Should we add a better marketplace or knowledgebase next?
- Thread starter neptronix
- Start date
Knowledge base system with a way to vet experienced members and allow them to collaborate on mtaining the knowledge..
Pictured is a very easy to use knowledgebase system that my company uses internally. The knowledge base for ES would be based on this, and have a WYSIWYG editor that's very easy to use. We would add functions that allow people to comment and rate articles. The integration with ES would be seamless ( no signup needed ).
Pictured is a very easy to use knowledgebase system that my company uses internally. The knowledge base for ES would be based on this, and have a WYSIWYG editor that's very easy to use. We would add functions that allow people to comment and rate articles. The integration with ES would be seamless ( no signup needed ).
DaLanMan
10 kW
Ooh, yes please...
I think I know an extant php system that does a very similar thing if you want the source. I guarantee it is free range and gluten free...
I think I know an extant php system that does a very similar thing if you want the source. I guarantee it is free range and gluten free...
slaphappygamer
100 W
A knowledge base would be great. That gets my vote.
Please PM me about it, but we have some software that, for ES integration purposes, is 75% complete, and was already built partially with ES' needs in mind. I'll at least give it a look!
Sure! I'm for trying everything out. It can always get whacked if we don't find it useful.
RunForTheHills
1 kW
Both sound useful. Personally, I would probably use the knowledge base more than the store. The store may be more trouble than it is worth if you facilitate payments or have to deal with fraudulent transactions for no fees.
I'm pretty sure the store is just a pass through, so it shouldn't be too much of a burden. It would all depend on the products that were promoted.
I don't know what "knowledgebase" means. Isn't that what we already try to do here. It might not be the most direct method to achieve knowledge but you would need to show me what "knowledgebase" specifically means.
I don't know what "knowledgebase" means. Isn't that what we already try to do here. It might not be the most direct method to achieve knowledge but you would need to show me what "knowledgebase" specifically means.
Exactly. It's a pass through. We don't want to handle money.
What i'd like is a reputation system so people can identify the bad and good buyers.
It would help people make educated choices and make online selling here a lot more useful.
I think this would increase the safety factor.
There is some prebuilt software that can do this ( we need to explore that ), but we may build it if we can't bend existing software to meet our requirements.
It's use would be restricted to companies with under ~8 employees. You should be able to filter by the seller's country. We don't want to become a free aliexpress.
Yeah, it's a replacement for the wiki that:
For viewers:
- Is designed for ease of use and ease of finding information above everything else. It has good search and sort, way better than wikipedia's software.
- It's about 4 years old and has been used at 3 companies to great effect.
- Is displayed basically as a tab on this website, making it part of the forum. It will be styled like the forum too.
- Has a commenting / article rating system.
- Has an optional blog-like view so users can see the most recently updated articles, in addition to navigating via the left bar.
- Uses a WYSIWYG editor ( like the box you put a post in ) that is a little more powerful than what we have on the forum. It's closer to MS Word in functionality, so there's lots of options to make very nice looking articles.
- The left navigation menu, when you are in editor mode, works exactly like the windows or mac file explorer. You can rename, drag 'n drop folders, delete items, etc in that menu. This makes categorization extremely easy.
- Supports the complex permissions system Xenforo has ( allows us to approve a certain member as a contributor )
- Doesn't have serious security problems like the wikipedia engine.
- Doesn't have the serious performance problems like the wikipedia engine, it's extremely fast and costs virtually nothing to run.
DaLanMan
10 kW
Will get it off to ya as soon as I can get by the actual office and hit the storage system. I took the secure storage unit offline a few months ago and ::coughs;: forgot to install the wake on command power supply, so it is setting there... not booting...
Brilliant! And conversely (at least as important), identify the bad and good sellers.
How would this be calculated and awarded? Seems like the majority of items listed for sale here on ES are one-time one-offs.
But for sure, an honest reputation system that cannot be gamed would be a very valuable feature!
I said buyers instead of sellers but you got it. In fact it should rate both, just like ebay.
I have some calculations in mind that are top secret but would help with one time sellers.
There would be huge repercussions for trying to game the system and lots of detection for it ( i love writing those kinds of algorithms )
The biggest people would would benefit from it are frequent sellers/buyers. Just getting one reputation point would encourage people to use it more. Right now we have no reputation system at all, which makes the market based on pure trust; we can do better than that.
A lot of people got their ebike business started here in the past. We'd like to make it easier to do that, because getting into ebike business is getting progressively harder.
I have some calculations in mind that are top secret but would help with one time sellers.
There would be huge repercussions for trying to game the system and lots of detection for it ( i love writing those kinds of algorithms )
The biggest people would would benefit from it are frequent sellers/buyers. Just getting one reputation point would encourage people to use it more. Right now we have no reputation system at all, which makes the market based on pure trust; we can do better than that.
A lot of people got their ebike business started here in the past. We'd like to make it easier to do that, because getting into ebike business is getting progressively harder.
offGridDownUnder
1 kW
This is how to vote.
stancecoke
100 kW
- Joined
- Aug 2, 2017
- Messages
- 1,820
We have a Wiki in the German forum. I've written many articles there, but I think no one reads the Wiki. All typical newbie questions are asked and answered again and again in the forum, no one gives the hint to just read the Wiki....
regards
stancecoke
Last edited:
DaLanMan
10 kW
One of the places I frequent has some uhm.. lets go with less than reputable segments on it, I don't play in that puddle anymore but when they decided to clean the cockaroaches out a few years back they set up a mandatory page where you are given a brief review of how things are laid out etc, and you have to acknowledge that you get it, and off ya go as an existing user. New users had to actually answer like 3 questions about what they just reviewed, if they failed they were popped into a chat room to wait for the next mod to wander in and chat with them. It evidently was a real pain for the first month, and then it became a situation where people would just bail and for the most part, that was all vendors and people who were the reason for setting that up in the first place.
Not even sure how it was implemented. I never got tagged for it despite being massively curious at the time.
Not even sure how it was implemented. I never got tagged for it despite being massively curious at the time.
slaphappygamer
100 W
I’ve seen the other wiki regarding the open firmware for KT controllers, but not that one. Thank you for sharing.We have a Wiki in the German forum. I've written many articles there, but I think no one reads the Wiki. All typical newbie questions are asked and answered again and again in the forum, no one gives the hint to just read the Wiki....
regards
stancecoke
We have a Wiki in the German forum. I've written many articles there, but I think no one reads the Wiki. All typical newbie questions are asked and answered again and again in the forum, no one gives the hint to just read the Wiki....
regards
stancecoke
We had the same case with our old wiki, but the format was worse and information quality lower than what people would find on the forum because we didn't vet contributors. Navigation was much worse because we were using the mediawiki engine.
I think producing a much better KB system would increase utilization. My experience with using nerdpress as a documentation engine for businesses, is that 80% of people who give it a try, continue to use it, and a majority of people who use it also contribute information. This was a lot better than previous solutions where usually one person was doing all the maintenance and people weren't reading it.
We think it could do good on ES.
Here's a feature comparison i put together years ago. The features on the left were what i considered minimum features for a wiki system.
| Feature | Nerdpress | Other KB systems |
| Interface isn't basically a copy of wikimedia | v/ And easily customizable to look like an extension of xenforo | x wiki.js was the only modern looking system, but hard to customize |
| WYSIWYG editing interface | v/ Extremely similar to MS Word | x Contributors must learn a bespoke markup language - discourages contributions |
| Ability to copy/paste images + html from anywhere | v/ Can copy/paste an ES thread, other website, to create a wiki article, including images and formatting | x Absolutely can't do this |
| Can work as a single file ( integratable directly into the forum instead of being a different website ) | v/ | x None of these systems built this way |
| Article commenting & rating system | v/ Fully featured | x Only partial implementation at best, users' avatars/info not displayed as they are in the forum |
| Blog-like view so users can quickly notice new/edited content | v/ System was designed to be a blog originally, has multiple ways to display this | x Non-existent or poor. Usually just an edit log. |
| Support for advanced content like mathematic equations, videos, tables, | v/ Provided by WYSIWYG editor | ? Non-complete set or very difficult to use |
| Categorization ease of use | v/ Models windows/mac file explorer, users already know how to use it, always on screen, encourages binge reading | x Ranges from totally awful to non-existent in other systems tested. |
| Ease / clarity of maintaining categorization | v/ Easiest maintenance of categorization possible | x Massive weak spot in wikis which always leads to poor or non existent organization |
| Speed/resource usage | v/ Much faster/smaller than our requirements on ES | ? Massive code size and performance tests indicate they'll create a scaling problem. Previous experience with poor scaling on mediawiki |
| Ease of software modification / maintenance | v/ Nerdpress is ~3000 lines of code, 3 files sitting on top of a micro-framework. | x dokuwiki: Approx 6000 files, dependencies add ~1000 files mediawiki: Approx 10000 files, dependencies 2x that |
| Easy security & maintenance | v/ Small attack vector, inbuilt DDOS protection, small codebase to audit, great forensics & diag | x Un-auditable due to code size, large attack vector, no system for forensics, previous experience w/having mediawiki compromised & requiring constant updates |
PS - Nerdpress will eventually be open sourced; any forum would be welcome to use it to replace their existing engine.
Last edited:
If it's tied into the forum, then perhaps you could have the XF function that checks for related posts about a subject and places them below a thread *also* check the wiki for related articles, and not only show them there, but suggest them to a post author when they submit their post.
Primarily this would be good for thread authors for the first post in a thread, but since many noobs reply to existing unrelated threads to get help instead of starting their own, it would be helpful to them as well.
If there's a UCP option to not show them, then experienced users could turn it off if they don't want to see the article links, but otherwise anyone would see them (since even people with hundreds or thousands of posts may not know how something works/etc and could benefit from such articles...or they could contribute to them if they do know how they work).
Primarily this would be good for thread authors for the first post in a thread, but since many noobs reply to existing unrelated threads to get help instead of starting their own, it would be helpful to them as well.
If there's a UCP option to not show them, then experienced users could turn it off if they don't want to see the article links, but otherwise anyone would see them (since even people with hundreds or thousands of posts may not know how something works/etc and could benefit from such articles...or they could contribute to them if they do know how they work).
Kottbullar
1 mW
The only relevant question to ask is ....'why does no one read the wiki?'We have a Wiki in the German forum. I've written many articles there, but I think no one reads the Wiki. All typical newbie questions are asked and answered again and again in the forum, no one gives the hint to just read the Wiki....
regards
stancecoke
My personal experience is that they are often hard to find, and not user friendly. I cannot think of a single wiki across several hobbies that I reference .....
Kottbullar
1 mW
It's interesting that these criteria are all for the contributors. Nothing for the users?
Same.
Re-read the list.
About 40% of those things improve the experience for users..
Another 40% benefit writers ( which means users will benefit from more/better content & organization )
The other 20% keeps the service online and feasible, which benefits everyone. Right now we don't even have a crappy wiki because of that last 20% part.
Every single time I attempt to use wiki I tell myself that this time will be my last. Maybe things have gotten better...
DaLanMan
10 kW
Not all wiki's are created equal. I made peace with twiki, got used to it. went to the next contract, never saw the software again. I have come to terms with Atlassian, but ::shivers:: it is such a wompus system for the price. they charge. Wiki's are irritating, but then again so is having to write your own HTML, It is one of those trade off things, whatever they go with I will make peace with ;
: not like I am gonna get it into a knife fight or something....
: not like I am gonna get it into a knife fight or something....
