Return of the ES wiki!

neptronix

Administrator
Staff member
Joined
Jun 15, 2010
Messages
17,525
Location
Utah, USA
Hey all.

Kauaicycler brought up the idea of bringing the wiki system back, and has been in the research phase for much better software.
Just wanted to let you know that this is in the works. And we have some candidate software that will hopefully be behaved better than MediaWiki, and also much easier to use from a viewer and writer perspective.

I found out today that i still have multiple copies of the old wiki, each one in a different state of corruption or issues. Some of it may be able to be imported into said new format. We will find out if this is imported later.

Just wanted to let you know!
 
Recently i have discovered some good techniques for slicing and dicing HTML and making another webpage pretend to live inside another.

A minimum feature of the ES wiki and forum integration will now be that selected sticky posts' internal content can be a wiki article, displayed in the format of the forum, so the content isn't on 'another site'.

Of course, if you hit edit, you should get shuttled into the wiki system proper.
But maybe i can house that into the forum system as well.

So basically the wiki won't be a separate site, it will effectively be part of the forum. I'm hoping that people utilize version 2.0 a lot more than they utilized version 1.0.
 
neptronix said:
I'm hoping that people utilize version 2.0 a lot more than they utilized version 1.0.


I'm not sure why, but I've always had fits trying to find the wiki posts. Apparently, I go brain dead trying to find the old post with the original listing of Bafang mid-drive OEM lubrication products. Apparently, I'm terminally inane?
 
The wikimedia engine we used to use had extremely poor organization by default..
Not fun to browse, and certainly not fun to edit. No surprise to hear you had a hard time referencing an article.

Also, we ended up running two sites with duplicate information.. it ended up being an avenue for a very small number of contributors.

I think that ultimately, 100% of our functionality should be very easy and rewarding to use. Neither wikimedia nor phpbb fit that definition.

The new software, WikiJS seems to be much improved and under very active development; i'm pretty confident it'll work out; if not, there are two other routes to implement this:

1) ES uses my currently in-development knowledge base software: "nerdpress".
2) Xenforo gets features loosely hacked into it so that behaves differently when operating on articles marked as a wiki article.
 
It would be great if we could highlight and select part of a post as a reply. See elelectricbikereview as an example of how I can select a part of a post in a reply. I’m clumsily describing that function…
 
tomjasz said:
neptronix said:
I'm hoping that people utilize version 2.0 a lot more than they utilized version 1.0.


I'm not sure why, but I've always had fits trying to find the wiki posts. Apparently, I go brain dead trying to find the old post with the original listing of Bafang mid-drive OEM lubrication products. Apparently, I'm terminally inane?

I wrote the Bafang lubrication article in question. Happy to go back over it but.. super embarrassing - I've been away for a while and I cannot for the life of me remember how to get back to the wiki :(
Its not in the FAQs and the search function is sending me to unfamiliar looking sites...
Help?
 
I believe the wiki is down. I messaged the webmaster but no response yet.

Lurkin said:
tomjasz said:
neptronix said:
I'm hoping that people utilize version 2.0 a lot more than they utilized version 1.0.


I'm not sure why, but I've always had fits trying to find the wiki posts. Apparently, I go brain dead trying to find the old post with the original listing of Bafang mid-drive OEM lubrication products. Apparently, I'm terminally inane?

I wrote the Bafang lubrication article in question. Happy to go back over it but.. super embarrassing - I've been away for a while and I cannot for the life of me remember how to get back to the wiki :(
Its not in the FAQs and the search function is sending me to unfamiliar looking sites...
Help?
 
The wiki has been down for >5 years and has been un-hosteable due to severe performance/DDOS issues, stemming from the software design. It also has a form of database corruption.

It's a big pain in the ass basically.

Wiki.js does have an import feature.

Let me talk with Mr Kahuna and see if he can get started on the revival project soon. I really wouldn't like to tinker with the mediawiki software platform ever again, even to just get one article out of it.
 
neptronix said:
The wiki has been down for >5 years and has been un-hosteable due to severe performance/DDOS issues, stemming from the software design. It also has a form of database corruption.

It's a big pain in the ass basically.

Wiki.js does have an import feature.

Let me talk with Mr Kahuna and see if he can get started on the revival project soon. I really wouldn't like to tinker with the mediawiki software platform ever again, even to just get one article out of it.

I'm happy to help. I replied on discord with some questions.
 
Did anyone copy and save the mid drive section of the wiki?
 
Should be in the backups ^_^

Unfortunately web.archive.org does not have a copy.
 
This is the new wiki site that we are looking at using. I've created a provisioning repository for it here and installed it on one of the es dev machines for neptronix to look at. Wiki.js looks awesome and is open source so anyone can install it. This video walks through the installation, setup and features of wiki.js

[youtube]Dd8_plibBYk[/youtube]
 
Mr Kahuna donated us a pre-rolled config in case we need to reinstall it. pretty cool.

I'm going to be "dogfooding" wiki.js on a small scale. I'm interested in it from a server administration and documentation aspect. Me and Kahuna will tinker with it to see if we can give it our seal of approval for use as the new ES wiki.

Should have results in maybe a week or two? something like that?

If we hit a wall with it, i have a half-done knowledgebase engine that i bet a lot of you would like using. It's a couple features away from being suitable for use on ES, and would integrate into Xenforo even easier than wiki.js could. Just add code, lol.

One way or another, we'll end up with a wiki. Fingers crossed that wiki.js is as good as everyone says it is :es:
 
kauaicycler said:
This is the new wiki site that we are looking at using. I've created a provisioning repository for it here and installed it on one of the es dev machines for neptronix to look at. Wiki.js looks awesome and is open source so anyone can install it. This video walks through the installation, setup and features of wiki.js
Thank you! Many times over!
 
After trying to dogfood wiki.js, i have a couple of pretty big concerns about it.. it has some noticeable design warts.. an unnecessary learning curve.. and looked a lot more impressive than it actually is. :confused:

I'm wondering if i can get any former mediawiki contributor to check out my tester and give me their opinion on whether this system is better or not, in terms of content creation.

Until i get that feedback, i can't give a gold stamp to wiki.js just yet.

We're going to go back to the drawing board because there is another option on the table that needs to be explored.wiki.js was not a slam dunk like Xenforo was.
 
Talked to Mr Kahuna a bit more, i think we are going to pull of some custom software out of our hats collectively for the ES wiki, because of the oddball learning curve

I have some existing software that is so easy and fast to pick up and use that it requires no training manual like wiki.js has. Zero learning curve. just lacks some features that would make it work well for ES.

It also has zero concerns about security or scaling because it was written more like a 64k code competition by a paranoid server admin than it was like wordpress or the wikimedia engine.

Here's where it's at. A basic CMS using CKeditor with easy image uploading and some math input functions. Currently being used at two small businesses who are happy it it.

knowbase.png

Below is a mockup of the future vision for the tool. We need a hierarchy for structured browsing/editing. We also need to ditch the single user system, and a couple other structural changes.

knowbase-2.0 mockup.png

I'm also very inspired by the idea of creating an internet version of apple note. This design is subject to change, because i'd like my design to bend in the direction of being not just a tool, but an awesome one. And it's not hard to do a lot better than the existing software out there. :thumb:
 
We've decided to start building the new knowledgebase system and we are calling it nerdpress.

nerdpress-2.png
nerdpress-3.png

More to come.
 
Yeah, that's it's 'good enough for now' name. :)
 
That's kind of a good name :)
I don't want to decide yet.. i think the tool should be named after it's true nature and maybe nerdpress isn't it, but it is a fun analogy for software that makes doing nerdy things easier and more fun.

Here's a work in progress. We have the start of hierarchical browsing/storing, and we've updated to ckeditor 5, which allows for even more content types than we planned, such as a way to include youtube videos easier than we can on the forum! :bigthumb:

nerdpress cke5.png

Some aspects of the design could use a tidying up, but it's a WIP, please forgive it. :mrgreen:
Kudos to Mr Kahuna for the upgrade work :bolt:
 
I really love the idea of making the vast amount of information in ES more accessible. A wiki approach seems to have great potential, and I think "Nerdpress" is terriffic because of its literal accuracy, and also has the additional irony/humor element that I love about all things open source and techy/disruptive.

I know that all the great things in life involve compromise, so I'm curious where you guys are on the 'store the content vs. link-to-it' spectrum. While storing it (assuming one get's past IP ownership issues) seems ideal over the long run, storage space still has some cost. Linking to information harnesses the true power of networking, but -- as we all know too well -- links die over time, and provide their own housekeeping challenges.

I'm grateful for all the work and creative energy you guys are bringing to this project!
 
Glad you're liking what you're seeing so far ^_^

I love the idea of making things accessible too. This is our answer to the long term 'sticky posts' maintenance issue for starters. Also, it will make maintaining 'forum sticky posts' a multiplayer affair instead of a single player mission, and also it won't require moderator/admin privileges and therefore a trust level from the forum. It solves a lot of problems.


Let's talk storage.

I finished my 'after the fact' operating system-wide image optimizer last year ( built at first for PHPBB ), which uses 'brute force image encoding' so that people can upload an image of an arbitrary dimensions/megabytes and have it automatically shrunk to a rational size and quality regardless of what application it came in from, without them noticing.

It's essentially the same piece of technology facebook uses, but it's agnostic as to what application you point it at, and it also checks it's output for validity and a difference in size.

Because of this we can store everything but video, and store it as a rule. Say, if you put an external link into nerdpress ( creating a 'content dependency' ), it could even cache that image and store it itself.

BTW, Xenforo will be able to store and use a copy of uploaded content, and also take an image/file upload just as easy as nerdpress.

BTW2, nerdpress will ultimately be skinned to look like the forum and will act/feel like it's part of the forum. The idea is to have it pretend to be integrated into the system so that from the user view, it just acts like part of the forum. That's the goal.
 
Hey all.
We cannot secure funding to keep developing nerdpress right now and have to find a way to fund completion of V1.0.

What i'm wondering is if the community will fund the 'to V1.0' buildout if i can show a demo of v0.8 in action and demonstrate the value. I will fund the v0.8 buildout myself ( i want to use nerdpress myself ), but at a much slower rate than we've been moving.

To get the features ES needs ( granular access control ), we need to throw about $2000/mo into programmer labor into the project for 2-3 months.

I was wondering if the community would be interested in chipping in so that we can get this software done and working for ES.
If so, i will set up a patreon account, working demo on where it's at now, reports on what the money is being spent on, and a separate website for the project and put the ES community forever as a top level sponsor.

This would require 200 people chipping in $10 for a few months, or one large donation.

Nerdpress would live on after ES and be continually improved by remaining donationware and getting use/funding from the rest of the world. Essentially it would be funded just like Blender and Linux are.

LMK what you think.
 
Back
Top