Author Topic: [Old] Keepers of the Faith Mission Statement - GH Wiki  (Read 240684 times)

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Offline CPTBadAss

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[Old] Keepers of the Faith Mission Statement - GH Wiki
« on: Wed, 09 October 2013, 18:52:22 »
Mkawa was nice enough to give us a lovely introduction but it seems that we haven't been too clear in our purpose. Every so often, I see people asking about the state of the Wiki and wanting to add something to it. I wanted to put somewhere clearly what the Keepers are here for and how you can help us.

So what we do know:

A) The mediaWiki is going away. It just hasn't worked for our community.
  • I am the author of the Clack Wiki article and, from personal experience, it was a colossal pain to learn Wiki-code. In the time I spent on that article, I probably could've banged out two or three reviews in bbcode. People also seemed turned off from the fact that you need a special account to work on the current Wiki. I know there might be backlash against getting rid of it but the fact is, there are very little people who want to step up to help even though its very easy to get a Wiki account. Also, there is little point in trying to recreate the Deskthority Wiki which is very comprehensive already.

B) The new Wiki will look something like this:

  • It will be a separate tab but look like a sub-forum, with articles setup the way we're used to.

C) We are waiting for more information, just like everyone else here.
  • I've been trying to share the information I have here and there. But until I get more word from Mkawa, rknize, and the mods, this is all I know. I will post more information as I get it.

D) We are going to start projects in the mean time
  • More info further down

What the Keepers will do once the new Wiki is up:

1) Help gather and sort information
  • The community has tons of information spewed everywhere. Even our (or my) attempts at compiling this information such as the Simple Questions Simple Answers thread and Clack Wiki, are a bit clumsy. With a dedicated team and help from everyone, this can be easier

2) Create concrete goals
  • Instead having things mentioned off hand, we're going to take suggestions, and make concrete goals. Instead of just saying "I wish I knew what colors the keycaps are", we can refine this statement to say "There will be an article that has pictures of keycap sets".

3) Curate the new Wiki
  • Instead of having a fight over which mod is really a "Ghetto Purple", we can put it down that we generally agree that "Blah Stem + Meh Spring = Ghetto Purple". In that way, we have a foundation to work from in both terminology and in our heads. Which information will stay and which won't? The Keepers will keep track. Right or wrong, we'll have an agreement that we can work with or know that we have to fix.

What the community will do once the new Wiki is up:

Help us with the new Wiki. Post your ideas/comments/concerns in this thread. Help us help you.

  • We want your input, your time in helping us hunt information down, your comments, feedback, ideas, criticism. This is for the community, by the community. Just because you don't have a book next to your name doesn't mean you're not valuable and can't help.

Keepers, please let me know if there is anything you would like to add or change in this OP.

Oh and most of the projects we work on will be posted here since we have mod privileges so the team can edit posts. And just for transparency, there is a private Keepers subforum where we talk about business related to the team, and we have mod rights in Making Stuff Together and Post Wiki Workshop. I personally (CPTBadAss) have global mod rights throughout GeekHack, as of 11/3/13, so that I can move information without bugging the mod/admin team. They will be informed when I do edit things and I will let everyone, both on the Keepers team and on GH, know when I do this.
« Last Edit: Fri, 06 July 2018, 12:34:11 by Photoelectric »

Offline CPTBadAss

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Re: Keepers of the Faith Mission Statement
« Reply #1 on: Wed, 09 October 2013, 18:52:32 »

Projects we are currently working on:

1) Organizing the Living Soldering Thread and How to Lube Cherry MX switches threads

OP from the Keepers private subforum:
More
So I was bugging Mkawa about some soldering tips and we both realized that the Living Soldering Thread as well as the Cherry MX Lube Guide need some serious organization. Ideally, they should be a go-to guide on how to solder and lube. I think Photoelectric's Paint Thread or my own Simple Questions Simple Answers thread would be good examples.


2) Creating a centrailized list of keycap set colors
Please check it out and help.

OP from the Keepers private subforum:
More
The people ask, we deliver.

We create a pictoral list of keycap sets, colors, and manufacturer. The OP has some info like pictures of the Xrite color checker (for monitor calibration), Dianoda's color ring pictures, SP's color codes, and explanation of legends/fonts. Then the entries look something like:



Name: Raindrop
Manufacturer: Signature Plastics
Material: ABS Plastic; Two-Shot Injection Molded (double shot)
Profile: DCS
Font: WYSE
Legends: 7Bit and Custom
Colors: White (WFK) and Blue (BFP)

And of course, Krogenar's helpful post found here.

3) GH Glossary
BlueBär created this Glossary to help understanding with all the abbreviations used on the site.

4) Open Source File/Resource Library
Photekq started this thread to help aggregate information pertaining to things like CAD, case design, etc. Threads that are related to this and will be folded include the GH CAD Resources Hub.

5) Switch Dampener Info Thread
I created this thread to aggregate information about soft landing pads and o-rings.

6) All Keycaps Site List
Quardah created this thread to aggregate any and all websites that sell keycaps that don't include the general GH classfieds.

7) Active Groupbuys List
This is a thread that shows all active GBs on Geekhack.
« Last Edit: Sun, 18 May 2014, 02:45:01 by CPTBadAss »

Offline CPTBadAss

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Re: Keepers of the Faith Mission Statement
« Reply #2 on: Wed, 09 October 2013, 18:52:41 »
Suggested Additions to the new Wiki

Have an idea? You should post in this thread and we'll add suggestions here!
« Last Edit: Wed, 09 October 2013, 19:06:14 by CPTBadAss »

Offline CPTBadAss

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Re: Keepers of the Faith Mission Statement
« Reply #3 on: Wed, 09 October 2013, 18:52:51 »
And Just in case

Offline lcs

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Re: Keepers of the Faith Mission Statement
« Reply #4 on: Wed, 09 October 2013, 21:01:03 »
I would like some stupid compilations:

  • Custom cases: everybody who has one / sells one for the edox, phantom, etc. I like seeing those
  • Novelty caps: it's kinda hard to find all of them in just one place, especially those from GBs

That's it. :)

Offline swill

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Re: Keepers of the Faith Mission Statement
« Reply #5 on: Wed, 09 October 2013, 22:38:25 »
It would be nice to have a compilation of GH projects.  Some that come to mind are:
  • GH60
  • GHpad
  • Phantom
  • Epsilon
  • Controllers
  • Keymap tools
  • custom cases
  • etc...

Some of these projects are extremely cool and by centralizing some of the knowledge from them it will help lower the bar for people to try new projects.

Offline CPTBadAss

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Re: Keepers of the Faith Mission Statement
« Reply #6 on: Thu, 10 October 2013, 07:30:28 »
Can you better define "GH Projects"? For example, the Phantom was a collaboration between DT and GH. You're looking for a list of custom keyboard projects?

To me, the only GH specific projects are GH60 and the GHPad. In my eyes, things like the Epsilon, TEK-80, and Longcat board are personal projects.
« Last Edit: Thu, 10 October 2013, 07:35:41 by CPTBadAss »

Offline swill

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Re: Keepers of the Faith Mission Statement
« Reply #7 on: Thu, 10 October 2013, 10:16:34 »
Can you better define "GH Projects"? For example, the Phantom was a collaboration between DT and GH. You're looking for a list of custom keyboard projects?

To me, the only GH specific projects are GH60 and the GHPad. In my eyes, things like the Epsilon, TEK-80, and Longcat board are personal projects.

Thats fair.  The reason I was considering the others as well is because there are some good take aways from some of the other projects.  For example, the key map code that came out of the Epsilon project.

Offline JPG

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Re: Keepers of the Faith Mission Statement
« Reply #8 on: Thu, 10 October 2013, 10:21:55 »
I would like to see a centralized reference on how to design/build a keyboard, from how pcb works, how to design a pcb, how to use/design/implement a controller and references to existing controllers/converters.

Same things on designing a case, layout, etc.

Most of the information is there, but not regrouped/structured.
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Offline Tym

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Re: Keepers of the Faith Mission Statement
« Reply #9 on: Thu, 10 October 2013, 10:24:00 »
Can you stick to a singular image size please :D Its so annoying to look at mega pictures followed by tiny ones  :-*
unless they have some unforeseeable downside (like they're actually made of cream cheese cunningly disguised as ABS)


Offline CPTBadAss

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Re: Keepers of the Faith Mission Statement
« Reply #10 on: Thu, 10 October 2013, 11:24:47 »
Can you stick to a singular image size please :D Its so annoying to look at mega pictures followed by tiny ones  :-*

For the Wiki? Where are you referring to?

Offline Tym

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Re: Keepers of the Faith Mission Statement
« Reply #11 on: Thu, 10 October 2013, 11:38:24 »
Just in general :)

Not having a go,  things look better when they are uniform
unless they have some unforeseeable downside (like they're actually made of cream cheese cunningly disguised as ABS)


Offline CPTBadAss

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Re: Keepers of the Faith Mission Statement
« Reply #12 on: Thu, 10 October 2013, 11:41:45 »
Sure. I have the same thing. I don't like non uniform pictures. Takes a bit of time to figure out though.

Offline SpAmRaY

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Re: Keepers of the Faith Mission Statement
« Reply #13 on: Thu, 10 October 2013, 11:44:24 »
Sure. I have the same thing. I don't like non uniform pictures. Takes a bit of time to figure out though.

Sort of on topic, is there a thread that highlights posting pics properly? Perhaps highlighting how to size them....I think I saw it here...or perhaps it was another forum....

Offline CPTBadAss

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Re: Keepers of the Faith Mission Statement
« Reply #14 on: Thu, 10 October 2013, 11:49:26 »
It's not here. To set an inline image to a width you like try this:

Code: [Select]
[img width=<yourpixelwidthhere>]<yoururlhere>[/img]
[img height=<yourpixelheighthere>]<yoururlhere>[/img]

So if I borrow jdcarpe's avatar:


Avatar set at height = 200


Avatar set at height = 400

If you want to learn more about bbcode, I highly recommend reading this bbcode guide from TeamLiquid.
« Last Edit: Fri, 11 October 2013, 12:16:14 by CPTBadAss »

Offline metalliqaz

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Re: Keepers of the Faith Mission Statement
« Reply #15 on: Thu, 10 October 2013, 23:00:00 »
There should be a wiki page for every single keyboard.  Every one we know about.  Current models, customs, vintage, etc.  Seriously, it wouldn't be that hard.  A hackathon would probably be needed to get it started, but I see no reason why that shouldn't happen.

Offline rowdy

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Re: Keepers of the Faith Mission Statement
« Reply #16 on: Thu, 10 October 2013, 23:52:02 »
There should be a wiki page for every single keyboard.  Every one we know about.  Current models, customs, vintage, etc.  Seriously, it wouldn't be that hard.  A hackathon would probably be needed to get it started, but I see no reason why that shouldn't happen.

The main thing to organise is to make is easily searchable, so that you can quickly determine whether your particular keyboard is in the list or not.
"Because keyboards are accessories to PC makers, they focus on minimizing the manufacturing costs. But that’s incorrect. It’s in HHKB’s slogan, but when America’s cowboys were in the middle of a trip and their horse died, they would leave the horse there. But even if they were in the middle of a desert, they would take their saddle with them. The horse was a consumable good, but the saddle was an interface that their bodies had gotten used to. In the same vein, PCs are consumable goods, while keyboards are important interfaces." - Eiiti Wada

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Offline metalliqaz

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Re: Keepers of the Faith Mission Statement
« Reply #17 on: Fri, 11 October 2013, 09:22:54 »
There should be a wiki page for every single keyboard.  Every one we know about.  Current models, customs, vintage, etc.  Seriously, it wouldn't be that hard.  A hackathon would probably be needed to get it started, but I see no reason why that shouldn't happen.

The main thing to organise is to make is easily searchable, so that you can quickly determine whether your particular keyboard is in the list or not.

Which is why I don't understand why the wiki concept was abandoned.

The way to do it is to made it cross referenced.  Listed by brand (Filco, IBM), type (terminal, PC), switch family (MX, Topre), year, category (Custom, Vintage, modern)

It's easy to specify those things, and that should filter the list down to a handful that will make it obvious if the keyboard has been recorded or not.  Really this is database stuff.  It could benefit from a custom setup using a spreadsheet or perhaps even SQL
« Last Edit: Fri, 11 October 2013, 09:28:55 by metalliqaz »

Offline CPTBadAss

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Re: Keepers of the Faith Mission Statement
« Reply #18 on: Fri, 11 October 2013, 09:26:30 »
There was barely any contribution to the mediaWiki and even now there isn't any. It seems that now that it's going away is anyone interested in contributing to it. It hasn't worked for the community.

You're more than welcome to grab an account right now and start proving that the mediaWiki is viable. Samwisekoi can hook you up if you PM him.
« Last Edit: Fri, 11 October 2013, 09:31:02 by CPTBadAss »

Offline metalliqaz

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Re: Keepers of the Faith Mission Statement
« Reply #19 on: Fri, 11 October 2013, 09:34:07 »
I actually did try it at one point.  Somewhere in my post history there is a message where I asked why I was denied an account on the wiki.  I don't think it was ever answered.

oh, here it is: http://geekhack.org/index.php?topic=36143.msg676658#msg676658
« Last Edit: Fri, 11 October 2013, 09:36:31 by metalliqaz »

Offline CPTBadAss

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Re: Keepers of the Faith Mission Statement
« Reply #20 on: Fri, 11 October 2013, 09:38:07 »
Try asking the mods again? I was given an account maybe 6 months ago and it was relatively pain free.

Offline metalliqaz

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Re: Keepers of the Faith Mission Statement
« Reply #21 on: Fri, 11 October 2013, 10:11:55 »
I guess my point was that it was doomed to fail.  As kawa said, "it is necessarily obtuse for now."  In that sense I understand the move to the forum, where it takes literally zero effort for existing users to get started.  It just isn't as good for storing data of an encyclopedic nature.

Offline xavierblak

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Re: Keepers of the Faith Mission Statement
« Reply #22 on: Fri, 11 October 2013, 11:50:46 »
I agree with the thought that the wiki shouldn't be abandoned. Threads are great for getting a bunch of raw information at the start. But once that data is compiled and will likely only need to be tweaked or have entries updated as we go a wiki make sense.

I think the wiki could be updated in much the same fashion as the Keycap Color thread. With a call for information thread and then an editor to clean it up once it's all collected.

Offline jdcarpe

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Re: Keepers of the Faith Mission Statement
« Reply #23 on: Fri, 11 October 2013, 12:14:23 »
It's not here. To set an inline image to a width you like try this:

Code: [Select]
[img width=<yourpixelwidthhere>]<yoururlhere>[/img]
[img height=<yourpixelheighthere>]<yoururlhere>[/img]

So if I borrow jdcarpe's avatar:

Show Image

Avatar set at height = 200

Show Image

Avatar set at height = 400

If you want to learn more about bbcode, I highly recommend reading this bbcode guide from TeamLiquid.


I broke your post with my new avatar. :(
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Offline CPTBadAss

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Re: Keepers of the Faith Mission Statement
« Reply #24 on: Fri, 11 October 2013, 12:32:38 »
Fixed it jdcarpe :P

And as far as I know, the mods/admins have concluded the mediaWiki doesn't work for our community. Which is why the Keepers were created to port the format to a forum-esque format.

For me personally? I agree that the Wiki as it stands isn't working. I hate editing the Wiki and so has anyone who has offered to help me in the past. Smallfry refused to work in the Clack Wiki and would ask me to make the updates because the code is frustrating to learn. As a volunteer, I'd rather not spend two hours of my spare time making a picture box work (which yes, I really did) when I can pound out a huge update to a regular forum thread. A Wiki might be way better at organizing but the learning curve for people helping is much higher, like Metalliqaz said.

If people really want, I can talk to mkawa when I see him and rknize to see what their thoughts are on keeping the mediaWiki. But like I said as far as I know, it's going away.


Offline jdcarpe

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Re: Keepers of the Faith Mission Statement
« Reply #25 on: Fri, 11 October 2013, 13:40:32 »
What about just having a separate subforum for wiki posts, and each entry would be a single-post thread. Either lock the thread, so that no one can post comments, or make that subforum read-only except for Keepers. Things can be organized by thread (post), and the subforum links to the threads would act as the TOC.
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Offline CPTBadAss

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Re: Keepers of the Faith Mission Statement
« Reply #26 on: Fri, 11 October 2013, 13:44:15 »
What about just having a separate subforum for wiki posts, and each entry would be a single-post thread.

That's what's going to happen as I understand it. If there are old timers here, it's going to be setup like the Old GH Wiki. Or if you're familiar with KBD, it's going to be setup similar to their Tips and Tricks section.

Either lock the thread, so that no one can post comments, or make that subforum read-only except for Keepers. Things can be organized by thread (post), and the subforum links to the threads would act as the TOC.

I like the idea of locking threads and then having a thread/post/link that acts as a Table of Contents.

Offline Krogenar

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Re: Keepers of the Faith Mission Statement
« Reply #27 on: Fri, 11 October 2013, 13:59:58 »
Santa,

I am happy to report that I was good for the first quarter and most of the second this year, and overall goodness returns appear to be trending upwards again! Here's what I want for a GH bbcode wiki-ish Christmas:

1. How awesome would it be (if it's even possible, not getting my hopes up) to write some forum code such that if someone were to write the phrase:
"OMG I cannot wait for another round of DSA Retro!" The phrase 'DSA Retro' would be auto-magically made into a hyperlink to the DSA Retro entry. The magic would come from all the sacrifices the Keerpers make to their dark gods, but still -- it would be awesome if it were possible.

2. The locked forum posts that represent a wiki-entry -- what about making it so that the 'report' button in those forums instead could be used to report inaccuracies (or objections, whatever) to the Keepers? Instead of reading, "Report to Moderator" it could say "Report to Keeper"?

3. Also, my very own Katy set for my Ducky.

Thanks for listening Santa. Sorry about the Sofia Vergara thing.

-- Krogenar
« Last Edit: Fri, 11 October 2013, 14:01:51 by Krogenar »
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Quote from: Samuel Adams
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Offline SpAmRaY

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Re: Keepers of the Faith Mission Statement
« Reply #28 on: Fri, 11 October 2013, 14:03:36 »
Santa,

I am happy to report that I was good for the first quarter and most of the second this year, and overall goodness returns appear to be trending upwards again! Here's what I want for a GH bbcode wiki-ish Christmas:

1. How awesome would it be (if it's even possible, not getting my hopes up) to write some forum code such that if someone were to write the phrase:
"OMG I cannot wait for another round of DSA Retro!" The phrase 'DSA Retro' would be auto-magically made into a hyperlink to the DSA Retro entry. The magic would come from all the sacrifices the Keerpers make to their dark gods, but still -- it would be awesome if it were possible.

2. The locked forum posts that represent a wiki-entry -- what about making it so that the 'report' button in those forums instead could be used to report inaccuracies (or objections, whatever) to the Keepers? Instead of reading, "Report to Moderator" it could say "Report to Keeper"?

3. Also, my very own Katy set for my Ducky.

Thanks for listening Santa. Sorry about the Sofia Vergara thing.

-- Krogenar

Basically link keywords like some forums do for advertising purposes but for an educational purpose instead!

Offline UniClown

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Re: Keepers of the Faith Mission Statement
« Reply #29 on: Fri, 11 October 2013, 14:10:25 »
I suggest a glossary of keyboard layouts. This is a fairly obvious suggestion, but it is needed given the number of basic posts about it as well as the increasing number of layouts (40%, 65%, 65% + F keys are all examples of relatively newer layouts).

Offline Krogenar

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Re: Keepers of the Faith Mission Statement
« Reply #30 on: Fri, 11 October 2013, 14:17:53 »
Basically link keywords like some forums do for advertising purposes but for an educational purpose instead!

... what? NO! I want to link occurrences of the word "badass" to my profile. Educational purposes... pftt.
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Quote from: Samuel Adams
"If ye love wealth better than liberty, the tranquility of servitude better than the animating contest of freedom, go home from us in peace. We ask not your counsels or your arms. Crouch down and lick the hands which feed you. May your chains set lightly upon you, and may posterity forget that you were our countrymen."

Offline Krogenar

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Re: Keepers of the Faith Mission Statement
« Reply #31 on: Fri, 11 October 2013, 14:28:04 »
I suggest a glossary of keyboard layouts. This is a fairly obvious suggestion, but it is needed given the number of basic posts about it as well as the increasing number of layouts (40%, 65%, 65% + F keys are all examples of relatively newer layouts).

That would be very cool -- all this screams out for a database system, or at least cross-linking. I don't know how difficult it would be to implement something like that.
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Offline CPTBadAss

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Re: Keepers of the Faith Mission Statement
« Reply #32 on: Fri, 11 October 2013, 15:12:40 »
I have no clue about a database and how it would work with SMF. The Keepers and I can create a cross-linked table of contents of sorts. Similar to this one.

I wonder, if we also include a little section/sentence at the end of the OP with phrases like "Bolt Mod" or "keycap color scheme", will it pop up in a Google search? Then when you search by using "site:geekhack.org <yourqueryhere>" in Google, those articles pop up.

Offline MOZ

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Re: Keepers of the Faith Mission Statement
« Reply #33 on: Fri, 11 October 2013, 15:14:39 »
pseudo-tags?

Offline mkawa

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Re: Keepers of the Faith Mission Statement
« Reply #34 on: Fri, 11 October 2013, 16:44:08 »
Fixed it jdcarpe :P

And as far as I know, the mods/admins have concluded the mediaWiki doesn't work for our community. Which is why the Keepers were created to port the format to a forum-esque format.

For me personally? I agree that the Wiki as it stands isn't working. I hate editing the Wiki and so has anyone who has offered to help me in the past. Smallfry refused to work in the Clack Wiki and would ask me to make the updates because the code is frustrating to learn. As a volunteer, I'd rather not spend two hours of my spare time making a picture box work (which yes, I really did) when I can pound out a huge update to a regular forum thread. A Wiki might be way better at organizing but the learning curve for people helping is much higher, like Metalliqaz said.

If people really want, I can talk to mkawa when I see him and rknize to see what their thoughts are on keeping the mediaWiki. But like I said as far as I know, it's going away.


we set up the mediawiki because it just seemed like a good idea at the time and we literally had no idea what we were doing. as it turned out, it was a huge pita to connect to smf, and the mediawiki language is incredibly complex and obscure. as a result, we just don't really have a base of contributors. meanwhile, everyone was filling the forum proper with some of the most amazing information ever to be collected in one place. the amount of brain we have collectively here is amazing, but the mediawiki doesn't do it justice because of the impedance of contributing to it. my initial idea was to solve this with search a la google. so we tried pushing sphinx into place (a very fast keyword searcher but with NO semantic capability) and ripped out the smf search, which is horrible. that made things a little better, but there's still a TON of information buried away in little nooks and crannies, and sometimes the only way to get that stuff out is just by tasking people with doing it. so, i started the keepers, and then rather than make them become these kind of controllers of the information stores by forcing them to use the incredibly obtuse mediawiki, russ started designing a modules that allows people to build knowledgebases INTO the forum rather than aside of the forum.

so that's the basic idea. mediawiki has too high an impedance to contribute, and we saw that by the non-participation in it while participation and information in the forum itself grew exponentially at the same time. our proposed solution is to assign a small group of librarians to help guide information organization, but to democratize the entire process by turning the library language into the forum language itself -- bbcode.

the reason not to leave the mediawiki up anyway is several-fold. first, our new module is going to made iit really easy to move between knowledgebase and active forum. this is strictly superior to the mediawiki. second, much like our informational slash discussion threads are called "the living ... thread", the knowledgebase is going to be a living, breathing thing that will deprecate the mediawiki, which frankly i see suffering a very slow painful death even if we were to leave it up. it's a better use of time now to take that information along with the information in the living breathing forum, turn it into this bridge format that uses bbcode as the common language, and then move forward from there.

sure, that's my .02c, but i've been thinking about this pretty hard for a while. when we launched the mediawiki it was only after quite a bit of nail-biting, and seeing it flounder like this has only confirmed our fears that it was the wrong choice. i'd rather back up and fix things then leave half broken projects everywhere.

to all the brilliant friends who have left us, and all the students who climb on their shoulders.

Offline davkol

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Re: Keepers of the Faith Mission Statement
« Reply #35 on: Sat, 12 October 2013, 17:56:52 »
Isn't there a Markdown plugin for MediaWiki? Or you can always use pandoc to convert Markdown to MediaWiki syntax. I mean, its obscure syntax isn't a dealbreaker in the end.

Offline mkawa

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Re: Keepers of the Faith Mission Statement
« Reply #36 on: Sat, 12 October 2013, 20:48:38 »
there might be, but the plugin architecture for MW is almost as obscure as MW itself. plus MW is ungodly slow and there's still the problem of multiple accounts databases. further, markdown is closer to bbcode but not actual bbcode. i think the correct way forward is to have a near full correspondence and seamless transition between posting on the forum and writing knowledgebase documents.

to all the brilliant friends who have left us, and all the students who climb on their shoulders.

Offline davkol

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Re: Keepers of the Faith Mission Statement
« Reply #37 on: Sun, 13 October 2013, 05:53:20 »
Move the forum to Markdown. Problem solved. ^_^

There's a reason why StackOverflow, GitHub or Reddit use it.

My main issue with BBCode is that it's basically just retarded HTML.

Offline CPTBadAss

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Re: Keepers of the Faith Mission Statement
« Reply #38 on: Sun, 13 October 2013, 08:56:04 »
There's a reason why the forum is on SMF. Mkawa and rknize can explain better than I can though. I'm not sure I can explain well enough why that reason is.

Offline jdcarpe

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Re: Keepers of the Faith Mission Statement
« Reply #39 on: Sun, 13 October 2013, 09:51:20 »
There's a reason why the forum is on SMF. Mkawa and rknize can explain better than I can though. I'm not sure I can explain well enough why that reason is.

Because of our name, we are a target of hacker groups. SMF was the most secure forum option they could find.
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Offline MOZ

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Re: Keepers of the Faith Mission Statement
« Reply #40 on: Sun, 13 October 2013, 10:40:38 »
Hmm, I would disagree on it being the safest, I would put XenForo as the safest.

Offline mkawa

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Re: Keepers of the Faith Mission Statement
« Reply #41 on: Sun, 13 October 2013, 12:22:20 »
Move the forum to Markdown. Problem solved. ^_^

There's a reason why StackOverflow, GitHub or Reddit use it.

My main issue with BBCode is that it's basically just retarded HTML.
my response to this is just way more than i really have time to write right now, but there are many dialects of markdown and the simplest ones are just implicit bbcode. you may think yay that's great but ironically, people are not programmers have no idea how to use it. weird and counter-intuitive, i know, but you just demonstrated that the only forums that have moved to it are ones that programmers use. programmers understand sugar, non-programmers do not is the simple explanation.

anyway, bbcode aka html 1.0, has become the lingua franca of bulletin boards. every board package uses it. it's simple and intuitive and _explicit_. this is why smf also uses it and why people happily use it all day long here. if we suddenly switched them over to to a situation where we're like "NO, ALL THAT STUFF YOU WERE WRITING CAN BE IMPLICITLY ADDED WITH A SINGLE CHARACTER" they'd be like "GUH???".

_explicit_ cues that are extremely simple and constrained are the simplest things in the universe. sure, they're ugly if you have a lot of training in implicit cues, but for most people, bbcode tag it and done.

anyway, you can go ahead and argue markdown vs html 1.0 all you want in OT, but we're using bbcode, because _everyone understands bbcode_, period. hell, if you want something to really rile you up, the simplest markdown dialects are just bbcode where every tag is sugared. BAM, now go argue with people in OT, but not here, because the community itself decided that it preferred bbcode a hell of a long time ago and we're just catching up.


to all the brilliant friends who have left us, and all the students who climb on their shoulders.

Offline davkol

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Re: Keepers of the Faith Mission Statement
« Reply #42 on: Sun, 13 October 2013, 13:12:05 »
I've opened this because wiki often requires different stuff, e.g. definition lists, tables or even footnotes. Markdown Extra (and pandoc) supports this in a quite elegant manner, BBCode not so much, if at all. Moreover, Markdown has excellent support in Emacs, especially table-mode is extremely useful. Ordinary user probably wouldn't bother with that, but I still believe people around GH are mostly skilled with technology... it's a forum about technology after all. Thus, I don't think it's fair to speak like that about users here.

BTW we can probably agree that MediaWiki syntax is awkward, but at same time... I've heard countless times it was one of the reasons behind Wikipedia's success.

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Re: Keepers of the Faith Mission Statement
« Reply #43 on: Sun, 13 October 2013, 13:36:28 »
I've opened this because wiki often requires different stuff, e.g. definition lists, tables or even footnotes. Markdown Extra (and pandoc) supports this in a quite elegant manner, BBCode not so much, if at all. Moreover, Markdown has excellent support in Emacs, especially table-mode is extremely useful. Ordinary user probably wouldn't bother with that, but I still believe people around GH are mostly skilled with technology... it's a forum about technology after all. Thus, I don't think it's fair to speak like that about users here.

I have no idea what any of what you just mentioned is. I don't understand any of the forum differences between Markdown, pandoc, and SMF. I don't know what Emacs is. And unfortunately, I don't have that much free time to figure it all out. It's nice to talk about and wish you could have someone step up and handle all this. But honestly? I've stepped up and I'm not interested in spending *more* of my free time learning coding and forum back code. Bbcode is very nice because it's easy for me to come on and bang out information and contribute. And for as long as I've been here, I've never seen anyone else contribute to the Wiki or even care about it except to talk wistfully about it. I'm not saying I'm the be-all-end-all contributor. I'm just saying that for me, it's nice to just be able to come on for an hour or two, bang out articles and updates, then move on. My time is more efficiently used because there is a lower learning curve. I would happily trade this efficiency for elegance or whatever, even if it means we don't get nice things like a "proper" Wiki.

Offline davkol

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Re: Keepers of the Faith Mission Statement
« Reply #44 on: Sun, 13 October 2013, 14:38:07 »
Markdown is a lightweight markup language just like BBCode and MediaWiki's syntax. It has roots in the long-gone ages when people used simple syntax like *this* and text smileys instead of full blown graphics and HTML—mostly for technical reasons, partly because of netiquette. There are several implementations of Markdown, the most powerful being pandoc and Markdown Extra.

Emacs is a powerful text editor just like Vim. Unlike most 'modern' editors, those support macros, advanced text editing and stuff like scripting. For example, take a look at Emacs' table mode. It make it possible to create good looking tables in plain text with very little effort. Those tables can be used in Markdown documents and exported to plenty of formats using pandoc.

I use extended Markdown to write my thesis, notes in classes, documentation for my projects and even create presentations. I can use just one pandoc call to export the plain text document to HTML, MediaWiki syntax, nice LaTeX template (and then good looking PDF), HTML slides etc. My wiki understands it as well. Once you learn to use these tools, you may experience a great boost in productivity.

Mods, if it's off topic, feel free to move it somewhere else.

Offline mkawa

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Re: Keepers of the Faith Mission Statement
« Reply #45 on: Sun, 13 October 2013, 18:13:09 »
i think it's completely appropriate discussion, but i still find it hilarious that you think we should ask the forum users to write their quick and dirty in-progress worklogs and articles in the same SGML derivative that you used to write your thesis in.

again, bbcode is the language of the forum; everyone who posts here learns it, and it's dead simple, since it's just HTML 1.0 (or 0.1 depending on what your view of the w3c was back in the day) with brackets instead of langle and rangle. it's also strict and ridiculously explicit. now that i've been considering the problem for a while i find _myself_ to have been completely misguided in thinking "sure, let's ask everyone to learn a new weird language for marking up their crap for no particular reason!" at any point in time. to echo clinton ca. 92 "it's the content, stupid". people have content coming out of their ears, and you just want to find the lowest common denominator over plain text to let them do that.

markdown is for people who understand unnatural implicit cues and compile stuff in their head. super ****ing explicit and highly restricted SGML aka HTML1 aka bbcode are for people who just want to post some **** and call it a day. that's it.

to all the brilliant friends who have left us, and all the students who climb on their shoulders.

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Re: Keepers of the Faith Mission Statement
« Reply #46 on: Sun, 13 October 2013, 22:46:53 »
I have build and managed huge forums in the past and they are not as easy to run as you think.

The processing involved to manage the number of topics and who has read what is non-trivial.  The forum software is fast and get the job done.  I would prefer fast to any other feature.

Markdown is alright, but people still have to learn it.  BBCode has worked just fine for longer than any other markup in this field.  MediaWiki markup is painful, that is true, it is harder to learn than Markdown for sure.  The barrier of entry for the majority of people to feel comfortable using it is too high in my opinion.

I don't know who is paying for the servers and dealing with maintenance, but I have to say 'good on ya'.  It is very difficult to manage a community this large and to have the features and hardware to make it run so smoothly. 

Cheers to the keepers, we owe you a drink...

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Re: Keepers of the Faith Mission Statement
« Reply #47 on: Tue, 15 October 2013, 10:14:59 »
I am respectfully requesting Keeper of the Faith membership, so that I might deliver more wretched souls unto Geekhack's dark demesne.

EDIT: Also, the bbcode decision is working. If even a troglodytic mouth-breather like me can make it work, then anyone can do it.
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Quote from: Samuel Adams
"If ye love wealth better than liberty, the tranquility of servitude better than the animating contest of freedom, go home from us in peace. We ask not your counsels or your arms. Crouch down and lick the hands which feed you. May your chains set lightly upon you, and may posterity forget that you were our countrymen."

Offline jdcarpe

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Re: Keepers of the Faith Mission Statement
« Reply #48 on: Tue, 15 October 2013, 10:18:38 »
Also, the bbcode decision is working. If even a troglodytic mouth-breather like jdcarpe can make it work, then anyone can do it.

QFT
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Re: Keepers of the Faith Mission Statement
« Reply #49 on: Tue, 15 October 2013, 10:35:37 »
Also, the bbcode decision is working. If even a troglodytic mouth-breather like jdcarpe can make it work, then anyone can do it.

QFT

We trogs must stick together.

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Quote from: Samuel Adams
"If ye love wealth better than liberty, the tranquility of servitude better than the animating contest of freedom, go home from us in peace. We ask not your counsels or your arms. Crouch down and lick the hands which feed you. May your chains set lightly upon you, and may posterity forget that you were our countrymen."