The Friki

[pauluffel]

My older brother and I are currently working on making a team site and plan to have a FIRST-based wiki on it - The Friki. It will be based on the Chiki that my brother made for his personal site and until we get the team site up and running, we have a part of the Chiki designated to become the Friki once we have a team page with a home for it. The point of this is that I would like to tap all of the experience that grazes here at ChiefDelphi to assist in building this wiki into a resource to help new teams or old teams that want to try something new.
The Friki is now based here and some guidelines to using it are on this page (and to start new pages write the name of the page LikeThis when you are editing and existing page or writing your new one.)
Don"t hold back in adding to this or editing what I already have, you probably know more than I do, and if you don"t, I"ll just go back and change it, so go fill it up!

[Beth Sweet]

Ok, maybe I'm just weird or out of it or something, but what in the world is Friki? I've never heard of it before in my life!! Care to elaborate?

[Cory]

Good, Im not the only one that has no clue what he said.

Cory

[Brandon Martus]

This will help you, if you don't know what a Wiki is:

What Is Wiki
Wiki is in Ward's original description:

The simplest online database that could possibly work.

Wiki is a piece of server software that allows users to freely create and edit Web page content using any Web browser. Wiki supports hyperlinks and has a simple text syntax for creating new pages and crosslinks between internal pages on the fly.

Wiki is unusual among group communication mechanisms in that it allows the organization of contributions to be edited in addition to the content itself.

Like many simple concepts, "open editing" has some profound and subtle effects on Wiki usage. Allowing everyday users to create and edit any page in a Web site is exciting in that it encourages democratic use of the Web and promotes content composition by nontechnical users.

(source)

[GregTheGreat]

Thanks for explaining it Brandon

[Beth Sweet]

Thank You!!!

[AlbertW]

we have a wiki too, but nobody uses it cause nobody knows about it.

oh well

http://www.harker-robotics.org/wiki

[Madison]

This seems like a ridiculously obtuse method of organizing or learning anything.

[AlbertW]

it's not for learning/organizing. it's for sharing information quickly and easily.

it's like a giant online whiteboard. why bother formatting something neatly and uploading it to a website when you can just jott it down on a wiki?

it's basically the web equivalent of the back of a napkin

[Joel J]

Freaky.. lol. Said nothing valuable, and proud of it. After all, this is based on a Wiki.

[Madison]

Originally posted by AlbertW
it's not for learning/organizing. it's for sharing information quickly and easily.

it's like a giant online whiteboard. why bother formatting something neatly and uploading it to a website when you can just jott it down on a wiki?

it's basically the web equivalent of the back of a napkin

Learning takes place through the sharing of information.

I've looked through the links provided her in the original post and in Brandon's explanation, and I don't find that either of these are remotely intuitive or easy to use. If I need information that can't be found on the Internet at large, it seems like a nice, neat, organized message board like this is so much easier to use and keep track of.

Additionally, I know that information here, correct or incorrect, will remain consistent. This crazy Wiki seems like it could change at any time, making tracing your steps or otherwise navigating around an exercise in annoyance.

[pauluffel]

Aww M., you were one of the people I was hoping would add their knowledge, but ah well, I"ll just try and explain it further to try and draw other people who are interested. My favourite part about wiki's are that it gives a chance to explain things and elaborate on concepts and subjects that are referenced in the explaination of a subject. If there"s an important concept on a page that I don"t understand, hopefully the author has realized that the concept is important and made it a link (by writing the phrase in CamelCaps, which automatically makes it a link after you click Save Changes.) If the author did not realize that they referenced something unusual, I could edit the page and turn the phrase into a link myself (say by changing gearing ratios to GearingRatios) so the next time the author or anyone else who understood GearingRatios came to the page, they could write up an explaination of GearingRatios and the problem would be solved. Also about navigation and getting lost, you can click the big word at the top of each page to find out what pages link to that word, so you can trace your steps backwards or you can just go to the recent changes page and explore new things that have sprung up since you last visited (like the portal page of ChiefDelphi.)
I"ve added some more stuff to the pages so there is hopefully more to build on and you"ll get a better idea of what it can do (and don"t worry about writing something that a moron will come in and erase, all of the edits are saved so I can go back and restore a page that"s been nuked [like the time the FirstRobotics page was changed to "I LIKE PIE"]).

[Madison]

Originally posted by pauluffel
Aww M., you were one of the people I was hoping would add their knowledge, but ah well

I'm flattered. You realize that I am the one who rewrote the entire FIRST page, right?

It's something that could be interesting to use and watch develop, but it seems like there are faster ways of accessing important data through other sources. To use your example, I could probably go to Google real quick-like and find a great explanation of gear ratios with pictures before I could find my way there on this Wiki thingamabob.

It's great if you're reading through and need a definition of a word or concept, but to find something specific, it seems like taking the long way.


This sounds quite like what exists at Everything2, which, again, can be an interesting read. Coupled with a search engine, its usefullness increases dramatically.

What I like most about E2 over this, so far, is that E2 tracks users and presents all the data entered about a subject, not just the most recent interpretation.

[pauluffel]

I didn"t know that you wrote it, M., but now your addition has been signed for you. Yes it is a form of learning, but a very indirect learning where you don"t go seeking facts, but rather you drift and find facts and more importantly, opinions. Since learning is fun, I browse wikis for the sheer joy of it and add to them so that others can pass through and experience the same feelings. In other words, please add things that are valuable either by their factual content or are pleasing to read. A good example of a page that is very pleasing, yet doesn"t have data that you would do a google search for ( ) is Andy Baker"s page wheras this page has a direct fact on it, yet it isn"t nearly as valuable as Andy"s.
The Morec of this post is that while the Friki may not be as good as a search engine at finding the facts you want answered it provides all the pleasing learning you would get from a rambling conversation with the world, or something like that...