head in to see how that system works and now that you mention it...I'm wondering how would a group like ours get in on the development of the already existing content. Do we need to sign up and add members? I'm kinda getting lost here ...It's just my computer time is limited since I'm on the net only once in a while and even that's at work, so all help is appreciated.

Also about Creative Commons license... this is also something new to me and I'm glad you mentioned it considering our site has had numerous copyright issues that I had to settle in the back ground [as a result of which I became slightly discouraged]. I don't fully understand it yet, so perhaps you or anyone else can shine some light on the copyright/licensing system and tell us a bit more about your experiences with it.

Thanks,

Ivo

[EDIT] Did a little research on the matter and have a few things to add. While Wiki is a great place to expand on the terminology used since it's technically an always developing encyclopedia, we can do simply a list of basic definitions and link them to on or off site resources, whether they are topics on this forum or resources such as your site. Not throwing the Wiki idea out and will definitely take a closer look to see how we can benefit from it with this in mind >>> All the topics hosted here are technically public information since Forumotion's services are structured just so and this information can be compiled and transferred to a Wiki at any time and by any one, only one problem...since Forumotion takes no responsibility for the content there is no transfer tool and all things will be manual when we do decide to start building up the Wiki's.[EDIT]

Ivo wrote:Hi,

I agree with every word.

Glossary of terms can be just a basic dictionary and linking every word
to a more detailed wiki article would be awesome, but what advantage
does Wikia have over Wikipedia? or it's just the licensing that's
different.

Wikipedia is rather picky about what it accepts. For example, we could not put any of the technical crossbow articles there (e.g. "this is how you make a medieval crossbow stock"). Also, Wikipedia does not promote s.c. "original research", meaning that all information has to come from a published source (e.g. a book). So, Wikipedia would work fine for generic crossbow information, but not for our "do it yourself" style content. For details, see:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:About

All together...I like the idea with the wiki....however how do we deal with the existing wikis out there? I mean we can take advantage of those articles, but I never really dipped my head in to see how that system works and now that you mention it...I'm wondering how would a group like ours get in on the development of the already existing content. Do we need to sign up and add members? I'm kinda getting lost here ...It's just my computer time is limited since I'm on the net only once in a while and even that's at work, so all help is appreciated.

What Wikis are you refering to? We could use Wikipedia content (or link to it) with no problem, it's also CC-licensed. I think the best approach would be to use Wikipedia when possible, but put the more technical and/or detailed information into our own Wiki.

Also about Creative Commons license... this is also something new to me and I'm glad you mentioned it considering our site has had numerous copyright issues that I had to settle in the back ground [as a result of which I became slightly discouraged]. I don't fully understand it yet, so perhaps you or anyone else can shine some light on the copyright/licensing system and tell us a bit more about your experiences with it.

Ok, this is how it goes. So, when I write something to these forums I keep the copyright to my work. Unless I've accepted to license my contribution under, say, a CC license, nobody else can copy or modify it. Wikipedia summarizes this nicely:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Copyrights

[EDIT] Did a little research on the matter and have a few things to add. While Wiki is a great place to expand on the terminology used since it's technically an always developing encyclopedia, we can do simply a list of basic definitions and link them to on or off site resources, whether they are topics on this forum or resources such as your site. Not throwing the Wiki idea out and will definitely take a closer look to see how we can benefit from it with this in mind >>> All the topics hosted here are technically public information since Forumotion's services are structured just so and this information can be compiled and transferred to a Wiki at any time and by any one, only one problem...since Forumotion takes no responsibility for the content there is no transfer tool and all things will be manual when we do decide to start building up the Wiki's.[EDIT]

For a glossary of terms a Wiki is definitely an overkill. If that's the only goal then these forums - or Wikipedia - would work just fine. However, I was thinking along these lines:

"Crossbow building Wiki - the best place to find crossbow building information on the web"

I would definitely be interested in writing to that Wiki. What about you guys?

A wiki type thing could be useful. It would be a more useful format for articles and longer more in depth type stuff.

As for copy right stuff: yeah that seems to be a confusing cluster that few people seem to really understand including the Wiki page. Not that I have any exact info but have heard there are errors in that page. A lot of people think they know copyright. So don't get depressed over it. Copyright seems to be deliberately confusing.

Basilisk120 wrote:A wiki type thing could be useful. It would be a more useful format for articles and longer more in depth type stuff.

As for copy right stuff: yeah that seems to be a confusing cluster that few people seem to really understand including the Wiki page. Not that I have any exact info but have heard there are errors in that page. A lot of people think they know copyright. So don't get depressed over it. Copyright seems to be deliberately confusing.

Yep. The problem is that each country has a slightly different type of copyright legistlation. For example, what is considered "fair use" may differ. Or what constitutes "legal copying".

This becomes even more confusing when you couple it with CC or copyleft-type open source licenses (e.g. GNU GPLv2/3) which use the copyright law to protect freedom of the content instead of copyright holder's rights. So, basically, when one releases his/her content under such a license, he/she gives permission to use the content relatively freely. However, the right to relicense his/her work is not granted. So, nobody could (legally), say, take the content, modify it and then sell it for profit. That would violate the copyrights of the original author.

Anyways, I think a good rule of thumb is not to copy random stuff from the
Internet (or books) somewhere else - at least not without mentioning and/or linking to the
original source. Also, even if the source is mentioned, I would avoid direct copying too large segments, e.g. more than few lines/paragraphs of text.

I hope this makes sense .

basileus wrote:
Yep. The problem is that each country has a slightly different type of copyright legistlation. For example, what is considered "fair use" may differ. Or what constitutes "legal copying".

This becomes even more confusing when you couple it with CC or copyleft-type open source licenses (e.g. GNU GPLv2/3) which use the copyright law to protect freedom of the content instead of copyright holder's rights. So, basically, when one releases his/her content under such a license, he/she gives permission to use the content relatively freely. However, the right to relicense his/her work is not granted. So, nobody could (legally), say, take the content, modify it and then sell it for profit. That would violate the copyrights of the original author.

Anyways, I think a good rule of thumb is not to copy random stuff from the
Internet (or books) somewhere else - at least not without mentioning and/or linking to the
original source. Also, even if the source is mentioned, I would avoid direct copying too large segments, e.g. more than few lines/paragraphs of text.

I hope this makes sense .

I'm beginning to recognize the various copyright markings on books, videos, and other content that I see online.

Thanks for spelling it out for me basileus, it's actually kinda cool now that I'm getting a bit of feel for it and I'm sure I'll get a hand of it in the process.

basileus wrote:
For a glossary of terms a Wiki is definitely an
overkill. If that's the only goal then these forums - or Wikipedia -
would work just fine.

I started filling the glossary and realized that most terms were written terribly and have to rewrite practically every term definition.

basileus wrote:...I was thinking along these lines:

"Crossbow building Wiki - the best place to find crossbow building information on the web"

I would definitely be interested in writing to that Wiki.

- "One for all, and all for one" ... I'm a slow typer and lately can't get organized, but do have a few interesting projects that I'm practically done with as well as a few new ones that will find a good home both on the forum(for discussion) and on the Wiki for reference.

basileus wrote:What about you guys?

...as for the rest of the guys...you guys keep sitting quite like that and I will consider it as you being asked to participate against your will and I will be glad to remove you from the group making you a mear mortal again ..., but seriously, just let me know what's up because I'm beginning to feel the sand in the wind ...

Ivo

I would be willing to write somethings for a Wikki not sure what I would be able to add but I could help.

basileus wrote:

...as for the rest of the guys...you guys keep sitting quite like that and I will consider it as you being asked to participate against your will and I will be glad to remove you from the group making you a mear mortal again ..., but seriously, just let me know what's up because I'm beginning to feel the sand in the wind ...

Ivo

If even a couple of people here are willing to write to the Wiki, then it's worth it. For starters, it could contain things like:

• Glossary
  
• Bibliography (all crossbow-related books with descriptions)
  
• Links to existing Internet resources (categorized with tags)
  
• Various HOWTOs (similar to these)
  
• Example crossbow pages ("this crossbow was made by X"); this could be based on a template page with technical data ( draw weight, draw length) and pictures.
  

Also, we should advertise the Wiki actively on these forums. Having a direct link from here to the Wiki - and vice versa of course - would be beneficial. This makes sure that when somebody finds one, he/she will also find the other.

Ivo, basilisk120: just let me know and I'll create the Wiki, it's no big deal. In the long run I'm sure the Wiki will pay off. I'm thinking of naming it "Crossbow building Wiki" (http://crossbow.wikia.com). What do you think?

I don't think I would be migrating my stuff from my homepage (too much effort), but I'll definitely link to it. As I don't have much diskspace left on my webpages, I'd be putting new stuff to the Wiki.

Hi Basileus,
I've registered on the Wikia site and ready to roll.

The basic layout is excellent for now to expand on...I will also work on a logo for the Wiki and present it here for review.

Also about the name...I like the simpler variation. The description is good, but might look silly at first, since "greatest on the net" is similar to "international" title and is something that's deserved. Don't get me wrong, I like it and wish I could put something like that on our forum header, but then realized that there is much to be done before I could do that. however you are in charge of the Wiki creation and if you truly believe in it, then you have my support.

Advertising the wiki on the forum and vise versa goes without saying ...it's a recipe for a perpetual engine and it smells great! This will definitely cut down the useful links panel size and allow me to focus on more forum related stuff.

Also...there has been some interest from the Russian crossbow guys in creating something similar, I'll see if they will be interested in participating in the development.
I think wikia supports a multi-language option for the same page...does it?

Ivo

PS: I don't have regular access to internet right now, so please bear with me this week, ok?

Ivo wrote:Hi Basileus,
I've registered on the Wikia site and ready to roll.

The basic layout is excellent for now to expand on...I will also work on a logo for the Wiki and present it here for review.

Also about the name...I like the simpler variation. The description is good, but might look silly at first, since "greatest on the net" is similar to "international" title and is something that's deserved. Don't get me wrong, I like it and wish I could put something like that on our forum header, but then realized that there is much to be done before I could do that. however you are in charge of the Wiki creation and if you truly believe in it, then you have my support.

Advertising the wiki on the forum and vise versa goes without saying ...it's a recipe for a perpetual engine and it smells great! This will definitely cut down the useful links panel size and allow me to focus on more forum related stuff.

Also...there has been some interest from the Russian crossbow guys in creating something similar, I'll see if they will be interested in participating in the development.
I think wikia supports a multi-language option for the same page...does it?

Ivo

PS: I don't have regular access to internet right now, so please bear with me this week, ok?

Hi Ivo,

I'll try to get the crossbow Wiki online by the end of this week with a few useful sample pages.

Wikia's language support seems to be pretty good. I got to check whether they have automated page translation in place, though I think that's not especially useful in most cases. Pages can be easily written in multiple languages and marked as such using tags. For example, pages in English could have the "English" tag and those in Russian the "Russian" tag. This would allow, say, a Russian guy to only view Russian-language wiki pages. Of course tags could be utilize to categorize content in other ways, e.g. "HOWTO", "Medieval", "Steel prod", "Design", etc. The only difficulty is selecting a good, relatively limited set of tags.

Regerald: could you notify the Russian crossbow builders about the Wiki when it's online?

Oh maaan...I thought I added Regerald to the Group, but don't see him in the list...will do that now.

I'll let Igora know about the Wikia once it's created, he's the Mod on the Russian forum and will let all the others know.

A lot of people were shying away from the forum since it wasn't a static resource and the info could get buried under all the other topics, so I bet there will be a great interest in this when it goes public.

Good job! and Good Luck! We got your back basileus.

Ivo

The Wiki is now online: Crossbow Building Wiki I added some content to give some idea how the Wiki could be used. I'll be adding more later today.

Very impressive work basileus!!!

I'll look through it tonight and will make my first few contributions in the morning.

Also I'll talk to the Russian guys about it as well as bring this topic to the public eye, this is going to fun.

Ivo