I just need to fix the template for that section, right now it’s pretty nasty with hardcoded colors and doesn’t work on mobile. Didn’t want to fight the templating system for hours so I went with a simple solution until I figure it out, then it will fix every page that uses that template.
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I now have everything by LMNC documented on the wiki:
You’ll see that I put in a lot more effort than simply doing a straight import of Kosmodulargrid.
Next, I’ll do other creators, then I’ll make a proper thread to announce the wiki, and will tag every creator to give them a chance to review their entries.
Let me know what you think, but as I mentioned before, let’s avoid the pointless bikeshedding.
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One minor, hopefully not bikeshedding, thought: Sam’s modules are on pages with titles like “1007 MIDI-CV” and “1113 Performance Filter”. My clock is on a page titled “Analog Output Clock”. Should there be more standardization of the page titles, such as “[Creator] [Model #] [Name]”?
That’s because “Clock” is a generic name that could lead to collisions!
I specifically mention it as an example here: Contribution guide - Kosmo Modules Wiki
(Edit: Actually, I realized by accident that our theme displays things in parentheses differently in titles, so I took advantage of the feature and now changed the convention)
Thanks for doing the work on this. The thing that’s most important for me is the ‘overview’ page - I like to browse the whole database looking for fun stuff to make.
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That one’s gonna take a bit of manual labor to make, MediaWiki isn’t so good at it! Having a complex databases would require extensions such as Cargo or Semantic Media Wiki, and at the scale of our database, it’d be ultra-overengineering zone.
I definitely want us to have a quick gallery of modules that’s easy to browse, and that makes it easy to figure out how you can (or can’t) acquire the module.
One feature Kosmodulargrid has that’d be very hard to have is filtering by multiple characteristics (e.g., show only modules that are 10 cm wide by TimMJN)… but frankly, we just don’t have enough modules it’s that important.
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I think this is a fabulous system to have in place. I’d never heard of Miraheze before. I did help run a site that incorporated MediaWiki but to be honest hardly touched the thing - don’t think I’d be much use to you in that regard. It seems like an excellent fit for the kind of templated information that synth modules tend to have.
I’m happy to help enter modules once it’s ready for general consumption and I’m sure others would too, so don’t feel you have to do all the hard work yourself.
Some thoughts/discussion points:
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Is there some kind of admin or moderation system like on Wikipedia? Curious as to how we would prevent vandalism/bot spam. We’re not a huge community and with the amount of modules we have, it’s likely some pages will go unvisited for a while.
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I feel that it’s somewhat counterproductive to have both a forum thread and a wiki talk page for each module. Could we potentially disable/restrict the talk feature? Would this hinder collaboration of editing wiki pages themselves?
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Miraheze appears to support custom domains. Repurposing kosmodulargrid.com could be an option. Then again I suppose it makes the site rely on one or two people to be in charge of the domain (look what happened to KiCad).
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(getting into bikeshed territory, feel free to ignore)
It would be cool to have a visual carousel of new modules on the front page like TinyCat does. That’d probably need some kind of custom plugin. I think making the front page more visual would draw the user in and encourage them to browse modules they wouldn’t otherwise encounter.
Really looking forward to seeing how this turns out.
I think the wiki talk page is useful for discussing edits. If it veers off into discussion of the modules themselves, builds, etc., people could be gently encouraged to move that discussion here.
I would not expect there to be a huge amount of legitimate editing going on, small enough that a couple of people subscribed to all pages (is that an easy thing to do?) could keep watch for vandalism without being inundated with bona fide edits.
Can editing be restricted to (moderator approved) wiki members while leaving viewing open to anyone?
I really insist to seed it all by myself for now for two reasons:
- Avoid wasted energy and pointless debates on how to do things then never get them done, when I could spend that energy on actually getting done something that’s 80% as close as what everyone wanted (I changed my mind multiple times how to implement things already - with zero effort wasted on coordinating those changes)
- If I just spin up an empty wiki and announce it in a new thread, it will be dead on arrival. But if it’s well-seeded people don’t have to put in much effort to keep it going forever, even if I were to disappear from the community.
Speaking of which, I’ve added most of the Analog Output modules today.
I’m planning to start with as few security features as possible then ramp it up if necessary. We can absolutely lock things down to the point you need to confirm your identity on the forums to be allowed to edit. But let’s see if we have a problem before we start fixing it. By default, there’s already a lot of invisible anti-abuse herustics done for us by Miraheze.
Yes, the about page absolutely makes it clear it’s not meant to be a social site, or to host in-depth documentation. The purpose of the wiki is to send you away from it to offsite resources ASAP. But I don’t think disabling talk pages is necessary - if people use them to ask for help with a build we can just tell them to use the forums instead.
We’re not locked into the current URL, but if we use a domain, the community now depends on a single person to remember to pay for it every year.
Planning on it! And also random / featured modules. And also random/featured racks.
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One thing I’d really like for the wiki is not just to be used to show off modules you can build, but to also to show user’s builds. Directly on the module pages, a gallery of builds of it. Gives social proof the Kosmo ecosystem exists at all, provides the satisfaction to creators they’re not sharing this stuff for nothing.
More philosophically, I’m reminded of how, in Imperial China, calligraphy enthusiasts would have “Collector’s Seals”, which they would use to stamp in red the works they would acquire. It was far from being considered an act of defacing, in fact, a work being stamped by a famous collector could increase its value. I feel it has a lot of parallels with how we operate and value each other’s work.
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That’s something I like about sites like Printables, if I can see photos of others’ builds and their comments about building it, it gives me more to go on than just the maker’s necessarily biased view…
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This. Also, I am much more like to build something (especially off a schematic) if it has been tried and tested, and comes with a guide as to what to look for, etc.
The social proof goes both ways. As far as I’m concerned, the real value is in proving to people who take the time to share resources and information that people actually make use of their work.
If you don’t normalize telling creators their work was appreciated, they will only hear from users when stuff breaks. It’s discouraging.
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A little demo of index pages and the reworked module page design, present only on the TimMJN modules for now:
You’ll see I favor ease of editing at the cost of complex templates and css techniques. It should also be mobile-friendly.
(Sadly, supporting the light color scheme seems not to work - or at least I don’t plan to spend more time attempting it.)
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