A Final Solution to the Wiki Question

[Chiri]

Have some easy way for jannys/OP to mark posts in a thread as important updates.
And provide a page that lists all marked posts in a thread for easy viewing which also link back to the respective position in the thread.

This would be very easy to use and make huge threads much easier to navigate but I don't know how easy it is to hack this into xenforo.

I've seen several other forums on XenForo use a Threadmark system so I think it's just built into the software. Implementing it here would really do wonders for navigating mega huge threads.

 

[Great Dane]

I think bringing back a Wiki would be an excellent idea. Having a wiki can remove the problem of a possible outdated OP or the need to search dozens, hundreds, or sometimes over 1000 pages to find a specific piece of information. I would be happy to help contribute, or maybe even create articles for lolcows. I like a simple format, following the Wikimedia format should be fine. I like the formatting from the Sonichu page as well.

I think having some form of guidelines would be good in order to make sure the articles have some form of consistency, but the guidelines shouldn't be overwhelming to the point where no one will want to make an article.

It wouldn't be a bad idea to tag articles that don't have a lot of information as stubs; users that need some inspiration on who or what to write about can help extend stubs and help them grow to be sufficient articles.

I've also got a question, should users contributing to the Wikia need a Kiwi Farms account to contribute to the website in order to prevent outside vandals, or should users outside the Farms be able to contribute without needing to make an account for Kiwi Farms?

EDIT: I think having a talk page for each article would be great, as users can communicate about how the article can be improved.

 

[mindlessobserver]

The best way to manage a community wiki is to just let the monkeys at the keyboard type away. Unless something is blatantly wrong it's best to just let be. Eventually someone will come along, rage at bad prose and spelling errors and fix it themselves. Other people may find it boring and stick a few pictures in. Someone else will think its disorganized and move things around.

The biggest mistake is to force an OP to be comprehensive and perfect right out the gate. If an article needs significant work the jannies can just flag it on the front page and let autism run its course.

 

[dreamworks face]

I have a really, really lazy idea. I think part of the problem with the wiki stuff is having two sites that do not share data is a lot of work, and it'd be nice if the information were just stored in one place.

I remember on the SA forums, the admins trolled a dude who wouldn't shut up about wikis by making it so any user could edit his posts (and just his posts), just for fun, with pretty hilarious results.

You could potentially just hack xenphoro to make OP's editable in the Lolcow forum. Xenphoro has an edit history for posts already (which could be used to mitigate vandalism.) That probably isn't the greatest idea, but if you're looking for a low-effort trial solution, that'd be one way of doing it.

A more production way of doing it would be to use the xenphoro rest api - conceivably, what you could do is write a "kiwi farms lolcow op editor" site that just allows you to edit lolcow ops of this xenphoro forum. Make a user that has "edit any post" priv that the rest api can use, and have the rest api auth as that user - but don't expose rest api past firewall, make another crud api that's exposed to the public, but that accesses the xenphoro rest api through backchannel requests. This public api can be secured so that it only allows displaying information/edit the ops of lolcows.

 

[Dear Leader Pol Pot]

The best way to manage a community wiki is to just let the monkeys at the keyboard type away. Unless something is blatantly wrong it's best to just let be. Eventually someone will come along, rage at bad prose and spelling errors and fix it themselves. Other people may find it boring and stick a few pictures in. Someone else will think its disorganized and move things around.

The biggest mistake is to force an OP to be comprehensive and perfect right out the gate. If an article needs significant work the jannies can just flag it on the front page.

I agree. Have a rough guide line with how articles need to be written. So long as they are forming coherent sentences, using proper wiki syntax, and isnt just writing a fucking ED 2.0 and up article filled with nothing but memes and personal army requests. Im not saying the articles cant be humorous or tongue in cheek but we all seen what happens to wikis that allow humor in the articles and go unregulated. The wiki will police itself and get better as time goes on and when people get a feel for an actual wiki again.

 

[ThePurpleProse]

So you want Reddit basically? That style of shit is what causes karma/sticker superwhores and ruins most discussion. And while I have much more respect for the users here then over there that kind of shit can wreck a community.

Just picture every threads top post being "fat and would not sex" & whatever other meme springs up, and that's what we'd be looking at imho.

Correct me if I'm wrong, but I think he meant to say that the ability to sort posts based on ratings would be useful thanks to the informative reaction, so it won't the be edgiest comment being added to the main article, but the informative ones.

 

[Pope Negro Joe the XIIIth]

Correct me if I'm wrong, but I think he meant to say that the ability to sort posts based on ratings would be useful thanks to the informative reaction, so it won't the be edgiest comment being added to the main article, but the informative ones.

I might've misread. Still I think reactions sorting has a possibility of backfire, but maybe it's more the crowd than the system in regards to places like Reddit.

 

[sidekek]

I've seen several other forums on XenForo use a Threadmark system so I think it's just built into the software. Implementing it here would really do wonders for navigating mega huge threads.

Most of the places I have seen it, (all the fanfiction sites) use this.

 

[Still Anonymous For This]

Like others, I think a Wiki for the larger threads would be justified. I think a few things would help it succeed:

1.) Make it editable by KF users, but only those of a certain post-count. This way not every mouthbreather under the sun can fuck with it, but all the impetus isn't on a small core of people to update it.

2.) Have a small group of janitors responsible for article upkeep. Mostly for minor editing.

I'm not quite sure how you could tie editing of the wikis into the KF login system, but I think it's a good idea.

 

[BlancoMailo]

I think a big part of what prevented users from using the wiki and creating threads in the first place was always the implied expectation of an encyclopedia level of quality, the same will happen with these summaries as well. Instead, I'd add an "executive/thread summary" (ES) just below the OP or in a collapsed form above it that users in each thread can request a post to be linked in the ES with a chronological bullet point hyperlink - no need to be a writing major, no need to try and get the format of everyone's writing to be consistent, just a bullet point list that cuts out the fluff and doesn't render the original OPs redundant (see below the dashed line).

So, to give a rough example of what I'm thinking, I'll use Sargon's thread:
-Starts with the OP or a spoiler-collapsed ES
--ES
--several bullet points linking to informative posts about his pre-GG history
--several bullet points linking to his major events during GG
--several bullets points linking to his ant-SJW antics
--a bullet point linking to a post that talks about his behavior during the Candid scandal
--a bullet point linking to the start and highlights of his spergy war with Metokur
--a bullet point linking to his campaign announcement and the start of the election arc

Basically, the idea is to lower the bar to entry as much as possible, allow users to suggest in the thread older and newer posts that should be linked in the ES with a suggestion of where to put it (you could use a numbered list instead of bullet points to make this simpler), if other users agree (maybe the post has to have a positive score, a certain level of positive scoring, or a mod can just see that it's obviously important to add), it can be added with a single sentence describing the link.

---

As for the OPs themselves, I'd add an editable post above the OP itself but below the ES and allow the community to edit them freely with a list of basic rules like link evidence, use proper grammar, etc. Give weaponized autism a chance to work and then have another discussion like this to implement specific rules after a two month trial period has show where the problem areas are popping up.

 

[A Logging Company]

So you want Reddit basically? That style of shit is what causes karma/sticker superwhores and ruins most discussion. And while I have much more respect for the users here then over there that kind of shit can wreck a community.

Certainly don't want reddit, but some kind of method to sort though posts would be great. But that would be a risk if that was implemented.

I've seen several other forums on XenForo use a Threadmark system so I think it's just built into the software. Implementing it here would really do wonders for navigating mega huge threads.

This is more of what I had in mind, without the fear of Redditcreep.

 

[John McAfee]

Is there any frameworks that allow markdown importing or parsing? Any collab things I've needed in the past I just had submissions with md to a ftp folder - just have to agree on formatting and other conventions.

 

[ThinkThankThunk]

I don't know about anyone else, but the handful of times I visited the Lolcow Wiki while it was still active the articles were out of date. I don't think you'd keep peoples interest in an off-site repository any further than the honeymoon period. Honestly, I don't think I would ever visit or edit it myself past the first few weeks.

I like the idea of editable OPs. I don't like the idea of the requirements being super high for it though, because most of the best work I've seen on the site come from people who either sign up just for a few responses or spend the majority of their time lurking. If that would be the route to go, I'd say gate it behind the same restrictions that the Proving Grounds has (or had, I don't know if anything has changed since the Prospering Grounds rebranding) and if there's any problem with vandalism keep upping the requirements incrementally until it stops being a problem.

 

[Sam Losco]

Here's an idea. Have a tag which you put into posts, let's call it #wikiworthy. You'd have a bot that would scan the thread for #wikiworthy posts and add links to them to the Wiki article.

To make it work properly you'd perhaps need more than a simple tag. E.g. a date and a summary of the post would be good. That way the Wiki would have [Date] [Summary] and a link back to the original post.

It's almost like a reverse hyperlink. A normal hyperlink is <a href="url">summary</a> and the syntax means you can easily add in more attributes. A #wikiworthy tag needs at least a date and a summary and probably more things would be handy. So the syntax needs to allow for extensibility.

On the upside, if you invented the reverse hyperlink and it caught on you'd be able to look Tim Berners Lee in the eye and call him a faggot and, worse, a Limey faggot.

Have some easy way for jannys/OP to mark posts in a thread as important updates.
And provide a page that lists all marked posts in a thread for easy viewing which also link back to the respective position in the thread.

This would be very easy to use and make huge threads much easier to navigate but I don't know how easy it is to hack this into xenforo.

Combine these two and it's a pretty good idea. Staff tag a post and a bot can copy/paste the post into the wiki or even if the "wiki" is really just a list of links to posts that have good info. Things must be copied in chronological order based on post date to keep things straight. I think having a bot actually do the writing work and have it be readable would be impossible, that's neural network AI level shit, so would still need people to go clean things up. The shitty part will be going back through huge threads that have good info all through (Russ Greer) and getting posts tagged.

I don't think we need a wiki page for every lolcow thread so you'd need to establish a barrier for entry. Say, if the thread hits 50 pages. I say 50 and not 10, because there are a lot of threads that may explode at first but still not have good info. See the Stonetoss thread. It exploded with a lot of posts because of the drama with the thread itself but none of it was wiki worthy, certainly not the shit OP.

My idea that I have thrown out before, was more with the idea you floated before of having the OP be a wiki but can still work here. Don't just let anyone do edits. People are idiots and idiots will fuck it up. You'll also have the cows themselves coming in to fuck it up. We wouldn't want that Shane idiot having edit access to his own wiki page, for example. Maybe at first just let T&HF edit and non paypigs on a case by case basis since there are a lot of people that have been around here a long time that never ponied up any shekels. The OP will also have edit privileges of any one they start.

Same domain to share accounts would be a must for access control as that'd be the only real way to make sure no one attempts to sock as an existing member.

As for actual wiki guidelines... we don't need an actual wiki style page with a lot of text. We really just need something along the lines of a timeline with minimal explanation. No opinion or stupid bullshit like ED does, just timeline with links to the thread posts about the event. More of a cow index than a wiki.

 

[CIA Nigger]

The Lolcow wiki was a good idea that suffered from a lack of editing and maintenance. What really did it in was ParkourDude91/Jace being confirmed as an elaborate shitposter. There's definitely a market for a website that's a documentation of online drama like Encyclopedia Dramatica (minus the mindless 2000s era edge). ED is pretty much dead and the last outage wiped out tons of images.

That's also perhaps the number one criticism of this website that I've seen outside of drama related to trannies or the staff. The PurpleKecleon thread for example is 1,500+ pages long over the span of 5+ years and only recently did the OP get updated. That documents years and years of drama, with the thread starting out as "hey look at this Pokemon fan artist who I heard is a prick" before more and more people signed up to post stories of and document PK's behavior. Before the new OP was made, it was extremely out of date and very hard for someone just reading up on this person to know what made them infamous. To add to this, in between big posts and before the great big log leak were posts involving everything from critiques of her comic to deconstructing her art style.

The thread is packed with info but it's very hard to skim through. Then there's the Cwcki or even ED allowing some cows to have multiple pages, and that's easier to digest. There were a lot of things that went on in the PK thread and a linear format means content gets lost easily.

Have some easy way for jannys/OP to mark posts in a thread as important updates.
And provide a page that lists all marked posts in a thread for easy viewing which also link back to the respective position in the thread.

This would be very easy to use and make huge threads much easier to navigate but I don't know how easy it is to hack this into xenforo.

I've seen a few hobby related forums do this. Next to the OP will be a database of "important posts" with descriptions of each post. Essentially this would be a table of contents for a long thread. As some threads devolved into drama, this would be used to mark key turning points within the whole saga making it easier for an outsider to enjoy it.

 

[Man vs persistent rat]

Encouraging people to make better OPs has already been difficult, but if they feel there's a better process than bugging you in PMs about replacing them every time they need editing would help a lot.

I can imagine a thread having two new functionalities to make the monster threads less awful - the first is a form or something to submit OPs that possibly has a collaborative element (the Chantal thread has used a Google Doc to collaborate, although it's not done yet). This could be like your old idea of integrating the wiki for the first article of big threads and I think would be the easiest way. I think the wiki being on a separate site and not embedded into the forum makes it seem 'remote' and gets less eyeballs (which is true), making it less useful.

The other very important thing the big threads need to make them less of a nightmare is a separate box at the top of the first post that is essentially a contents page separate from the OP. The OP can have its own chronological biography in as much detail as the followers of the cow want to provide, but the contents page could simply be a series of titled links to milestone updates in the thread - eg, each new update for Onision's legal problems, or each new fad diet with Chantal. I'd imagine it as something like this (sorry for MS Paint):



Also a way for people to propose polls within the thread without having to have an active OP would be great, perhaps a voting system of "good poll/shit poll" or whatever.

The potential html/browser lag impact of the contents also need to be resilient enough to withstand the threads that are active enough to want to do a weekly "what's happened this week" type update, so possible the "see more" could go to a new contents page once it reaches a certain amount of characters, instead of just expanding a collapsed section.

If too annoying to code a solution to make a collaborative OP, perhaps have a separate discussion page for improving the OP, like wikis do, to prevent derailing the thread. Sort of an easy to view background layer to the thread for people who want to maintain it, but can be safely ignored by those who don't.

 

[BONE_Buddy]

Here is a hot take of an idea based off of a #WikiWorthy system.

For every board, and certain large threads you could have the particularly active subset of users have a special title (or something like that). A person with this title can nominate a post (or series of posts).

At that point, that post could be highlighted on the thread.

If more than N number of special thread folks vote a post (or series of posts) as #WikiWorthy then a bot or script will transport it to the Wiki.

_
This is probably a bad take, but hopefully it stimulates thought.

 

[Chiri]

This is more of what I had in mind, without the fear of Redditcreep.

The only issue I see with putting in Threadmarks is that we'd need some special system in order to create them for already existing threads. The best I can think of is having a ticket system where users can request that a Threadmark be made for a certain post and then have a staff member approve/reject it.

 

[Shaka Brah]

Here's an idea. Have a tag which you put into posts, let's call it #wikiworthy. You'd have a bot that would scan the thread for #wikiworthy posts and add links to them to the Wiki article.

To make it work properly you'd perhaps need more than a simple tag. E.g. a date and a summary of the post would be good. That way the Wiki would have [Date] [Summary] and a link back to the original post.

It's almost like a reverse hyperlink. A normal hyperlink is <a href="url">summary</a> and the syntax means you can easily add in more attributes. A #wikiworthy tag needs at least a date and a summary and probably more things would be handy. So the syntax needs to allow for extensibility.

On the upside, if you invented the reverse hyperlink and it caught on you'd be able to look Tim Berners Lee in the eye and call him a faggot and, worse, a Limey faggot.

Maybe have a separate board called wiki or something with posts that can be edited by anyone that links off to the discussion threads instead of visitors being overwhelmed by seeing so many pages/replies.

If it's possible, what if there was a way to combine these ideas? Basically, we do need to rely on people to update the wiki, but what if it was up to good forum-users and not just wiki users?

Have a forum where people can copy good posts and insert wiki formatting, and have posts in these threads be appended to wiki articles automatically in the order they were posted. Because of the nature of new posts usually being new info, sagas would be laid out in rough chronological order. If necessary people could go on the wiki and edit things, but the special subforum would serve as a good list and a source for the wiki so each kind of user would be catered to in a way.

 

[Second Hand Syringe]

Im down to write articles and no life the wiki. Just give me a list of shit you want done first and i wont go to bed for the next couple days.

I'll also volunteer my time to write and format articles if necessary. But I won't lose any sleep over it so Dear Leader Pol Pot might be the natural choice.