FIRST wiki: Status check?

FIRST General Forum
1

Dear FIRST/CD Community,

Most of you have probably heard of Wikipedia. For those who don’t know, wikipedia (www.wikipedia.org) is an online encyclopedia that allows users to easily edit its content, or to easily change it back after a bad edit.

Comparatively fewer of you, I’d be willing to bet, have heard of FIRSTwiki. FIRSTwiki (www.firstwiki.org) is a “wiki” devoted to all things FIRST, just as Wikipedia is devoted to… well… all things, real and unreal.

When I went to FIRSTwiki to create a page for my team, 1719, I found amazing gaps in the site. There was no JFLL page (If you don’t know what JFLL is, see the new JFLL page). The page titled “FIRST” had not been updated for three years. It’s now updated, but feel free to update it more.

But seriously, for a program with just over seven hundred teams with several thousand students involved, it’s funny that JFLL didn’t get a wiki page.

But wait… actually, it’s not. This is not atypical of the gaping holes in the site where knowledge should exist. When I started editing, there basically was no page for the 2007 Game.

So I’ll make this short. Here’s my request: go do these things, and in a couple seasons we will have an extremely useful repository of knowledge for our programs. Go as far down on this list as you can.

  1. Go to the site. It’s at www.firstwiki.org . There. You know about it now.
  2. Create a log-in and password. You don’t even have to provide your real name, much less where you live.
  3. Check to see if your team has a page, and if they have one, check to see whether it’s updated or not. If your team does not have a page, create one. Creating a page is easier than getting out of your chair. Just follow the links and type in a couple sentences about your team. If you’re feeling fancy, copy-paste the format and upload pictures and a logo.
  4. Browse around. See what’s missing. Create pages. Go crazy. If you want, check out the site’s list of needed pages.

I’m hoping that this message can get some publicity for FIRSTwiki. As it is, the site is dying. However, the format makes it completely easy to edit; therefore, in the words of that bear… only YOU can prevent forest fires - err, edit FIRSTwiki pages.

Thank you for your time.
Paul Dennis

2

What do you guys think about this? I’d like to keep this in the public view until it gets some circulation, but if no one is interested, then obiviously that won’t happen.

(Thanks to those who have responded privately, though).

Paul

3

Thank You for Bringing this to my attention have now begun to up dtae my teams Wiki:)

4

I have noticed the absence of activity on FIRST wiki. I posted my team’s page last year. At the end of the competition, I made a page for last year’s championship game. I didn’t know much information (and didn’t really have time to look it up) so I copied the code from the 2005 page, removed all the content, and placed what little I knew into the page. Eventually somebody placed the awarding teams, but nobody placed the ranks of everybody like in 2005 and the stub notice was removed. You can compare the 2005 and 2006 pages using those links. More people really should know about this site so the lack of information like that won’t happen.

5

I’m starting to edit pages now. I found out about it a couple days ago, and I too was amazed at the dated pages. We should keep this up, though. I feel it’s a vital tool for teams, volunteers, and prospects alike.

6

Axe-some. I will begin my wiki quest!!!

The FIRST world needs to use this way, way more.

7

Thanks for the reminder, I just updated the NEMO wiki page. I noticed that there was a section of templates created for FLL; can someone please create the same for FVC and then I will create the ConnVex page in that section also… thanks.

8

I added text for the 2007 FRC game. It’s incomplete though, but it gives a pretty generic overview. At least for now. Someone go update!

9

Again, thanks to all those who have posted here, and a further thank you to everyone who is involved in editing FIRSTwiki, whether they’ve seen this thread or not.

If you have an opinion about this issue, please post it here. I’d like to keep this seen.

10

Last year, I and a friend of mine updated some of the pages on the off-season competitions in my area, which was seriously lacking at the time.

11

Around a month or so ago there wasn’t even a Vex page. A couple of my friends took all the code for lists of FRC teams and copied over to vex with a few minor changes.

It doesn’t take much time at all to do just a little. If everyone does a little the wiki could become an even more valuable resource.

12

I’ve been looking around on Firstwiki, and i gotta say, with more participation, it could be an amazing resource for teams. teams can flaunt their awards, put up pictures, and i think that it could become very very cool.

13

Well, I used to run a wiki and quite often people that come to wikis just look at it and do nothing more. The owner/administrators of the wiki will add over 90% of the information for the first few years.

14

I’ve never personally been involved as you have, Chris, but I’d hope that we, the FIRST community, could do better on this one. We’re also talking about a pretty huge amount of information here. Ideally, there would be a page for each FRC, FVC, FLL, and JFLL team. That’s a whole ton of pages! There’s also a lot of miscellany that needs to be written - I recently wrote the page on weight classes for the 2007 game.

Paul