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2 posters

    Crossbow Building Wiki - Published!!!

    Ivo
    Ivo
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    Crossbow Building Wiki - Published!!! Empty Crossbow Building Wiki - Published!!!

    Post by Ivo Mon Mar 14, 2011 10:38 pm

    Hey Guys,

    Here to celebrate the creation of the Crossbow Building Wiki put together by basileus.

    It is a Crossbow building resource to which any one of us can contribute our knowledge. Being in a Wiki-encyclopedia hierarchy format it will be much better organized than a discussion forum and thus will be more user friendly for beginners and more static for the contributing/experienced members. It's very plain right now, but I know we all have something to contribute, so come and check it out!

    Crossbow Building Wiki


    Crossbow Building Wiki - Published!!! 399779 Again Big Thanks to Basileus for starting this Wiki! Crossbow Building Wiki - Published!!! 399779

    Ivo
    basileus
    basileus
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    Founder & Curator
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    Post by basileus Sat Mar 19, 2011 6:17 am

    Hi all,

    I tried moving over content from my pages to the Wiki, and it ended up being relatively easy with html2wiki and the MultipleUpload Special Wiki page. Anyways, one of my pages is now Wikified:

    • http://crossbow.wikia.com/wiki/Forging_boltheads,_method_2

    I think I'll move the rest over in time. Speaking of tags, I'm thinking of using categorization similar to this:

    • Time-based / historical: ancient medieval, 16th cent, 17th cent, modern...
    • Location-based: european, roman, german, chinese, russian...
    • Technique-based: woodworking, forging, welding
    • Component-based: bow/prod, bowstring, bolt/arrow, stock/tiller, lock
    • Material-based: glassfibre, wood, steel, horn, sinew, linen
    • Language-based: english, russian, german
    • Technology-based: compound, recurve, straightbow
    • Other: backup (for backing up pages tagged with this)

    The example page (above) is tagged with some of these. If you click on any of the tags after "Category:", you'll see a page where all pages in the same category are listed. Those per-category pages will become very useful as the amount of (tagged) wiki articles grows. What do you think? Is something essential missing?

    Ivo: is it possible to tag/categorize forum threads, too? That would help find content here, too.

    Samuli
    basileus
    basileus
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    Post by basileus Sat Mar 19, 2011 9:30 am

    Hi everyone,

    I added hierarchy to the wiki categories. For example, the "Woodworking" category page now belong to the "Techniques" category, as do "Welding" and "Forging". Similarly, the "English" category page belongs to "Language" category. This allows grouping categories logically, so that it's obvious what each category title means. It also helps finding information and correct categories from the Wiki. For example, to find out which languages have (so far) been used in the Wiki articles:

    • http://crossbow.wikia.com/wiki/Category:Language

    If we click on the "English" link, we get a list of English-language pages:

    • http://crossbow.wikia.com/wiki/Category:English

    To view all categories that have been added, we can use

    • http://crossbow.wikia.com/wiki/Special:AllPages/Category:

    If you're unsure which categories to use, feel free not to add them. Others can easily add categories to your pages. The most important thing is to add more content there.

    I also added a few new categories, Practical and Theoretical.
    basileus
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    Post by basileus Sat Mar 19, 2011 9:42 am

    Added a category hierarchy page which lists all categories (and articles that belong to them) hierarchically using the CategoryTree extension. The list itself is here.


    Last edited by basileus on Sat Mar 19, 2011 10:08 am; edited 1 time in total (Reason for editing : Updated information)
    Ivo
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    Post by Ivo Sat Mar 19, 2011 9:29 pm

    Cool developments basileus!

    basileus wrote:

    Ivo: is it possible to tag/categorize forum threads, too? That would help find content here, too.

    Samuli

    I tried something similar once on here. It was a built-in feature that
    works terribly...in a sense that it categorizes everything automatically
    and not only from our forum, but from all other forums ON THE
    NET...which is crazy, so I turned it off.

    The only way I can think of is manually adding topics to categories and
    organizing them in a format similar to Wiki...inside a separate topic which is how I initially pictured it.

    So...I don't exactly have an idea how to tag topics other than they are automatically tagged by being placed into an appropriate forum with a proper title. People occasionally fail to keep in mind that other people may be searching for the same exact thing, but will not find it because of the vague "new guy needs help" or similar topic titles given.

    I may have misunderstood your question, so let me know. Also I can offer you access to the admin panel, so you can have a look yourself if you're interested.


    I've written to the Russian guys, but it seems there is much work to do before they can write to the wiki. As I understand the language categories(say Russian, English, French) can all have copies of an existing article only some in translated form with a link to the original. Like on an English article we would have a link "View article in Russian" or something along the lines.
    basileus
    basileus
    Crossbow Building Wiki
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    Post by basileus Sun Mar 20, 2011 5:33 am

    Ivo wrote:
    I tried something similar once on here. It was a built-in feature that
    works terribly...in a sense that it categorizes everything automatically
    and not only from our forum, but from all other forums ON THE
    NET...which is crazy, so I turned it off.

    Hmm, interesting Smile. It's probably best to keep tagging turned off.


    So...I don't exactly have an idea how to tag topics other than they are automatically tagged by being placed into an appropriate forum with a proper title. People occasionally fail to keep in mind that other people may be searching for the same exact thing, but will not find it because of the vague "new guy needs help" or similar topic titles given.

    Yeah, that's exactly the problem I was thinking about. There's lots of useful stuff here, but it's difficult to find it. The Wiki will be much better in this regard, especially if we maintain a useful set of categories/tags.


    I've written to the Russian guys, but it seems there is much work to do before they can write to the wiki. As I understand the language categories(say Russian, English, French) can all have copies of an existing article only some in translated form with a link to the original. Like on an English article we would have a link "View article in Russian" or something along the lines.

    I'll look into the Wiki page language issues. It seems possible to have multilingual pages - or more correctly translations of existing pages. See the "Translations by language" menu on top of that page.

    Btw. I migrated some of my pages to the Wiki today. I'll have to look into redirecting traffic (and google bots) from my pages to the Wiki when I'm finished. My pages are visible on Google searches. For example, if you google for "making crossbows", you'll find my article as 10th link. If you try "designing crossbows", it's on first place. Same with "making bow irons". In any case, that traffic redirection should forward lots of people to the Wiki, and from there to these forums.
    basileus
    basileus
    Crossbow Building Wiki
    Founder & Curator
    Crossbow Building WikiFounder & Curator


    Posts : 86
    Join date : 2010-06-18

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    Post by basileus Mon Mar 21, 2011 12:06 pm

    Moved more of my stuff to the Wiki. I also added 301 ("Moved permanently") HTTP redirects to my migrated pages. You can try the redirect yourself by clicking on the links on my pages. This automatic redirecting means Google searches should very soon start showing Wiki links instead of links to my pages. I also added a "Plans" category for those articles which contain crossbow/crossbow component plans (e.g. CAD-drawings). Some of the categories may be redundant; for example, "Material" and it's subcategories, given that there's already "Technique" category, which contains things like "Woodworking", "Forging", "Welding", etc.
    Ivo
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    Post by Ivo Mon Feb 13, 2012 1:49 pm

    Hey Basileus,

    I've been trying to add some material to the Wiki, but the layout is like a meat grinder - very nicely designed, but I would think twice about sticking my head in there. Laughing

    If it's ever to be user friendly, it needs to be redesigned dramatically.

    Lets talk about it.

    Ivo
    basileus
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    Posts : 86
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    Post by basileus Tue Feb 14, 2012 8:24 am

    Hi Ivo,

    Ok, I see what's the issue. It seems that "Crossbow Trigger Design" page which you(?) added is a
    s.c. category page although a normal page should suffice. The category pages
    should (in general) only contain an explanation of the category, not any
    real content. I can move your page to non-category page and add
    it to appropriate categories.

    I think categories are best thought of as tags.
    They make finding relevant pages very easy, compared to static links to
    individual articles. This becomes increasingly important as number of
    pages on the Wiki increases. I've tried to keep the main page free of
    links to individual articles to keep things tidy. At the moment, the
    best way to browse the Wiki is to use one of these:


    • http://crossbow.wikia.com/wiki/Special:AllPages
    • http://crossbow.wikia.com/wiki/Special:AllPages/Category:
    • http://crossbow.wikia.com/wiki/Category_hierarchy


    These
    could be renamed if they're confusing (e.g. to "View pages by
    category"). This said, direct links to the most important Wiki articles
    may make sense. Using categories gives a couple of main benefits:

    • All page listings are updated without human intervention
    • It's very easy to find relevant information (e.g. all articles on crossbow triggers, modern crossbow or fiberglass)

    When
    you add a new page, you don't (normally) need to add any new category
    pages to the Wiki. You can just click on "Add new page", add the textual
    content and then add the page to (existing) categories from the right
    hand side of the editor.

    The list of categories each page is
    attached to is shown at the bottom of the page
    below "Read more" links. In practice, most pages are only attached to a
    few (2-3) categories (e.g. "English", "Practical", "Bow"). Pages can be
    attached to categories afterwards, too, without opening the page
    editor. If any categories are needed, they can be added fairly easily.
    Combinations of even fairly generic categories are surprisingly
    powerful.

    Please bug me if you have further issues
    using the Wiki... I'm so marinated in these things I don't see the
    usability issues at all.

    And thanks for the article, Ivo!

    Basileus

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