Why not well-illustrated articles in the wiki?
Why not well-illustrated articles in the wiki?
you will never understand, until you move those standards yourself, even if not shooting, I always have a LF camera mounted so I can look at the GG and move things around.
I am new also.
Originally Posted by ScenicTraverse
Tin Can
you are very correct, who was it, seven types of learning?
I read too much, I need to force myself to actually play...
Tin Can
Wiki setup is fairly straight foward, and there's at least a couple of packages, one of which is free, that integrate with vBulletin. Integration would mean that members on the forum can automatically have editorial access to the Wiki.
Wikis are edited by all of the members. Administrators can lock a page to keep it from being vandalized, or changed minute by minute. Wikipedia has had lots of internal firestorms and hoaxes posted on it. Some of the hoaxes (including slander) have remained there for quite a while. Sometimes the firestorms are so egregarious that they make news in the IT tabloids.
Usually what happens with a wiki is that everyone edits it, changes things around, and it comes to a fairly usable state. Pictures can be added as you please, so there can be lots of illustration. The color scheme can be preset or customized. Various add-ons can be used with the wiki software.
MediaWiki is free and integrates with vBulletin. This package has a very fast installation with vBulletin, and claims that most of the time it just takes "one click." Otherwise it takes a little prodding. VaultWiki is commercial and costs up to $60 for pro installation and no branding, along with $30/year license renewal. What I was contemplating today was using a seperate, commercially hosted wiki service. For something reasonable it would cost me $5 per month for unlimited users and 2Gb total of storage space. It would place no load on the site's servers.
Creating a wiki page is as easy as making a post in the forum. There is both a text/HTML mode and WYSIWYG for editing a page. Each page has its main display, and a meta-page to discuss what has been and what needs to be done on that page. Some wikis are set up with version control, so changes can be rolled back, or accidentally erased data can be retrieved. Version control is also relatively easy to set up.
Yes, anybody, at any time, can start posting LF articles to Wikipedia. However, I don't know if "good enough for us" is "good enough for them."
As for opinions on "LF facts," the opposing opinions can actually exist as a subset under a main topic. Personally I would suggest that the main topic would be physical data/evidence, and then opinion pages can exist under it. I find that the differing views are quite educational, if not entertaining or downright hillarious.
"It's the way to educate your eyes. Stare. Pry, listen, eavesdrop. Die knowing something. You are not here long." - Walker Evans
Brian, it sounds like you are knowledgeable. Good.
How do we make it as permanent a record as possible, yes, ever mutating, but available for a long time. Like Internet Archive or something.
I sure would hate to see it disappear in 10 years. I know there are no guarantees, but we need to fight the digital darkness that is pervasive on the web. meaning people shut sites down all the time!
One of my pet peeves is broken links and dead sites.
Tin Can
An integrated Wiki could take the place of the current articles section which could be incorporated in it, a benefit would be images which most articles here lack.
It would be a pity to see something like this separate from what's already a good website and resource.
Ian
Integrating with VBulletin puts a drain on limited resources, of course. So, the reasons for doing it would have to be compelling not just to those who support the idea, but also the site's owner and administrators (not so much moderators). Tom is involved in a special project at the moment, and for the next several weeks, so his critical opinion is something we'd have to wait for, if VBulletin integration is relevant.
I'm not sure that it is. Brian, no question that you have the skills to set up a Wiki on an external server. But that independance demands commitment. Not everything about it can be crowd-sourced, and one or several people have to commit to the following:
1. Permanence. I wrote several articles for a non-photography Wiki a few years ago, and after all that effort, the guy who started it got tired of dealing with the issues of administration that he did not expect, and abandoned it. It was not just his own effort that was abandoned, but it was his own decision. He becamea "quitter" in the eyes of that community.
2. Productivity. Discussions about what goes into the articles (on the "discussions" tab in the Wikis I've seen), must be moderated carefully. It is not their purpose to provide ongoing support or to argue truth, but to simply decide what is to be included or not included in the article. That focus is frequently lacking.
3. Authoritativeness. Much that is written on the web has the patina of authority--it is written by guys like me who are good at making writing sound authoritative even when we are pulling it right out of ... the air. Others who have unquestioned expertise may not have those skills. What sounds correct is not necessariy what is correct. Of course, this is a problem on the forum, too, but the forum is self-policing in real time. It's also a problem with static articles, though it is mitigated there with careful editorial standards and review, which this forum can and does provide.
One of the reasons Wikipedia has increased their standards beyond what we might want, as you put it, is that they are trying to apply what they thought they would never need: Editing. It turns out that crowd-sourcing, while efficient, is not always accurate. But their approach is not effective at solving that problem.
There is another issue that bothers me about Wikis. They are great as a repository of information, but they are lousy at identifying what is important about that information. When an author writes nonfiction, he first determines what is not known that needs to be known. That requires a careful analysis of 1.) his targer reader, and 2.) his editorial objectives. Is it a reference work? A narrative? Research? A tutorial? And if it is a tutorial, how does one make it interesting and worth maintaining (since maintenance is crowd-sourced) by the experts who can provide authoritativeness, while still undergoing careful scrutiny to determine that learning takes place by the target reader? Many articles do not consider these issues, and their value as training material suffers as a result. This is probably the worst fault of the articles on our home page. Some are written for beginners, and lack much of the underlying theory that might help someone with more experience understand more. And some are written with the implicit understanding of basic knowledge that a beginner might not possess. To be more effective than what we have, the materials will need to be based on a really clear understanding of the target reader, what he or she can be assumed to know or not know, what gaps in knowledge need to be filled by the writing, and what approaches need to be taken in that writing to ensure that those gaps are filled. This is not as easy as it seems. It requires committed and careful editing.
It is axiomatic that news articles are truthful except when covering topics about which we are experts. That is true for wiki articles, too. Even with their editorial standards, I find that Wikipedia does not attain to the standard of accuracy that even common encyclopedias (e.g. World Book) did back when people owned such things, let alone those encyclopedias that were designed to go deeper like Brittanica. In the articles about which I am expert, the signal to noise ratio is very low. And much of the FUD that it in those articles sounds plausible enough, so that it requires just the expertise the reader is assumed to not have to be able to separate actual truth from what is merely truthy. In the early days of Wikipedia, it was variable, but the good stuff was very good because it was conceived and written by a person, not by a crowd. Most of it has diminshed down to nothing better than what a mediocre journalist would write in a newspaper, confusing references with expertise. And I say that as having been the author of several Wikipedia articles. I used to spend time trying to police the articles to keep out the FUD, but eventually that gets tiresome and I have better things to do. So, the article on traffic signals in Wikipedia is...okay...but it contains many errors, obvious and subtle, that professionals find tiresome to try to correct. It's about what I would expect from a journalist whose assignment for the week was to write an article about traffic signals, not by an expert who is also gifted at explaining things to beginners.
This website has the aim of providing an ongoing resource for practitioners of large-format photography. It has the secondary aim of providing a repository of collected knowledge. The forum format is far better at the first than the second, though if people would learn how to use Google with the "site:largeformatphotography.info" parameter they would find their searches here much more effective. But the knowledge is not organized for any tutorial purpose, and beginners don't know what they don't know and thus struggle to find the right search terms for many subjects. Some on the forum are patient, many are not, just as in real life. It could be argued that a willingness to rub up against that crustiness is part of the fee paid for getting free advice, and that would be a better argument if the free advice that comes with that crust was consistently worth more than what it cost. It could be argued with much more merit that it is not the purpose of this forum to spoon-feed baby food the lazy, but rather to serve meat to each other. When I'm researching forums about topics where I'm the beginner, I find myself asking, "Can't you just answer the freaking question?" When I read posts in forums where I'm an expert, I find myself asking, "If you don't know the right answer, just shut up!" Of course, it is human nature that we do not allow anyone to exist at our level. It was George Carlin who point this out: All those who drive slower than we do are "idiots", while those who drive faster are "maniacs!", but if anyone drives at our speed, we speed up or slow down to get them away from us.
Thus, the gap not served by this forum is for rank beginners who are coming into large-format photography as a first step into film photography. The problem is that a Wiki is really no better at trimming off that chewy crust than is a forum, or making sure that the soft stuff underneath is really nutritious, unless it is very actively edited. A bigger problem is that many here (and I'm not excusing myself) find it impossible to allow a simple thing to be stated simply, and feel the need to embellish, or to nit-pick the simple descriptions provided by those trying to state it simply. You end up with convoluted constructions where the main point is obscured by a range of qualifying statements or expansions that each have a champion and are not false enough to be removed, but that sometimies have little importance to the tutorial objective or accuracy of the article. Wiki contributors are concerned about trees, not the forest. A Wiki does not filter that out automatically. It takes a real editor to do these things--someone committed to the tutorial aim of the writing and someone who 1.) has earned and 2.) is willing to exercise absolute authority.
Without these principles, the project will be doomed to end up no better, and probably worse, than articles on this forum's home page.
There is an alternative:
If there is a topic that needs clear writing with a specific objective, a good writer who sees the need can create that article and run it past Tuan. That writer might even be able to discuss the idea first to get general approval before investing the time to write it. Then, the article can be posted on the home page and then discussed here, as was the case with the article on portrait lenses from last year. That article was edited with those comments in mind. There are those who believe the article is still inadequate or even inaccurate, but I submit that it is better than what could be achieved using a Wiki. If nobody is willing to do that, then who will write for the Wiki?
A Wiki can be a good model, but thinking it requires less work than the above because of "crowd sourcing" is a mistake.
Rick "who has written, edited, and reviewed textbooks, research papers, and training materials for many years" Denney
I think we could determine what most LF photographers need by first writing a Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ) page. There are several types of posts on forums.
Most common posts - Novice questions about equipment use, what to buy
Questions on values
Questions on how to get a certain look
Historical questions
If we wrote a wiki on just one or two of the above, we'd miss some people's learning needs. If we picked, say, just the history facts, we'd lose more. That's why I say develop a FAQ first, to do a needs assessment. We could make our article section into a FAQ.
It's easy to write a wiki, and like Rick says, it's easy for those with the most time (but most shaky knowledge) to start writing everything they can think of - even if it's wrong. I'm an Instructional Designer, and build training for everything from fighter pilot academics to manufacturing processes. Been doing it 20 years. I always need a Subject Matter Expert (SME) on my projects. The problem with the internet (and a wiki) is too many "experts" that are just repeating what "they've read before..." I'd rather have a good FAQ written by SMEs, than a sharp wiki with fuzzy concepts.
Garrett
flickr galleries
I wonder about the alternative of putting our heads together to see what sort of articles are most needed and then setting about getting people in the community to write them. If we were to really work to increase the range and depth of the articles available on the site here and work to inter-link them as appropriate, that could go a long way toward satisfying the need for a more information-rich resource without opening up the new can of worms that a wiki would be. This could be supplemented with a separate FAQ where common questions are provided with links to both articles and the numerous forum threads already in existence that address these questions. I don't think the article section should become the FAQ, but should be supplemented by a FAQ.
The main thing that I think needs addressed is that we have an immense wealth of information represented by the users here, but that wealth is not being tapped. All the great stuff that we (as a community) know should be recorded and made easily available. I was actually looking at the articles page last week and was struck that, while there is certainly some good stuff there, it's only a tiny fraction of what it could be. The forum itself is a great way to ask questions and discuss things, but that articles page should be overflowing with new articles all the time. And it can be - we just need to put some effort into it as a community.
I agree:
"If there is a topic that needs clear writing with a specific objective, a good writer who sees the need can create that article and run it past Tuan. That writer might even be able to discuss the idea first to get general approval before investing the time to write it. Then, the article can be posted on the home page and then discussed here, as was the case with the article on portrait lenses from last year. That article was edited with those comments in mind. There are those who believe the article is still inadequate or even inaccurate, but I submit that it is better than what could be achieved using a Wiki. If nobody is willing to do that, then who will write for the Wiki?"
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