The Wiki problem

ProffieOS
1

I’ve recently learned that the github wikies are not indexed by search engines. That makes the ProffieOS wiki a lot less effective in helping people. However, the question is what to do about it, like maybe:

  • leave it and rely on https://github-wiki-see.page/ for indexing
  • put the content here on the crucible
  • use a different wiki (any recommendations?)
  • run my own wiki (but using what software?)
2

If you can bring here that may be best, is it possible to let users edit content but prevent commenting or how would you see it working?

3

Discourse has “wiki posts”, which basically just lets anybody edit the post.
However, it doesn’t really help with indexing, linking or organizing the wiki information. Also, I’m pretty sure that comments and discussion will get all blended up with the documentation content unless someone moderates and cleans things up.

Discourse does posting pretty well though, and it makes it easy to upload images and other media. (Github wiki is bad at pictures.)

4

Discourse lets you lock posts and I think limit who can post etc.

5

True, but why?
The point of a wiki is to let pretty much anybody make changes.
(But let moderators change it back easily if someone messes with it.)
If it was just a matter of publishing pages, then I could just use my website.

6

Has https://github-wiki-see.page/ for indexing been tried?
Seems like a simple workaround if it works.

7

It already works, try searching for “proffieos wiki where is my port” on google.
However, it doesn’t look very good, and all posted links are going to github, which means that the indexed content doesn’t get much of a boost from google’s pagerank algorithm.

And there is still the image posting problem.

8

Is the wiki only editable via browser? I tried to push from CLI and got
remote: Permission to profezzorn/ProffieOS.wiki.git denied to NoSloppy. fatal: unable to access 'https://github.com/profezzorn/ProffieOS.wiki.git/': The requested URL returned error: 403

9

There is a link at the bottom to the Original page " Please visit the Original URL for working links and to view the page as intended!"

Interestingly, leaving “wiki” out of the query and doing just “proffieos sound”, it returned the original page as well as the wiki-see page in the results. Also note your site in there with the new Free Font Sounds page.
Screen Shot 2021-09-27 at 5.42.23 PM

Lastly, I was able to add an image to the wiki pretty easily using Postimage’s “Hotlink for website”.

10

I’d have a team in a moderator group that manages the actual content. Have a sub forum where people can submit edits, which the team then enact or not. As a writer myself, I get the concept of wikis, but there’s a reason editorial control exists.

1 Like
11

I agree 100%. I wouldn’t leave the content to be editable to just any average joe who feels like it. This can bring in issues with them putting in wrong and misleading info.

12

The ProffieOS wiki has been open for anybody to edit with no problems so far.

I know what it’s just a matter of time before someone tries to spam it or deface it, but removing barriers can be a really powerful thing too.

Ideally, I would want a wiki that has both options: Leave it open, and review changes after they are made, or close it and review changes before they go public. Possibly with some sort of trust system to let people who have made a couple of edits in the past do immediate edits. (Which might be a good reason to put the information here, since discourse has a trust system.)

13

That’s why I suggest having an editing team, with submissions from general users. You just give them permission to maintain the wiki subforum, and have them moderate the wiki amends subforum. It’s a semi open system. And you’d only have a handful of people properly editing a wiki anyway.

Also, from my experience, wikis tend to be an utter mess to read, bar a few.

14

Wikis are the worst, except for all the other options:

  • PDFs - easy to read, but impossible to maintain and linking to specific parts is tricky
  • Forums - Low Signal/Noise ratio.
  • Facebook - impossible to find things, S/N = 0
  • most other forms of publishing: One person has to do everything.
15

What about gitbook? I’ve used that for a manual before.

16

No, gitbook looks like a bait-and-switch waiting to happen to me.

17

How so? I thought it was OSS?

18

Is there maybe more than one gitbook?
I went to this site: https://www.gitbook.com/
I don’t see OSS mentioned anywhere.

19

No, that’s the one.

20

The Wiki problem is getting worse.
Some links on the proffieOS wiki got replaced with malware links.
Those links are fixed now, and the access to the wiki has been locked down.
Unfortunately, the only access control knobi is “limit wiki access to collaborators”.
“Collaborators” also has full access to the code repository, meaning that they can submit code without going through PRs, which is not what I want.

Basically, github wikis are now entirely useless, because they don’t get indexed, and only I can edit the pages. :frowning:

Definitely time to renew the search for an alternative.

Here are the requirements:

  1. It must be indexable by search engines.
  2. It must support editing by multiple people, but the editing should either be limited to a set of trusted people, or all edits should go through a review process before published, similar to github PRs.
  3. Data MUST be possible to export and import elsewhere. (no lock-in!)
  4. Bonus: printable / PDFable
  5. Extra credit: easy to edit (wysiwyg)
  6. Nice to have: open-source

Possible options:

  1. github wikis, but fixed somehow?
  2. google docs (not structured, it would just be one big page)
  3. github pages (not particularly easy to edit)
  4. something else…