The links at the top of this daily weblog are currently as follows:
I’m not quite happy with that setup. The PROJECTS, DOCS, and CODE links point to stuff I’m working on and sharing through this site, but there’s a bit of a disconnect with what others are doing. It’d be nice to be able to maintain a list with other projects derived from (or perhaps just inspired by) the ones at Jee Labs. Likewise, the code I’m kicking into the world is only part of the story – what about changes and extensions by others? Or sample code? Wouldn’t it be nice to have everything available in a single place?
And then there’s the somewhat confusing separation between the TALK discussion forums and the WIKI pages. Both of them intended to help people share and exchange articles, code, images, etc.
Lastly, TALK is of course about asking questions, but wouldn’t it be nice to tie in much more to the pages to which these questions apply, and to have the answers easily reachable from those same pages?
I’d like to try something new. Better get it over with early on, and benefit as soon as possible from an improved community exchange site.
Meet the new experimental Forum + Wiki site:
This is a unified forum + wiki setup. That concept in itself risks being so confusing that I’ve decided to start a Guidelines page to describe what I’m trying to do.
Will it work? I don’t know. Let’s review this a few weeks from now …
The trouble with a site change like this is that it’s going to be disruptive. Especially since I’m not yet 100% sold on adopting the above site and throwing out the current forum and wiki.
The current plan is to proceed as follows:
- Allow everyone to explore and try out the new site, which is now public at http://test.jeelabs.org/
- Keep the current forum and wiki links on this weblog intact for another week or two.
- If the new test site is deemed effective, make it the default one.
- Create read-only archived versions of the forum and wiki for reference.
- Enjoy the new site, make it rock, and move on!
I hope this works out. Let me know what you think, especially if there is any show-stopper or other issue!
I have looked at the new Wiki and it is exactly what was missing for us newbies at this platform. I spent weeks trying to make sens of bits and pieces of information stored “all over the place” in the old structure. I accidentaly reinvented parts other already worked on. Some information (eg. RF driver) existed in many versions and some of them deprecated w/o notice. This mess must been even harder for user whiteout knowledge of Arduion. What’s needed now is a collaborative effort to move all documentation from the old site to the new one and checking it for accuracy to new soft-wear versions at the same time.
Do not misunderstand me, I now that the old stuff grove organic and this is NOT criticism of the authors of that information it is just a hip, hip hurray fort the future!!!
I think that if everything is organized in a single place it will be much easier. One of the things that is essential is to be notified when someone writes a reply to one of your posts, wiki page change, etc. I interact / collaborate in several wikis, blogs, open projects and without notifications you can easily zap some important information.
Agreed, both comments. I’m still not convinced by the new setup, the Wikodot site has some quirks, but it’s definitely very powerful and I think it has all the notification mechanisms needed.