Improving the wiki

[Brandnewfatboy]

Now that the forum has had a makeover – and is much improved – I’d like to suggest that the wiki has some TLC.

 

A few ideas how it could be improved:

 

Deleting the spam

Half the pages on the wiki are now spam. I’ve grouped them into a Bilge category – 115 pages to date, out of 212 total. They’re not really doing any harm I suppose, but the All pages page shows how cluttered it’s getting.

 

A few weeks ago, there was also a burst of new, clearly spam-related user accounts created. Which didn’t then appear to do anything. Oddness.

 

Stopping spam

Not really sure how successful anti-spam measures can be. We have a wiki at work, but it’s internal so spam isn’t really an issue.

 

Mediawiki manual discusses various ways of Combating spam. I suspect that no method, even in combination, is infallible, but could reduce the chance of the wiki being a spammer target.

 

More administrators

Just as the forum is benefiting from an array of moderators, I think the wiki would benefit from having more administrators. Having another 1 or 2 would help with deleting spam pages and spam users, and with other stuff that has slightly cryptic descriptions but is probably useful (!)

 

If there can be more administrators, I’d like to nominate RobJ.

 

Images

The wiki would really benefit from pictures. For example, images of hardware would help to show what Rajahal’s recommended builds look like, or what certain components look like, while annotated screenshots of the web interface would be really useful to new users.

 

It may be that it’s not wise to allow all users to upload images, due to the potential for spam abuse. But perhaps a few users, in addition to administrators, could be given upload rights.

 

Updated homepage

There was a comment from Tom a while ago about the GUI being important because it's the face of unRAID.

 

Equally, the wiki is how unRAID documentation is presented to the world, and at the moment its homepage is a bit dry and unappealing. Could do with a refresh.

 

A rather more elegant equivalent is the Networked Media Tank Wiki. Am not necessarily suggesting that the unRAID wiki copies this look or approach – there may be other wiki ways that are even better. Would be very interested to see them if so.

 

If the homepage is updated, it would still be important to be clear what is ‘official’ and ‘unofficial’.

 

[limetech]

Thank you for your interest in TLC for the wiki and I am exploring options for how to proceed with it.

 

As of a few days ago, I got rid of the registration capability - all new users now have to request an account.  This will help a bit, but doesn't do anything to address current spam pages and spam user accounts.

 

In researching this problem, it turns out that MediaWiki was a poor choice of platform.  This is because it really has no effective way to address spam.  Amazingly there is also no way to delete existing users and pages (!).  This is because MediaWiki is designed for public wikis which are self-monitoring (that is, a large user base can take on tasks such as spam removal).  Along with that, once a page is created, it's there forever - again a nice feature for a public wiki such as Wikipedia for which it was designed.

 

Of course one could go into the MySql database using a tool such as myphpadmin and start deleting spam users, etc.  But the MediaWiki documentation warns against doing this because of cross-linking.  Also, it's not very easy to identify specific pages in the database.

 

What I would really like is to have a wiki integrated with the forum.  This way there could be a common registration system.  And what-do-you-know, there is such a project: http://smfwiki.net/

 

Unfortunately virtually all my effort at the present time is toward getting 5.0-beta3 out (and prior to that 4.7 "final"), and I just haven't had time to investigate what it will take to get SMF Wiki up and running, and how difficult it will be to transfer existing wiki content over.  I do know it will require upgrading the forum software itself from present 1.1.12 version to 2.0-rc4.

 

So my plan is this:

a) get 5.0-beta3 done

b) take a snapshot of current forum and test upgrade to 2.0 on a test forum.

c) install SMF Wiki and find out what are the capabilities and import capability.

d) upgrade main forum with SMF Wiki installed

e) if necessary, recruit volunteers to move content over

f) toss MediaWiki into the trash bin

 

If anyone out there has experience with SMF Wiki, please let me know your experiences!

[limetech]

Also found this:

http://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Extension:SMF/Users_Integration

 

Kinda old though 

[kizer]

Looks like currently SMF Wiki only supports version 2.0 RC3

http://download.smfwiki.net/index.php

 

I have a spare domain we could install 2.0 RC3 and media wiki on and play with it some if you would like to for some beating up purposes.

[Spectrum]

I don't have any experience with smfwiki, but I'll throw my name in the hat for wiki work regardless of the platform.  I know I am relatively new to the unRAID community, but I hope I've been helpful so far and would like to contribute more going forward even if it is just cleaning up old docs and organizing.

[limetech]

Ok... all the spam pages are deleted... on to the spam users...

[RobJ]

I took a look at SmfWiki, and I'll be honest, it's rather depressing.  The project looks very immature so far, with little commitment behind it.  Documentation is incredibly sparse, just compare the Syntax page with the MediaWiki Formatting and Links page for example.

 

The thing I immediately could not find is any mention of external links, and that is huge!  Mostly my own fault, but our wiki lives and dies with external links to the forums.  Without them, you would have to throw out the FAQ, Best of the Forums, the Topical Index, etc, and would seriously cripple many other pages.  Obviously, SmfWiki may have external links, and just have not documented them yet, so whoever decides to try it out, please test this first.

 

There is also no mention at all of users, or a registration process, or any administration at all, or integration with an SMF forum.  Perhaps it is there, but there is no evidence of it, that I could see.

 

The extension that integrates MediaWiki and SMF seems more promising to me.  It *is* old, but old is fine, if it does the job.

[prostuff1]

I have not looked at this extensively as of yet but I did find this in a quick search.

 

When I get some more time I will do some more looking.

[lionelhutz]

Images

The wiki would really benefit from pictures. For example, images of hardware would help to show what Rajahal’s recommended builds look like, or what certain components look like, while annotated screenshots of the web interface would be really useful to new users.

 

I'm hoping for images. I want to add some share/split level info but I really only want to do it with the use of visual aids.

 

Peter

 

[bubbaQ]

This is because it really has no effective way to address spam.  Amazingly there is also no way to delete existing users and pages (!).

 

Don't be so fast to pull that trigger.... Like the SMF forum software, there are a number of addins for MediaWiki do deal with things like that.

[limetech]

I took a look at SmfWiki, and I'll be honest, it's rather depressing.  The project looks very immature so far, with little commitment behind it.  Documentation is incredibly sparse, just compare the Syntax page with the MediaWiki Formatting and Links page for example.

 

The thing I immediately could not find is any mention of external links, and that is huge!  Mostly my own fault, but our wiki lives and dies with external links to the forums.  Without them, you would have to throw out the FAQ, Best of the Forums, the Topical Index, etc, and would seriously cripple many other pages.  Obviously, SmfWiki may have external links, and just have not documented them yet, so whoever decides to try it out, please test this first.

 

There is also no mention at all of users, or a registration process, or any administration at all, or integration with an SMF forum.  Perhaps it is there, but there is no evidence of it, that I could see.

 

The extension that integrates MediaWiki and SMF seems more promising to me.  It *is* old, but old is fine, if it does the job.

 

Yes, I've ruled out SMF Wiki.  I found a newer MediaWiki extension that interfaces to the SMF forum user table.

[limetech]

Wiki Progress so far...

 

Managed to delete all the spam pages - thanks to fatboy for identifying these and tagging with Bilge - saved me a lot of time!

 

Managed to delete all the specific-user pages, but have not deleted all the spam user accounts.

 

However.. login to the Wiki is now tied to the forum login.  That is, if you are logged into the Forum then you are automatically logged into the Wiki, and logging out of either logs you out of both.  So those existing spammers won't be able to log in (I think).

 

Also enabled file upload (for images).

[BRiT]

Nice work on the Wiki so far even if it meant some delay in the 5.0 beta 3 release ... hopefully things will improve with the account tie-in to the forums so spammers won't have such an open ride.

[limetech]

Nice work on the Wiki so far even if it meant some delay in the 5.0 beta 3 release ... hopefully things will improve with the account tie-in to the forums so spammers won't have such an open ride.

 

Yes I need to start publishing documentation for 5.0, which means I needed to come to a conclusion on the wiki.

 

BTW - during the (unsuccessful) effort to get rid of the spam user accounts, I deleted all the user wiki pages.  If you need your page restored, it pretty simple for me or another moderator to do... just post request in this thread.

[Brandnewfatboy]

Marvellous clean-up job of the wiki!

 

There are two spam articles that had escaped deletion - spammers had cheekily edited their Bilge category tags into a link to an online pharmacy of dubious origin. They're now back in Bilge

 

Many thanks for enabling file upload for images. Have done a quick test and it works a treat

 

 

 

[limetech]

There are two spam articles that had escaped deletion - spammers had cheekily edited their Bilge category tags into a link to an online pharmacy of dubious origin. They're now back in Bilge

 

Amazing.  Looking at the page history, they did this during a small window of time between when I deleted all the existing spam pages, and set up login to go through SMF user database.  This should not happen again unless the spammer has a dormant forum account (which is possible).