Organ Forum Wiki is Coming

[Admin]

Over the years, we have received many requests for a way to better deal with and find answers to commonly and repeatedly asked questions. There are many ways in which the forum currently addresses this problem but none are entirely satisfying:

Forum Search

The forum's search function is very powerful, but with that flexibility comes a complexity that many users are not interested in mastering. Complicating matters is a minimum word length of 4 characters which frustrates users searching for items like Hammond Oil without using quotes to specify this as the phrase "Hammond Oil". Further, by default, the search engine returns a list of threads containing the search term in one or more of its posts. While it makes sense to group and present the results in this way, as it provides context to a result that might return literally thousands of posts, it requires the user then to repeat the search at the thread level in order to locate posts of interest.

Google, Bing and Other Search Engines

Many search engines proved the ability to limit their search to a specific site, so it is possible to search the Organ Forum for Hammond Oil by typing Hammond Oil site:organforum.com into Google. The drawback here is that unlike the Forum's search engine, the results are returned without containing context and may be in the thousands making it difficult the locate the precise answer one is looking for.

Similar Threads

Under the list of posts in a thread is box containing suggestions for other threads that have related posts. Useful, but often overlooked by users.

Tags & Ratings

When tags are consistantly used by users they can become a powerful and rapid way of locating information on the Forum. Although any viewer of a thread has the capability of adding tags to it, most threads remain untagged because users are either too lazy or unware of the feature. Likewise, thread ratings provide a cue to those threads containing useful information as opposed to those containing garbage. As with tags, any viewer can contribute a rating to a thread, but few bother to do so.

Sticky Threads

Sticky threads in topics almost solve the problem of providing a repository of knowledge, but they have the limitations of being in the format of post, needing moderator intervention to create, and the lack of editability. Some users regard sticky threads as an annoyance while others find them less than concise due to their threaded nature.

FAQs

The Forum supports the creation of multiple specialized FAQs but have the drawback of needing to be created, edited and managed by moderators.

THE ORGAN FORUM WIKI

After looking at all of the above options, the decision was made to add a Wiki to the Organ Forum. Although most Internet users are aware of Wikipedia, they might not be aware that it derives its name from the fact that it is structured as a Wiki.

A wiki (ⁱ/ˈwɪkiː/ WIK-ee) is a website whose users can add, modify, or delete its content via a web browser using a simplified markup language or a rich-text editor.^[1][2][3] Wikis are powered by wiki software.

Although participants in discussion forums such as the Organ Forum are adding content via web browser, a Wiki organizes data as articles, rather than discussion threads, and provides greater ability to organize, format, link, edit, and manage data. Wiki content is generated by those in the community that have interest in sharing their knowlege and experience with others.


Over the next several weeks we will be setting up the Organ Forum Wiki. Once implemented, members of the Organ Forum will be able to create new articles for the Wiki as well as contribute to and edit existing ones. The Wiki will be seamlessly integrated into the existing Forum software which means that registered Organ Forum users automatically are registered users with privileges of the Wiki and the Wiki and its contents is fully accessable from within the Organ Forum. Wiki articles will include a place for comments and discussion of the article and will be fully searchable through the Forum's search engine as well as third party search providers such as Google and Bing.

During the integration period of the next several weeks, you may notice topics, articles, pages and other Wiki related artifacts appearing and disapperaing as we experiment with layouts and organization. We'll let you know when the Wiki is officially open for business. In the meantime, as always, we welcome your questions, suggestions and comments regarding the Organ Forum Wiki and have set up a discussion for that purpose.

See here: http://www.organforum.com/forums/for...nd-Suggestions


It is our hope that addition of the Wiki to this site will make it more useful than ever to the organ community. The Organ Forum would not be possible without the contribution of those who contribute their time and knowlege here and for that we are greatful.