A Community Maintained RailWorks Knowledge Base ?

[nobkins]

Hi All,

I have an idea. I know the idea will result in a wide range of opinions but I wanted to canvas for those opinions before doing anything about it.

I think a knowledge base of known issues with RW and work-arounds (if there are any) would be useful to users and RS alike. Users will be able to "vote" to show they have encountered the issue, thus allowing for people to easily see how common (or not) an issue is. I also think it should contain a feature request section. This would allow users again to submit requests for features and have users vote on them. Thus allowing people to see what items are in demand and which are not.

The system would have to be admin'd by someone (me at the start) and I am very aware that RS could see it as RS bashing. This is 100% NOT what I want to do. I want users and RS to be able to see the prevalence of issues and also the features that users are crying out for. I know you can glean this info. from UKTS and other forums but it is scattered all over. I had thought it might be a good thing to have on UKTS as then we would already have access to a large number of users who can use there existing logon credentials to submit info etc. It would also mean that we could use the same team of moderators (if so desired) to keep tabs on things and obviosuly the same rules of conduct would apply.

Matt if you read this what do you think? I am very happy to right the core code (PHP, MySQL) and then you could just slot it into the site as you see fit. If you are not sure about the idea or do not wish to have it associated with UKTS then of course I respect that. Depending on feedback I may or may not take this idea forward.

@RS. I stress again this is not an RS bashing exercise I am proposing. The aim is to provide info to RW users and useful info for RS in one place. I would be very happy if RS put something like this on their web site but I am aware that this would require time that may not be worth it in terms of value for money etc. If any RS people on UKTS want to comment (or PM if you wish to keep it private) please do. I will definately take those thoughts/objections/ideas on board.

Thanks and let me know your thoughts.

Jim

[NeutronIC]

Interesting! Can you PM / email me with more info about what you're thinking (i.e. specifics)?

No problem hosting it here at all.

Cheers
Matt.

[NeutronIC]

Just caught up on a comment from one of the moderators who rightly thinks that this would be better as a more general knowledgebase, and also reminds me that we have been trying for ages to get something along these lines running in the background (as usual hampered mostly by me!).

One of the approaches we've considered is more wiki-like, to create a site using something like a wiki or a CMS like Joomla or Drupal, and put in there articles and knowledgebase things - i.e. known issues, known work-arounds, common questions and answers, and then move on to more developer-y site of things like tutorials for making routes, 3d models, exporting things from various 3d tools, how sounds work and so forth.

This always felt to me to be something that is more free-form and suitable to the wiki/cms approach than a more specific data-storage style.

Thoughts?

If you're interested in that, then i'm happy to get something installed and hand over the organisation of it to you and a team you nominate. The moderators made a tremendous start on this kind of thing in XWiki for MSTS - but due to security reasons (i.e. anyone could trash it) I was never able to make it public. Having reviewed things like Joomla and Drupal since, they felt to me to be more "browseable" and less techy than Wiki, therefore more appealing to the general user-base that just want answers - but still provide tons of flexibility and editability that would be needed for a project like this, with lots of writers (hopefully!) and so forth.

Matt.

[nobkins]

Hi Matt,

Great ideas. I should have known you would have come up with it already

I am reasonably familiar with Wiki's (but not in depth). I'll try to have a look at Joomla and Drupal.

I think we need a balance of easy for users to add content whilst also providing a degree of admin / moderation control to prevent them being trashed and also ensure that the knowledge base is exactly that - and not somewhere to complain about RS or anything else. It must be constructive to users, RS and other developers. To achieve this moderation will be required and all issues listed on the knowledge base need to focus on the issue and how it can be resolved (worked around) and not just complaining about why it has not been resolved.

Once I have had a look at the CMS type systems you mentioned I'll get back to you. If it is hosted on UKTS then I think this will give instant access to a large user base with hopefully a few experianced moderators thrown in as well. If I host it myself (which I am happy to do) then it might not get off the ground as something like this is very much dependant on have a "critical mass" before it truly gets going.

Jim

[NeutronIC]

The way that I had envisaged something like this working previously is that there would simply be a set of "editors" who contribute content, if someone new comes along and wants to contribute content then you accept articles from them via email a couple of times and see how they are, what edits are generally required and if all is well you add them to the editors group. In this way, moderation should be very minimal if any, perhaps only with comments etc.

It also keeps it more structured, for something like this it is very important that the result is coherent and structured, easy to find things - if a number of people have competing ideas about how things should be organised it will become a box of "stuff" that needs to be sifted through (and thus won't be used much).

No problem hosting it here at all, as I said, already had this on the road map just not had the chance to get to it yet so if you can investigate this and kick it off that will be fantastic.

Matt.

[rufuskins]

The moderators made a tremendous start on this kind of thing in XWiki for MSTS - but due to security reasons (i.e. anyone could trash it) I was never able to make it public. Having reviewed things like Joomla and Drupal since, they felt to me to be more "browseable" and less techy than Wiki, therefore more appealing to the general user-base that just want answers - but still provide tons of flexibility and editability that would be needed for a project like this, with lots of writers (hopefully!) and so forth.

Matt.

Whilst I wish you every success in this project, it's disappointing that the MSTS XWiki idea has ben hidden in the bowels of Atomic Systems. I accept that security is always a "problem" but if the desire is there ANY site can be "trashed" so to speak.

Alec

[paulz6]

Whilst I wish you every success in this project, it's disappointing that the MSTS XWiki idea has ben hidden in the bowels of Atomic Systems. I accept that security is always a "problem" but if the desire is there ANY site can be "trashed" so to speak.

Alec

Wiki's can be trashed by the average joe user by design, where as most other sites can be made very difficult to trash by the average joe user.

[AndiS]

Great to see that Matt & the moderators already got active here.

Exactly like Matt, I would take the rating and voting out of the plan and make it more a knowledge base than an issue base. Even with all the flaws that we all could collect, far more people struggle with their own knowledge limitations, without any other issue than not knowing what needs to be known at a certain point.

RSC obviously have an issue tracking system for their own usage, and understandably hidden from the public. Everyone would appreciate if they would update their Section 0 more often, but I read that they are dissatisfied with the reader count (which can in turn be explained by the state of their Wiki).

Like Matt, I think that the trashing can easily be avoided by simply limiting the number of contributors, and maybe have some public inbox area. You would invite a few dozen notorious posters from here, or put up some link where people can volunteer to become contributor. Everyone else can put his bits of information at the doorstep (in an inbox), from where it gets sorted into the main knowledge corpus.

If someone causes too much copying of input, he is simply recruited. There are certainly some measures to keep spam at bay at all installations of CMS.

The inbox could be publicly visible or not. In the later case, dumping your hate there would not even help the sender at all. In the former case, you have a bit more feeling of getting honoured. Depending on how good the user interface is, you might be able to combine both. Anonymous input goes to a hidden inbox. Any moderator gives it a quick look to see if it is constructive and makes it visible.

The inbox could be roughly structured like the forums here, or you already have a better idea for the structure.

Actually, for me the most important thing is the search function. Maybe it can be helped by keywords. But if there is no built-in keyword search, or if you are not sure whether everyone is good in putting keywords to his input, you could also put "Keywords: ..." on each page at the discretion of the author.

My (certainly very ambitious) vision would be to get a few people to dump their knowledge - with or without ghost writer help - instead of a ticker on the latest issues. "How I did it" from as many people as you can get. Many have some questions, get some answers, say thank you, and disappear. The really precious thing would be to drag them all up from their hiding places and beat up a report on what really worked. Many are reluctant to share their creations, or consider them premature all the time. But even then, they would be in a perfect situation to tell others how things worked out for them (blueprints, animations, scripts, track laying, asset counts and complexity, making things look good at night, sound, physics, particles, ...).

[nobkins]

I think I need the thread name changing.

I'll ask a mod.

Community Maintained RailWorks Knowledge Base

I agree with the idea that the main point should be knowledge and useful articles. However I still think there is a place for bugs and feature requests to be on the knowledge base.

It would help users and developers to know what problems we are having and what we want. Be it that this will become a small part of a much bigger knowledge base.

Mods: If you wouldn't mind - Change Thread title to Community Maintained RailWorks Knowledge Base

[NeutronIC]

Whilst I wish you every success in this project, it's disappointing that the MSTS XWiki idea has ben hidden in the bowels of Atomic Systems. I accept that security is always a "problem" but if the desire is there ANY site can be "trashed" so to speak.

As Paul has said, Wiki is meant to be a "community editable project" so that anyone can simply click an edit button and do what they want. In a utopian world where everyone is pulling for the greater good, that is a fantastic idea - but in this harsh reality it's a pretty awful one, as witnessed by the number of defacements that have happened on Wikipedia even with their controls in place.

My original intention was to get the project underway with XWiki but then find either a better system or purchase Confluence - unfortunately most wiki's are pretty basic or have one or more things that just make them inappropriate or inconvenience - and Confluence (which is by far the most ideal solution as it has proper credentials and security) was, at the time, horrendously expensive.

It was in looking to revive this project in the last few months that I was investigating Joomla and Drupal, and also considering the newer much cheaper Confluence licenses (though they would limit us to ten "editors").

Matt.

[transadelaide]

Perhaps instead of a wiki open for all users to edit, how about retaining the wiki interface but adding a restriction of certain users only being editors. All could be able to contribute but by way of going through one of the editors first.

Retaining space on every page for an official comment from RS.com and allowing their representatives full editorial/moderation access is a must. The first reason for this is for UKTS to maintain good relations with RS.com, but it would also be useful for providing updates and allowing any situations with potentially libellous content to be resolved smoothly. It would be a great shame if this kind of thing was to proceed but became a RS.com bashing exercise when we know quite well that they are the good guys who want to improve RW, not destroy it.

[Retro]

Sounds like a very interesting and useful idea to me.
Kind regards James

[USRailFan]

Agreed, definately a good idea

[nobkins]

Just had a quick look at Confluence. It does look very impressive.

The way that I had envisaged something like this working previously is that there would simply be a set of "editors" who contribute content, if someone new comes along and wants to contribute content then you accept articles from them via email a couple of times and see how they are, what edits are generally required and if all is well you add them to the editors group. In this way, moderation should be very minimal if any, perhaps only with comments etc.

As it comes with 10 licenses for £10 maybe we should give it a go Matt? The issue I suppose is what do we do if we want more than 10 editors. At the moment it is Approx £550 for 25 editors ($800) and £1400 ($2200) for 100 users. Logons could be "passed on" to user B once user A has finished but this would mean we loose the granularity of who authored an article because the logons would be re-used.

A difficult decision. I will try to get demo's of Joomla and Drupal and evaluate them.

[NeutronIC]

Joomla and Drupal are free, so no licensing issues there (or at least i'd be probably looking to use their free editions anyway )

I'm very experienced with Confluence (used it at previous job and current job, and also set it up for OpenRails) so no issues getting that running, i'm just concerned that 10 users really is too much of a limit and there's nothing to justify spending that much money on it to get more users.

My brother in law evaluated Joomla and Drupal and found drupal to be a bit more friendly and easier to get something nice and unique working - I had a quick play and must admit it did seem nicer than Joomla. That said, I've only really had a quick glimpse at both.

I'm tending towards one of the CMS tools rather than Wiki, I think it will provide more structure for us out of the box rather than with Wiki where you have to do everything yourself. The result out of a CMS is generally nicer to use for end users too.

Matt.