A Final Solution to the Wiki Question

[UselessRubberKeyboard]

It'd be nice to have posting guidelines for a wiki article, a bit like the guidelines that were (are?) at the top of lolcow proving grounds. Sure, it makes things a bit more difficult for people, but it means articles will have at least a modicum of organisation. I get that you don't want to put potential writers off at the first hurdle, but there has to be some posting standards for a wiki.

Is having it on the same site as the farms a good idea? Just thinking about if the usual asshole decides to spend his monthly tugboat on ddosing us again, it means the wiki goes down too. I guess it would mean leaving it to the whim of some nebulous hosting platform that might pull a France, though, so there's that going for having it all right here.

Poke me if you need some sort of writing help. I can't code for shit, but I'm happy to edit stuff for speellin' n stuff.

 

[Ellesse_warrior]

I think making the OPs editable by all users is a good idea and it would be an easy way to link to important posts within the threads without having to bother mods each time. I'm currently archiving all of Fedsmokers videos and trying to put them in order because he has so many channels and videos and he uploads them out of sequence. I had the idea that when I finally get finished I'd draft up his timeline using the videos and link them from the OP.

 

[sad cowboy cat]

Isn't that handled by the thread title?

I still think having resources external to the farms is useful

 

[Account]

Just a thought, but it could be easier to sift through threads if you could collapse reply chains, or have a way to view a thread like a tree (like a mailing list, or reddit), since most updates (I think) are probably not posted quoting from another person. Plus it could make it easier to find discussion within large threads, which is equally important (for instance, I was looking through the Phil Foreclosure thread, and there was a reply chain of people talking about foreclosure law and laws concerning debt in the state that Phil lives in).

 

[NIGGER ASS PEE POOPY RAPE]

best solution: edit OP and link to good lolcow documentaries, most newfags like me don't want to read anyway.
second best solution: allow sorting replies by number of upvotes like on Reddit.

 

[HumanHive]

Probably said before, but Spacebattles has threadmarks. Usually only mods and OPs can do that, so why not have a "nominate for threadmark" system for users with old enough accounts or whatever (or whatever anti-troll/spam option you feel to be best).

Furthermore, Spacebattles also has a "reader mode" that lets you look at the threadmarks and nothing else, providing an in-order historical experience.

Edit: In case you have no idea what I'm talking about, here's an example. Ignore the subject matter, just look at those sweet threadmarks.

Skywalker For Senator (Star Wars)

Ever wished Luke did something before A New Hope? Padme, Anakin, and even Leia did some pretty impressive stuff before they were nineteen years old. But Luke? According to canon he was playing with his space ship models and blasting Womp Rats in his Skyhopper. To be fair, there isn't much to do...

forums.spacebattles.com

 

[GarthMarenghisDankplace]

I found the ADF board very helpful when I first found him. There was an overview thread with a history of the cow and links to the good bits. Could OPs be kept up like that, with users making changes that need a mod to approve before they go live?

 

[Coke Pope]

A solution we had prior was the Lolcow Wiki, which has since been abandoned. The largest issue with it was expecting people to work for free but also obey certain writing standards. It was a job to write a good entry and very few people were up for the task.

Yeah, this type of autists is a hot rare commodity these days. Especially since trannies took over Wikicommons and gassed all of them.

1. Ease of Use
2. Ease of Construction and Maintenance

Won't that also make it easier to vandalize and reduce the overall quality because you are also lowering the barriers of entry?
Just asking, I legitimately don't know.

 

[Rafal Gan Ganowicz]

Dunno much about computers, but I'm a decent writer and willing to work for free for an hour or so per week. Let me know if i can help.

 

[theshep]

Not sure if you're able to do it, but could you make first posts editable by everyone or even just trusted people?

Some thread's first posts are well maintained by the authors, but others are not or the author had their account deleted. I've noticed that certain people follow certain cows religiously and would be able to keep it updated regularly. It would be great to be able to redirect people to the first page for a TL;DR on super long threads.

 

[derpherp2]

Not sure if you're able to do it, but could you make first posts editable by everyone or even just trusted people?

Some thread's first posts are well maintained by the authors, but others are not or the author had their account deleted. I've noticed that certain people follow certain cows religiously and would be able to keep it updated regularly. It would be great to be able to redirect people to the first page for a TL;DR on super long threads.

Yeah, instead of adding another website, why not improve the forum so it's easier to access information? This place is already surprisingly easy to gather information from.
Even if people vandalize the posts, I'm pretty sure you guys have archives and can revert the changes.

It would also be "self-feeding" in a way, since longer topics would either have more people interested in the topic, or more dedicated people to the topic.

I guess the biggest problem would be long-running topics with no one willing to do any of the work. And I guess having one domain would make your shit easier to fuck over, but wouldn't it also be easier to recover?

 

[Haramburger]

Can you make the KF login credentials work on a sister site? Like how there's a "login with your facebook when you're already on it via another tab" the way Instagram or a few other sites work? Seems practical and unifying despite having separate domains.

On the topic of effort/quality content, nothing, not even money drives it other than personal interest. Zoe Quinn is the perfect example; lots of people had a financial interest in writing articles about her in the media, and it was all poorly researched, half-done horseshit even when it was in her favor/her side. The only reason I bothered to sort her 900+ page thread and make the Table of Contents/index for notable pages and events & continue to educate posters and direct them to specific pages/posts of relevant content is because I hate her that fucking much.

Probably said before, but Spacebattles has threadmarks. Usually only mods and OPs can do that, so why not have a "nominate for threadmark" system for users with old enough accounts or whatever (or whatever anti-troll/spam option you feel to be best).

I took a look and this is pretty nice, it seems like a half-automated and crowdsourced version of what took me 40ish hours to do on two separate occasions. Between this and maybe another layer of staff dedicated to improving and curating OPs/first pages this might be a low effort/high pay-off improvement.

What about threads where OP is inactive, though? Would a mod then take on updating the thread?

They do, I've PM'd two different mods on two different occasions to improve ZQ's OP, considering that poster is banned & unreachable. As long as you're making a sensible change and it's easy to implement/copy-paste, staff do a pretty good job of handling simple tasks on demand when you can get their attention. Checking with other users to make sure your proposal is actually good and spellchecked is another good step to make that I recommend.

 

[zyclonPD]

Unless the posts in those threads of back and forth discussion is worth keeping I'd just elect a handful of mods and tell them "run roughshod over the threads and delete any part of a post or whole posts that don't have relevant information".

Like for instance if I had modship of weebwars I'd burn that main thread down from 3000 pages to probably 200 pages. The circle jerk back and forth convos are okay for certain threads but not for ones on cows. They treat their cow threads like that too.

I don't need you to squack for 5 paragraphs about why you don't like the person. Show me why they are bad. Shove your personal opinions up your ass.

 

[Twinkie]

This is a discussion forum not a wiki though. why delete discussions. if you want just information and not discussion then creating a wiki would be a lot less work than trying to make the forum into something entirely different.

 

[ScrappyLobsterchu]

Wikis are definitely needed. Tbh if you are new to a cow reading through a whole thread is time consuming and you have to go through lots of unnecessary conversation. Someone, either you or the community should select certain cows who are worth a wiki.

The issue might be actually getting competent people to help create such wikis so that they become better than just reading through the forum.

The entries should probably be just fleshed out OP's with links to relevant threads on ongoing issues. That's my two cents.

 

[Null]

I was mostly looking for information on how people would like to wiki-tize the OPs but it was made pretty clear from the posts that the idea of highlighting the best posts in large threads for expedient reading was much more desired so I've started working on that.

As a stage one for this extension, I'm running an automated process every hour to look through active threads and start paginating it into best ofs.

To make this more fair and to adjust for new site activity over time, each thread is broken up into n pages (currently 3) and the most positively reacted n posts from those pages are identified. Those posts are the ones with gold borders in recently active threads. Expect some wonkiness in the newest pages of a thread, as I've not done anything to (for instance) stop the first post on the 4th page of a thread from getting highlighted if it has no subsequent posts.

I'm doing this now so people can give feedback on how my idea works before I begin figuring out how I want to use this data useful. I am debating between adding a totally new threaded view of just the best posts, or adding a button that says "jump to next highlight" while keeping you in the real view of the thread. I am leaning towards the latter.

 

[MysteriousStranger]

YES!! Perhaps give extra weight to the 'informative' icon? Lots of posts are uprated because they're funny, for example, but the informative ones usually add information.

 

[Angry Shoes]

YES!! Perhaps give extra weight to the 'informative' icon? Lots of posts are uprated because they're funny, for example, but the informative ones usually add information.

I agree. Giving extra weight to 'inforamtive' and 'semper fidelis' can help make sure some joke on the first page isn't the one with the gold border.

 

[ComedyEnjoyer]

YES!! Perhaps give extra weight to the 'informative' icon? Lots of posts are uprated because they're funny, for example, but the informative ones usually add information.

Something like this sounds good. If I want a quick run down on a cow I want to read all the posts that give info, not just the ones calling them retards in funny ways.

 

[Nanook Rubs It]

YES!! Perhaps give extra weight to the 'informative' icon? Lots of posts are uprated because they're funny, for example, but the informative ones usually add information.

Oh great let's make these neets even more autistic about ratings