Wiki vs stack overflow vs future directions
Added 2018-01-29 23:12:13 +0000 UTCFirst of all, I'm amazed at the update in people supporting me; something happened in the last month or two where there's been a tipping point, and growth is starting to get exponential. Don't know if it'll last, and its still not enough to quit my day job (far from it), but still, wow, thanks everyone for being awesome!
Next, I've been feeling the wiki is getting a bit messy. I can't do tags, the page load times are getting enormous, its not easy to see when things get updated, all the usual teething problems with wikis.
I've felt for a while that a stack overflow style thing would be better, last night I had a look around, and spent an hour installing one of the more popular clones, question2answer. I had a checklist in my mind of the minimum feature set (gifs of course, image upload, file upload, syntax highlighting), and then all the benefits from a SO style site (tags, voting, good search, fast access etc).
Managed to get most of the things I wanted running, test site is here:
So, my question to all you folk is, do you think this is worth pursuing? And in what format? I can see this having several options:
-Move all the wiki content over, properly tag it, it becomes the new home for cgwiki. I turn off all all the external user things, so its a QnA for just me, but easier for others to access (or is it?)
-move the wiki content over, make it public access, so it becomes a general QnA site for houdini for everyone. Becomes tricky in terms of patreon support, but hopefully somewhat self maintaining re good answers get upvoted, bad ones downvoted, I rule it with an iron fist.
-move the wiki content over, but limit the users to just you folk, my lovely patreon supporters. its publicly readable, but only supporters get to login and ask and answer questions.
-all the above options, but don't move the content over, it just becomes its own thing
-get sidefx or odforce to install this instead, now that I've proven its not difficult to do. :)
So, what do you think? It'd be a big task, and if its gonna piss more people off than it'll help, I won't touch it, but curious to hear your opinions.
Cheers
-matt
Comments
While the QnA approach might provide some interesting opportunities that i am not fully aware of, i have grown to be very fond of the Wiki page. I feel it is like a comforting tome of knowledge that i can always rely on, a place where i can easily dive to search for a specific problem and on the way more often then not i find other interesting techniques that keep me motivated to learn more each day. The structure of the wiki feels like a proper exercise book wich should accompany the manual - while the QnA format feels a lot more loose
Dorin Croitoru
2018-01-30 08:50:13 +0000 UTC