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[moved] We need a new home page, Chris

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Chris Russell

Fri Aug 24 2007, 03:28AM

... not Russel!
Registered Member #1 Joined: Thu Jan 26 2006, 12:18AM
Location: Tempe, Arizona
Posts: 1052

I appreciate the suggestions in this thread. It's part of something I've been meaning to do for a long time. Let me see if I can address a few of these points, and let you all know what I would like to do.

First off, a front page full of images doesn't sit well with me. I won't deny that there are many visually stunning and impressive photographs that we could put on the front page; I am just not certain that doing so will attract the right sorts of people. It seems a bit self-congratulatory to me, and I fear that it will draw in the "lol sparkz are c00l, how do i built a telsa coil" crowd.

I think the news and announcements section would work well, if we had more to say. The problem is, nobody has any news (I was hoping more people would submit science news, upcoming Teslathons, etc), nobody is submitting any featured projects, and not much is changing lately on the site. I agree that there should probably be something different taking up most of the front page, so that things do not appear stagnant if no major news has happened for a while. Announcements could probably be relegated to a small feed in a box somewhere.

AM has quite correctly pointed out that I have not explained the registration process on purpose. I think we stand very very little to gain at this point by opening up the floodgates and inviting anyone and everyone to sign up. People who dig around a little, or can be bothered to send me an email or PM, will learn that registrations are, in fact, open. Others who can't be bothered to look around generally do not sign up. It is far from perfect, but it is doing an adequate job of keeping out the riff-raff until a proper registration system can be set up.

At any rate, what I propose is this:

a) We finally integrate the wiki into the site. This means the front page of the site will be handled by the wiki, not the forum. Clearly we will need to create a new skin for the wiki, and for the forum, so that they will play nicely together. The front page of the wiki will also need to be updated a bit. I will also start auto-linking certain keywords on the forum to wiki articles. For example, TC or Tesla coil will automatically link to the appropriate article. With any luck, this should keep unnecessary questions down to a minimum, while fostering some work on the wiki.

b) We look long and hard at changing forum software, again. I admit it, I made a poor choice with e107. When I settled on e107, I saw very few issues, and updates and new releases were coming fast. Certain things were just on the horizon, like being able to generate low-bandwidth pages, or letting users pick their own skin, but never materialized. Nobody even got around to fixing the odd way in which posts get marked as read. This time we ought to go with a straight forum, rather than a content management system. phpBB comes to mind as a very flexible forum that will cooperate nicely with mediawiki, but I am sure there will be other suggestions that merit investigation. I know people aren't keen on moving everything over again after just 18 months on this software, but we've run up against a lot of walls as far as what we can and cannot do with this software, and a lot of the issues that were supposed to have been fixed in various updates of the software never were. Either we move, or the answer to any other bugs will have to be "it'll get fixed when it gets fixed."

c) If we're doing a) and b), we might as well rewrite the rules from the ground up. Some things need to be added, and some things can probably be removed or merged. Bonus points if we actually include a mission statement and have the current membership vote on it before implementing it.

d) Once we've got a), b), and c) done, now we can look at the registration process. From previous attempts, we know that any process that requires people to manually review members will eventually get backlogged and fail. We also know that opening the floodgates wide and trying to run damage control afterwards works, but leads to a very very poor signal to noise ratio. I really think that the only solution at this point is going to be the creation of a membership test, one that quizzes people on the rules of the forum, as well as some basic points of etiquette. I am not sure if we need to quiz people on some basic math and science. It might be a good idea. At any rate, even if we use a rotating question pool, I'm certain that some wiseass will eventually post all the answers somewhere, but perhaps anyone smart enough to google for the answer wouldn't make such a bad member anyway.

Speech time. I think, no, I know, that we've got a lot of great people here, people who could do a lot more than just trade jabs on a forum, given half a chance. However, as one of our members said a long time ago, we are spending too much time wrestling alligators when we ought to be draining the swamp. We have accomplished much here, in the way of making information available to people, but there is so much more that could be done. How many good threads are just buried in the archives, never to be read again? How many times will the same question be asked and answered, when it could be answered once, forever? I'm very very proud of what we've done in the past six years, and I wouldn't get rid of the forum for anything, but it's time to grow, expand, and evolve. I feel that it's time for me to either step up and lead this community to something great, or step down and let someone else maintain the status quo. Who is with me?

ragnar

Fri Aug 24 2007, 03:34AM

Registered Member #63 Joined: Thu Feb 09 2006, 06:18AM
Location:
Posts: 1425

I think most of us are with you, Chris.

Considering that you made sure the search functions and the images were left intact from the last 'archived' forums, letting this system settle into an archive would not be too hurtful if you wanted to try another software again.

So, can I put my quadraphonic plasma speaker system project on the front page yet? =P

Tesladownunder

Fri Aug 24 2007, 09:07AM

Registered Member #10 Joined: Thu Feb 02 2006, 09:45AM
Location: Bunbury, Australia
Posts: 1424

Gulp... All I asked for was an update of the front page.
My 2 Aussie cents worth (= 1.64 cents US).
I personally would be unlikely to contribute much to a Wiki as my focus is on my website.
I would really not want to lose the ** Add your Tesla coil here ** thread (again) even though it is a bit stale. The hit count suggests that it is still very popular.
I too lament the loss of old mega threads eg can crushing or nitrogen lasers but am not sure that this would be recoverable.
I don't tend to look at the news section. News appears rapidly on the forum generally and I set my browser for that page.
The use of pictures in a front page may give the wrong impression but a large block of text and mission statement doesn't really create a great impression either.

Food for thought.
Big Tesla display tomorrow - must go.
TDU

Steve Conner

Fri Aug 24 2007, 11:17AM

Registered Member #30 Joined: Fri Feb 03 2006, 10:52AM
Location: Glasgow, Scotland
Posts: 6706

Well, I think we should write "4hv: The Book"

It would be like the ARRL handbook but for amateur HV and pulsed power experimenters. You could give it away free as a PDF, and charge for the paper copy. I wager that we really do have at least an ARRL Handbook's worth of useful information here, and I would be happy to help compiling and editing it.

A good start to this would be to dig through the board and find all of the outstanding project threads, as well as threads and wiki articles that answer those frequently answered noob questions. Then collect links to them in one place.

It would also be a great way to go out, if Chris eventually does decide to wrap up 4hv and move onto greater things. It would give us something really concrete to show for all the years we've spent loafing around here instead of working ^H^H^H^H^H researching

If he keeps it going, well, we can do the sequel in another 6 years

BP, I'm not too familiar with the "featured projects" system, but I think it's open to anyone who can be bothered to write up their project in the right format (whatever in the world that actually is!)

Chris Russell

Fri Aug 24 2007, 04:38PM

... not Russel!
Registered Member #1 Joined: Thu Jan 26 2006, 12:18AM
Location: Tempe, Arizona
Posts: 1052

Steve, that's sort of the point of the wiki. It is "4hv: The Book", in a format such that anyone can read it, and anyone who has something to add can add it. It could also house the projects section of 4hv, as well as threads like "add your tesla coil here", in a format that is more logically laid out and more easily searchable.

A new front page is fine, but the result is going to be more new people with questions that have already been answered. I think that constantly grabbing people who are new to coiling will just flood 4hv with "my first coil" threads, which basically makes us an elmer's forum. I'm not sure that's what we want. A wiki could help tamper that inrush of new blood, and perhaps even give them a way to be constructive when they find information they're looking for.

If there really isn't that much interest in a wiki, then I probably can't change that. However, I am going to do my best to ignite some interest, as this is something I really believe in.

Dave Marshall

Sat Aug 25 2007, 04:23AM

Registered Member #16 Joined: Thu Feb 02 2006, 02:22PM
Location: New Wilmington, PA
Posts: 554

I'm all for a software change. I've been dissatisfied with e107 pretty much from the beginning. Its a usable forum, but its got alot of little quirks that seem to get more annoying the more traffic we see.

I kind of like Conner's idea, but I agree that first we need to reassess our approach to the forum. Perhaps once the Wiki is the front page, we can figure out a way to display a featured thread or two right up front. This would keep the forum highly visible, while still making the bulk of the information gleaned from the archives.

I'm all for it. Just let me know what you need help with.

Dave

Steve Conner

Sat Aug 25 2007, 11:09AM

Registered Member #30 Joined: Fri Feb 03 2006, 10:52AM
Location: Glasgow, Scotland
Posts: 6706

Hmm Chris, that's kind of a different (and better) function from what I thought the wiki was meant to do. If we can turn the wiki into 4hv: The Book, then great.

My only reservation is that I'm not sure quite how well our content maps onto the wiki format. For instance, project threads are someone telling a story about something they're building, with a big discussion of it tagged onto the end. How would you write up an existing project in a wiki? A "4hv's greatest projects" section with a wiki page for each?

I'm not saying this to dis the idea of wikifying our content, I'm just genuinely puzzled about how to do it, and I suspect many other people might be too, which would explain the lack of interest in the wiki. I took the approach of writing new material for the wiki from scratch, and I would never have thought of trying to transfer or link existing content into it.

Bjørn

Sat Aug 25 2007, 12:50PM

Registered Member #27 Joined: Fri Feb 03 2006, 02:20AM
Location: Hyperborea
Posts: 2058

I think the book is a great idea and worthwhile, but it will not save the forum.

It is the future of the forum we are talking about, have a look at Chris' post count. Not a lot for 18 months and most of them has been to tidy up someone elseâ€™s mess. It takes a lot of time to run the forum properly. So much that you don't have the energy to start your own interesting threads because each time you log on there is some fire to put out. So there is a lot of tiresome work and hardly any reward.

The most important lesson we have learned in these years is that people learn by example, the quality of their posts depends strongly on the posts they read the day before. So without someone to set an example and keep everything on track the quality starts to decline and the experienced members gets frustrated and starts to make low quality posts themselves or just turn their backs to the forum.

We have reached a peak where we can't seem to develop any further and we can't increase the membership significantly because there are not enough hard working moderators. Chris is reaching the end of his tether and the moderator team can't agree on anything or do anything constructive on their own without directions from Chris except for some simple tasks like moving threads around.

The answer to this dilemma has been identified as the HvWiki, it is a much more rigid structure that does not have a tendency to deteriorate without a few people watching every step, because everyone is a moderator. It also increases the value of the information because the structure makes it very easy to find the information and all the off topic chat is left out. The wiki would also answer all the basic questions that gets annoying after the tenth time, what was once exotic starts to get annoying when it is repeated over and over again on the forum.

The alternative is that someone else takes over. That would be a wild gamble, it could take just a month and we would be knee deep in google ads and every other link would send us to dateanerd.com. In short there are very few people that are capable of running this forum without getting paid in some way.

There are many advantages with the wiki, it can even display proper equations. There are some things it is not good at like exploration of new concepts. If we put the information that fits the wiki format in the HvWiki and the rest on the forum and cross link the two where appropriate they should support each other very well and hopefully makes us able to develop further.

thedatastream

Mon Aug 27 2007, 02:47PM

Registered Member #505 Joined: Sun Nov 19 2006, 06:42PM
Location: Yorkshire!
Posts: 329

I'm willing to help with the wiki. If we can make it into a FAQ and The Book at the same time then well done us.

Is there a plan for articles that need writing / cleaning up / expanding? If the wiki is meant to be one of the answers, some central co-ordination might help. Otherwise all that happens is loads of "wiki fiddling" and typo correction and nothing get written. More direction on this issue is required IMHO

Following on from the idea of 4hv: The Book, do licensing issues prevent us from using the content on the wiki for inclusion in a paid for paper book or e-book unless profits of said book go back into funding the wiki and 4hv in general?

Chris Russell

Mon Aug 27 2007, 04:27PM

... not Russel!
Registered Member #1 Joined: Thu Jan 26 2006, 12:18AM
Location: Tempe, Arizona
Posts: 1052

I agree, more direction will be required in order to get things going. One easy way to help tackle this is for people to create "stubs," or articles that have been created but need more content before they can be considered done. We can then use the list of stubs as a to do list.

The license on this forum, and the wiki, while permitting free distribution and copying of the work, does not prevent commercial use of the work. However, it does require that the work and all derivatives be properly attributed and released under the same license. You could compile some of the work into an ebook and offer it for sale, but anyone who obtains the ebook would be free to copy it without restriction.

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