Providing links -- rather than reprinting info?

Providing links -- rather than reprinting info?
by Disch on 2005-10-24 (#5827)

One of the big things that was deterring me from adding stuff to the wiki was this line on the main page:

Quote:

If you're adding content, please focus on documenting things which aren't already well documented; if it's already documented, just provide a link. A goal of this site is a coherent organization of information already available

I guess I see the point behind this mentality, but at the same time I don't really agree with it.

To me, the wiki seems like it should be a living, all-in-one massive reference. Rather than just a compilation of various links to offsite pages. I mean... if someone just wants a compilation of links to various docs... they'd go to the main nesdev page.

Not to mention you can't make minor corrections/clarifications to pages if the wiki is just linking to some other doc. So that takes away all the flexibility and control of having a wiki.

I don't see the harm in copy/pasting chunks of info from existing docs. If credit is an issue we could tack on a "contributors" or "sources" section at the bottom. In fact the sources section could even link those off-site pages... in addition to having it available for viewing/modification on the wiki.

Imagine doing a search on wikipedia... only to receive links to brittanica and other encyclopedia sites. Makes you kind of wonder what the point is =P

by tepples on 2005-10-24 (#5830)

I agree with Disch's view.

by Quietust on 2005-10-24 (#5833)

Agreed, though it would probably help a lot to upgrade the wiki to proper software such as MediaWiki which can handle advanced features such as templates and categories and tables of contents.

by blargg on 2005-10-24 (#5835)

My idea (when the wiki was made) was to first put together a coherent organization of the material already available, then work on adding new content. I think there is already a lot of good documentation out there, just a lack of organization. One thing I wanted to avoid was a mad rush to quickly transcribe already-existing information, in an attempt to fill the wiki but without regard to overall approach or integration.

It would be a good idea to switch to a different Wiki if we're going to attempt to do it right this time, as this would be a "bottleneck" as far as content goes. I really hope we can discuss the overall plan before jumping in, each with his own idea of how to do things.

Reliability
by Guest on 2005-11-14 (#6571)

Quote:
My idea (when the wiki was made) was to first put together a coherent organization of the material already available, then work on adding new content. I think there is already a lot of good documentation out there, just a lack of organization. One thing I wanted to avoid was a mad rush to quickly transcribe already-existing information, in an attempt to fill the wiki but without regard to overall approach or integration.

Does it work all the time for you?:?

Re: Reliability
by Quietust on 2005-11-14 (#6574)

Anonymous wrote:
Quote:
My idea (when the wiki was made) was to first put together a coherent organization of the material already available, then work on adding new content. I think there is already a lot of good documentation out there, just a lack of organization. One thing I wanted to avoid was a mad rush to quickly transcribe already-existing information, in an attempt to fill the wiki but without regard to overall approach or integration.

Does it work all the time for you?:?

...and THAT was some completely pointless spam. Along with your other 4 junk posts. If you don't have anything useful to say, then go away.

by Memblers on 2005-11-14 (#6586)

Yeah I'm really starting to wonder about this guest, heh.

Educated
by Guest on 2005-12-26 (#7712)

I completly agree....this is actually what my theisis was based upon.

by Quietust on 2005-12-26 (#7714)

And again! What is with these loonies?

by Memblers on 2005-12-27 (#7720)

Quietust wrote:
And again! What is with these loonies?

Seriously, that's what I'm wondering. I just did a google search, and a lot of the other "this is actually what my theisis was based upon" posts had links to stupid casinos in their signature. Looks like we've foiled them here by allowing them to post as guests with no sigs.

by tepples on 2005-12-27 (#7746)

Memblers wrote:
I just did a google search, and a lot of the other "this is actually what my theisis was based upon" posts had links to stupid casinos in their signature. Looks like we've foiled them here by allowing them to post as guests with no sigs.

The other way to foil them is not to let Googlebot and other popular search engine bots' user agents see signatures.

by Memblers on 2005-12-29 (#7827)

tepples wrote:
The other way to foil them is not to let Googlebot and other popular search engine bots' user agents see signatures.

Yep, and I think some people already made some mods that prevent non-logged in users from viewing the member list. I dunno if it's in the normal distribution yet.

On a related note, I had a scare the other day when I looked on the 'who's online now' list and saw about 50 guests "posting a message" all from the same IP. I freaked out, then I looked it up later and found out it was just Google's spider. heheh.

by tepples on 2005-12-29 (#7836)

Memblers wrote:
I think some people already made some mods that prevent non-logged in users from viewing the member list.

I think such mods are a bad idea, as it makes it difficult to discover whether you have already registered on a given board before registering again, especially on boards with strict anti-sockpuppetry rules.

Quote:
On a related note, I had a scare the other day when I looked on the 'who's online now' list and saw about 50 guests "posting a message" all from the same IP. I freaked out, then I looked it up later and found out it was just Google's spider. heheh.

Solution:
robots.txt wrote:
User-agent: *
Deny: /bbs/posting