# Glitch City Laboratories Archives

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## Wiki Discussion

### Transition to wiki good idea or bad? - Page 1

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#### Transition to wiki good idea or bad?

Posted by: Abwayax
Date: 2009-01-30 18:58:33
In early-2005 I asked ACE91 about the feasibility of using a wiki instead of the setup we had then (a portal-CMS, kind of like what The Orange Glove will be). He said it was a bad idea, probably because of the probability of false stuff ending up on the site.
However, things have changed significantly since 2005. Here is the breakdown of the advantages a wiki setup will have from my viewpoint:

[li]Complete integration with the Forum. I ran a wiki+forum site in 2007/2008 where everything was shared between the two, including theme and user info.[/li]
[li]Easy-peasy editing of pages. Instead of logging into an "Admin CP" interface, going to a "Directory" listing, and then finding the page there, just hit the edit link.[/li]
[li]Easier to learn syntax: Tables aside, wiki syntax is in my experience easy to pick up. There are also other benefits, including the fact that newlines are automatically converted into linebreaks (I know I was frustrated when my "\n"s didn't show in the browser, but that was a long time ago on a site far far away)[/li]
[li]More opportunity for non-staff users to contribute: Normal users can edit pages too. The problem, initially, is that this is prone to unexperienced or malicious users inserting misinformation or blatant vandalism into articles. However, MediaWiki has an extension FlaggedRevisions. This lets people with authority (i.e. Staff) to review revisions to articles manually and "flag" them as "stable". The Stable revision will always be shown to guests, so in effect all revisions made by non-staff members MUST be "flagged" by Staff to become visible to all. This to me is a better approach than the current "Submit a Glitch" thing going on (which has been in place since the late-2004 incarnation of the site) in that users can add the information to the site and Staff can just verify and "flag" it (or delete it if it's bogus). And, of course, if a user is troublesome, we can block them from editing.[/li]
[li]"Interwiki" links - links to other wikis - will be made much easier. We will be linking A LOT to Bulbapedia if we switch to this system.[/li]
[li]We will lose no data. At all. Everything we have can be transitioned to a MediaWiki.[/li]
[li]Template syntax is exactly the same as it is on The Orange Glove.[/li]
[li]The Glitchdex, as it is now, can be preserved if we make it an "extension" (i.e. not actually hardcode any of the pages into the wiki, but dynamically generate it, as we do now). Not going into the technical details, we can preserve the sort, search, etc. features of it while making it wiki-ready. All of the data can be preserved in "plaintext" (perhaps XML, since it's nice to read) and can be edited by any user (and vetted by Staff). The same will go for the other 'dexes.[/li]

So what say y'all on this? Personally I think the good outweighs the bad.

#### Re: Transition to wiki good idea or bad?

Posted by: GARYM9
Date: 2009-01-30 19:20:07
As long as we add in security verification to edits to prevent spam bot edits then yes. :)

#### Re: Transition to wiki good idea or bad?

Posted by: Bent`
Date: 2009-01-30 19:22:10
Sure, sounds all right.

#### Re: Transition to wiki good idea or bad?

Posted by: Abwayax
Date: 2009-01-30 20:51:56

> As long as we add in security verification to edits to prevent spam bot edits then yes. :)

That's very possible.

#### Re: Transition to wiki good idea or bad?

Posted by: Thomas
Date: 2009-01-30 21:00:00
I don't really mind.

#### Re: Transition to wiki good idea or bad?

Posted by: boxman
Date: 2009-01-30 21:31:59
What the heck, I can easily update the "Glitchdex" that way, and we no longer have to catagorize Glitches by site.
I vote yes.
We should have it though so only registered users can edit, rather than the average trouble making Joe.

#### Re: Transition to wiki good idea or bad?

Posted by: GARYM9
Date: 2009-01-30 21:38:16
That's what we were going to do.

#### Re: Transition to wiki good idea or bad?

Posted by: PichuUmbreon
Date: 2009-01-30 21:42:05
Good idea. I always thought it'd be a good idea to try that. This might just revive GCL.
Though, would other information go onto the site as well, be the same as before, or what?

#### Re: Transition to wiki good idea or bad?

Posted by: Abwayax
Date: 2009-01-30 22:30:43
Well, we could separate the Caspar stuff into their own namespaces or something, or make a page entitled "Sonic glitches" and have all of the Sonic glitches be subpages of that.
Aside from that, it's mostly a way to 1) Encourage user participation/replace the "Submit a Glitch" system that is massively backlogged now, 2) Make it simpler to edit the site, 3) Laziness on my part because I'm tired of all the Orange Glove coding I did this week. The "What needs work" thread shows that many users thought Minor Glitches could use some overhaul.

#### Re: Transition to wiki good idea or bad?

Posted by: agusganog
Date: 2009-01-30 23:23:27
Sounds like a good idea to me.

#### Re: Transition to wiki good idea or bad?

Posted by: Guy
Date: 2009-01-31 04:26:48
Sounds great to me! I'll be able to post my stuff there finally!

#### Re: Transition to wiki good idea or bad?

Posted by: Bluelatios
Date: 2009-01-31 08:00:11
Hmm….sounds like a good plan to me. I could use an easier page editing system. I took a look at the one that we have but could not figure out how to use it.

#### Re: Transition to wiki good idea or bad?

Posted by: Ratipharos
Date: 2009-01-31 17:00:46
Sounds good. The only thing to worry about would be false information, but the solution seems to be found. It would probably be a better way to search all the glitches.

#### Re: Transition to wiki good idea or bad?

Posted by: Zach the Glitch Buster
Date: 2009-02-01 00:11:04
Eh, worth a try. This does look like a good idea but one flaw. Would guests be able to make new pages? Even if the pages are flagged and unseen, could they have the authority to make them? If the answer is no, then we'll still need the submit a glitch feature on the site. But the idea of having working sonic sections and whatnot is great. For that reason, we should go for it.

#### Re: Transition to wiki good idea or bad?

Posted by: GARYM9
Date: 2009-02-01 08:34:41

> Eh, worth a try. This does look like a good idea but one flaw. Would guests be able to make new pages? Even if the pages are flagged and unseen, could they have the authority to make them? If the answer is no, then we'll still need the submit a glitch feature on the site. But the idea of having working sonic sections and whatnot is great. For that reason, we should go for it.

They have to register an account to make pages and guests really shouldn't be able to make new pages anyway to prevent "ZOMFG MISSINGNO IS EATIN MAH BRAINZ" spam.
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