Scripting Wiki idea: Q&A page

[Malenfant]

Despite my earlier reticence, I find that I'm warming to the idea of using the wiki now. I'm still a bit hesitant to change or add things so I'm going to bounce an idea off the people here first.

What I was thinking was to set up a Q&A page (Question and Answer). This wouldn't be a 'FAQ' but I think it might be similar to what Hank had in mind. The idea would be that there'd be a Questions page there that people could ask scripting questions on. I guess they can be detailed, but I'm initially envisaging relatively simple questions first. Then, if someone reading the Questions page sees something they can answer, they create an Answer page for that question. if any discussion/further questions/corrections are required on that specific topic then it should be hashed out on that Answer's discussion page, and the final answer should be updated as required based on that discussion on the Answer page itself (to avoid reading confusing conversations on the Answer page as something is discussed when you just want a solid answer on how to do something).

Thus, I could go on the Question page and ask "How do I use For loops?". This would sit there for a while til someone notices it and answers, and then they'd make a new wiki page with their answer (preferably with short complete scripts to copy/paste and use as demonstrations) and add a link to that page from the question itself.


I think this would make the pages a lot more useful - now experts would be able to directly answer specific questions asked on the wiki, and we can use that to build up a referrable knowledge base. Plus, it would IMO be more organised than the current discussion page on the Scripting page. If enough questions are asked/answered then we could also catalogue them and arrange them in terms of topic too.

Do people here think that would be worth setting up? We could even rearrange the current CelX Scripting Wiki to incorporate this.

[cpotting]

I'm not knocking the idea - I'm just speaking about my own involvement...

I have kids; I have a boss; I have deadlines; I have wonderful fiancee who wants me to spend time with her and "get off that d**n box".

I simply am not going to go to two different places to follow threads and answer questions. I find the forum to be enough.

Again, I love the wiki - but my opinion is that it is a reference utility, not an interactive forum (notice the sly and subliminal use of the word "forum" - pretty smooth, huh?)

[Malenfant]

I simply am not going to go to two different places to follow threads and answer questions. I find the forum to be enough.

Again, I love the wiki - but my opinion is that it is a reference utility, not an interactive forum (notice the sly and subliminal use of the word "forum" - pretty smooth, huh?)

My main problem with the wiki has been that there's little incentive for me to write an article about how to something from scratch there because for all I know it would never be of any use to anybody. If someone actually asked a question though, then I'd know that there's a specific issue that needs to be addressed. As more questions are asked, the knowledge base there increases and it becomes more and more useful as a reference guide.

I'd prefer to ask/answer questions here on this board too. BUT... if the wiki is to be any use then the answers have got to get over there somehow, right?

Some other ideas that may or may not be better:

1) Set up a (stickied?) "Questions" thread on THIS board, and use that as a 'request for answers to be posted as articles on the wiki'.

2) ask questions and post answers as usual on this board, but summarise the question and final answer once the original poster is satisfied and make a single coherent article linked to a Q&A page on the wiki.


The second option might work better maybe? (I think that's basically what Hank suggested to start with in our discussion. I guess he did persuade me after all ). The only thing that remains is whose responsibility would it be to transcribe the answer to the wiki? The original poster's? Or should there be a 'wikimaster' who is in charge of moving things over?

[Malenfant]

I've written something up on the wiki to show what I mean - take a look.

http://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/Celestia:C ... ipting:Q&A

I also took the liberty to rearrange things a bit to make the file structure a bit more sensible.

http://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/Celestia is the main Celestia wikibook.
I added Cel Scripting and Celx Scripting to the topics there, moved the text that was written for them in the existing Scripting topic to the new pages, and then linked the Q&A to new the Celx Scripting page.

The existing Simple CELX Scripting page and Hank's 'zoom to fit' page are still outside this structure though.

The answer to the question that's there isn't quite finished yet - I'm going to be busy this afternoon/evening so I won't be able to finish it off til tonight. If anyone spots any glaring errors in the explanation for the answer in the meantime then please correct it!

[cpotting]

I've written something up on the wiki to show what I mean - take a look.

http://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/Celestia:C ... ipting:Q&A

I also took the liberty to rearrange things a bit to make the file structure a bit more sensible.

YES! That is the way I suggested that the wiki be used for scripting questions: have all the back-and-forth what-if's and please-explains' hammered out here on the forum and them summarise on the wiki for others.

Putting all the dialogue on the wiki simply makes it a copy of the forum - and IMHO, two forums is a waste of resources and more confusing. This is much better.

Now, someone brought up a very good point: who should be responsible for doing the summarisation and addition to the wiki? I can't think of a definitive answer to that. Sometimes the topic being covered is for a very specific or esoteric use that few of the people using the wiki would ever be interested in (e.g. "how do I use the __newindex() method of the rotation object?"). In other cases, almost every neocelxer would benefit (e.g. "how do figure out the direction the observer is facing as a vector?")

I think perhaps it should be left up to the descretion of the forum users. If the people asking, answering or even just reading along feel that the answer could be of use to them then they could just drop a note into the forum saying "Dear guru, could you please summarise this in the wiki", or "Mr Learner, I'll try and put this together as a new wiki item". Once there it can be corrected, tweaked, added to by those in-the-know without any further discussions needed.

I think, though, that it should be strongly encouraged that the person putting the information into the wiki inform the other users in the original forum thread. Otherwise, conversations may continue about stuff that is already summarised; newcomers may spend a lot of time sifting through forum discussions without realising that it has all been neatly wrapped up on the wiki; the "guru" may not know that his explanation has been incorrectly interpreted and posted as "fact and law".

Ideas? Thoughts?

[Malenfant]

Maybe we should have a stickied thread of Answered Q&A topics here?