ConsumerWiki **Live** - Discussion

[dave]

http://www.consumeractiongroup.co.uk/wiki/index.php/Main_Page

 

Hi,

 

What does everyone think so far?

 

Critisism welcome (although not THAT welcome ;-) ), suggestions welcome, volunteers welcome.

[dave]

No-one?

 

I would have thought after all the complaints about the forum being hard to navigate/find information that people would have welcomed a structured approach to handling information.

[Spiceskull]

No-one?

 

I would have thought after all the complaints about the forum being hard to navigate/find information that people would have welcomed a structured approach to handling information.

I made my interest and input known...

[dave]

Indeed you have, thank you.

[Spiceskull]

...and it is inevitable that this will always be a work in progress...

[j.barton1]

Hi, I've had a look and I am not sure what its for...LOL

Having a blonde moment but whats a wiki???

Jenny

[Mistermind]

Dave, as requested, 1 destructive suggestion, 2 constructive:

 

(1) The screen page, and indeed the brain can hold only so many words at any one time. Go over that limit and redundant words will push essential words overboard out of consciousness, out of recall. If the new CAG Wiki pages are likened to lifeboats lowered from the Titanic, they look overcrowded to the point of sinking. A ruthless economist needs to push some words overboard.

 

(2) The second most difficult person to understand is a lawyer speaking lawyer's language, the most difficult is a layman speaking lawyer's language. Recently a judge went on record demanding that a claimant express himself in everyday English or he would dismiss his case. Whereas precise circumspect language is unavoidable in law, many CAGgers are painting by numbers. In the front part of key template letters, could there be added a brief, indiscreet, everyday English translation, what on earth is the letter saying -- a Rosetta Stone.

 

(3) With a million threads exploding away, a powerful keyword search engine is paramount. The present CAG engine is defective in places. It can find "5000" (for £5K limit) but cannot find "12" (for £12 OFT guideline). If asked to search for "Dave and Wiki" it would search for "Dave or Wiki".

 

My congratulations. An excellent idea this CAG Wiki, no doubt an excellent product in time.

[dave]

It's like an encyclopedia (like http://www.wikipedia.org), but here it's simply for access to information in an attempt to cut down some of the announcements and 'stickies' that clutter up the forum.

 

Discussion forums are for discussion ;-)

 

Wikis (I wish to God they had named it something else) are for information store.

[Spiceskull]

Hi, I've had a look and I am not sure what its for...LOL

Having a blonde moment but whats a wiki???

Jenny

Think of it as a properly indexed compilation of all the best (and proven) bits of the forum. A lot of threads have hundreds of posts, asking the same questions, and debating the same issues - a wiki is a condensed and relevant version of this...

[dave]

Dave, as requested, 1 destructive suggestion, 2 constructive:

 

(1) The screen page, and indeed the brain can hold only so many words at any one time. Go over that limit and redundant words will push essential words overboard out of consciousness, out of recall. If the new CAG Wiki pages are likened to lifeboats lowered from the Titanic, they look overcrowded to the point of sinking. A ruthless economist needs to push some words overboard.

 

(2) The second most difficult person to understand is a lawyer speaking lawyer's language, the most difficult is a layman speaking lawyer's language. Recently a judge went on record demanding that a claimant express himself in everyday English or he would dismiss his case. Whereas precise circumspect language is unavoidable in law, many CAGgers are painting by numbers. In the front part of key template letters, could there be added a brief, indiscreet, everyday English translation, what on earth is the letter saying -- a Rosetta Stone.

 

(3) With a million threads exploding away, a powerful keyword search engine is paramount. The present CAG engine is defective in places. It can find "5000" (for £5K limit) but cannot find "12" (for £12 OFT guideline). If asked to search for "Dave and Wiki" it would search for "Dave or Wiki".

 

My congratulations. An excellent idea this CAG Wiki, no doubt an excellent product in time.

 

(1) - fair point, I'll skim it down a bit.

(2) - yep - no problem, I'll start one. The point of the wiki is that it's editable by everyone, so if I miss bits (which I will!!!) then anyone can put them back in. Vandals can be spotted very quickly and anyone can roll back to the latest 'good' version of any page.

(3) - do you mean the search in the Wiki or here in the forum?

[Mistermind]

Never tried Wki search yet. I meant search on the site in general, selecting individual forums manually where required. Not wholly understood where Wiki sits in the site map, whether Wiki contents can also be covered in a site search, i.e. whether Wiki can also be selected or deselected, just like Lloyds Forum.

 

Once a keyword has been discovered inside a big thread, it is still a job pinpointing the specific page out of 15, each page containing 20 postings. When I tried "search by keyword within thread" it never seemed to work for me.

[Guest JUMBOPOWERED]

Its perfect for the trained eye but erm what is it supposed to do ?

[dave]

Well, the plan is to take the information out of the discussion forum, and leave it as just that: a discussion forum.

 

Obviously, there must be information in the forum too, but I think seperation will make both easer to use and to find what you are looking for.

 

Discussion in the Wiki will be about the information, and discussion here will be for helping people.

 

We are currently looking at ways to completely redesign the site, but this time with more thought behind it; as it stands the site pretty much get too busy too quickly for us to be able to sit back and actually design a nice, easy to use layout.

[dave]

Its perfect for the trained eye but erm what is it supposed to do ?

 

If you go here: http://www.consumeractiongroup.co.uk/wiki/index.php?title=Category:All_pages_needing_cleanup&action=edit

 

for instance, you can see 'articles' that are unfinished or need cleaning.

 

There are (will be) many pages in there that will hold all the information in one place - in categories, rather than in the rather sporadic way it is held at the moment.

 

If you use the search in the wiki for say, "co-operative", it will either (if you click "Go") take you straight to our page about the co-op, where you can find contact details etc...

 

Search for "DPA" and it will tell you about the Data Protection Act, but with links to related searches, like "Information Commissioner" etc...

 

There is also a step by step guide with context sensitive words to click on to find out about those as well.

[Mistermind]

To answer the question from the l'infant terrible, I went and googled

"definition of wikipedia", with this result:

 

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

 

 

A definition is a concise statement explaining the meaning of a term, word or phrase. The term to be defined is known as the definiendum (Latin: that which is to be defined). The form of words which defines it is known as the definiens (Latin: that which is doing the defining).

 

I suspect Dave has in mind not an encyclopaedia of definitions, as it will not try to cover everything, more like everything perceived to be currently useful, without going off a tangent, i.e.

 

A Claimants' Filofax

 

Perhaps the discussion forums for controversy and debate,

and the Wiki for the settled consensus?

[dave]

A Claimants' Filofax

 

Like it!

 

I especially like the sort of 80's reference.

 

But, in seriousness, that's pretty much bang on!

 

Perhaps the discussion forums for controversy and debate,

and the Wiki for the settled consensus?

 

Yes, but of course the forum should still be used for people to get help understanding the info in the 'filofax' and for help.

 

The chat room (yes, it will be back), should be used for instant urgent information.

[meagain]

Looks good. Actually a very sensible idea - occasionally good nuggets of information get buried in the forum, and then there are a few threads where the signal gets drowned in noise (*ahem*). I have some considerable knowledge of Wikipedia and the MediaWiki software, the search facilities are good, and in terms of building an editable reference its feature set makes it practically second to none.

 

Two suggestions I would like to make straight off the bat:

 

1. Upgrade - the 1.6 series is no longer supported. 1.10 was released a while ago, and should be good for a while. It's important to keep it up-to-date.

2. De-uglify the URL by getting rid of the "index.php" - it's usually straightforward in most cases, but if you are one of the exceptions I can help you out with it.

 

PS - this is incompatible with the software.

[dave]

Ok, points taken.

 

Who wants to help populate it then? ;-)

[j.barton1]

Any help i can give??

Jenny

[meagain]

I would like to help put stuff on there, and help out with the often-underappreciated (at least on the 'Pedia) task of cleaning up, but cannot at the moment as it would be illegal for me to do so (and anyone else besides Dave, in fact) because of the copyright notice on the front page. I'm game for a lot of things, but 10 years in prison for copyright infringement is not one of them.

[dave]

But you wouldn't be reproducing the content.

 

Secondly, you have my written permission to work on it, if you so wish ;-)

[meagain]

But you wouldn't be reproducing the content.

 

The way that the Wiki software works is that editing a page and then committing the change is modifying the previous version, and then publishing that modified version.

 

I strongly suggest you look at ready-made options. On the matter of copyright, I trust the opinions of the Creative Commons lawyers considerably more than I do yours (nothing personal, but if there's a few decades of experience in international copyright law you're not telling us about, I might be persuaded ). If you've got some overriding concern which absolutely requires you to own everything, we'd love to hear it. Otherwise, you'd do well to simply adopt CC-BY-SA for the Wiki, on account of the fact that it is one of the few options that would make it legal for people to contribute, and easily the most practical of those few options.

 

Secondly, you have my written permission to work on it, if you so wish ;-)

 

I am reliably informed that I would need that on paper, signed and notarised, complete with a mutual release agreeing that my contributions belong to me and are to be licensed under the same terms as the rest of the content, and that RTL does not claim any right over the contributions of its members (I hope I didn't miss anything out). This would then need to be repeated for every contributor.

 

Alternatively, adopt CC-BY-SA, and you don't need to do any of that. Read that description, and tell us what your objections to it are - I don't believe that any of those four basic conditions interferes with our goal.

[dave]

The link doesn't work for some reason - 502 proxy error.

 

And as regards to copyright law experience - trust me, we have the few decades you are asking for - it's perfectly legal for anyone to contribute - as it is here!

 

....but it's up to you if you want to contribute or not. I think you're making a mountain out of a molehill to be honest!

 

However, I quite like the idea of creative commons licences. ;-)

[jansus]

As a newbie - i had a look at the proposals - great - much clearer and it would be great not to have to search all the threads and opinions for up to date guidance.

 

Just one thing - will you have a section on the front page (sorry I may have missed it) to cover people like me who found it difficult to start a thread -hijacked other peoples in error - and did not realise about saving favourite bits. In other words an ABC of how to make posts - do searches etc. I think a lot of people struggle a little with this in the begining which means they concentrate less on getting to the important bits.Also a re-inforcement of general thread behaviour such as not quoting specific names etc

 

but it looks great.

jansus

[Mistermind]

Yes, CAG is a broad church, an army of 140,000 carrying from bows and arrows to lasers. For new arrivals there could be a collated 1-page write-up on buttons, reputation symbols, search engines, and the numerous tools and forum rules. I have lost count of the number of newbies who posted in the forum, how to PM?

 

A 1-page site map would be nice, highlighting the popular areas.

Then for those who wish to drill down, a 3-page site map.

Then for those who wish to drill down and use everything, a 6-page site map.

 

Many sizes fit all.