A Modest Proposal

[hrothgar]

Much as I like the BBO Forums, I've started to recognize some severe limitations with the forum organizational model. The forums are a great system for interactive discussions regarding various contemporary topics. However, the forum structure is a miserable mechanism to permanently store and organize information. The search tools are primitive at best. The organization hierarchy is very limited. As a result, I worry that a lot of really good content is getting lost. For example, Inquiry wrote a really good series of articles on “Squeezes”. I doubt that many new members of the Forums realize that all of this information is buried back in the dank recesses of some directory structure. In a similar vein, MikeH wrote some nice articles on Reverses. Here, once again, I'd like to see some mechanism to preserve this information for posterity. I would argue that the best way to proceed would be to use a “Wiki” to complement the Forums. The Forums would still be available as a vehicle for real time debate, however, the Wiki would provide a permanent location to store and organization information. (If anyone isn't used to Wikis www.wikipedia.org is an excellent introduction to the whole concept). Long term, I'd love to see a Bridge Wiki supplant many of the more traditional publishing mechanisms. For example, my understanding is that the ACBL loses money on its “Encyclopedia of Bridge”. I'd love to see them simply release the material into the public domain and use this as seed crystal for creating a comprehensive Bridge Wiki.

 

In theory, there are three different ways that one could go about creating a Bridge Wiki:

 

Option1: Piggyback off of the Wikipedia. The Wikipedia is the first, the largest, and arguably the best Wiki on the web right now. The Wikipedia already contains “Stub” entries for bridge (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Contract_bridge). In theory, the BBO forums community could descend en-mass and start building out the Wiki. There are some big “Pros” associated with this implementation scheme. The two most important are the cost of implementation (zero) and the size of the existing user base. However, there are also some problems jumping on to an existing project. The Wikipedia is controlled by a third party, which could lead to issues surrounding editorial policy or project direction. Equally significant, the Wikipedia is support an awful lot of information besides bridge. Our information would be lost in the shuffle. Personally, I would argue that we'd get more traction if we started our own project and then mirrored our information into the Wikipedia at some later point in time.

 

Option 2: BBO installs and hosts its own Wiki server. BBO already maintains a number of servers. There's a lot of good Wiki software out there. In theory, BBO could add a Wiki system on to its existing web server. I spent a fair amount of time researching different Wiki packages. PmWiki (http://pmwiki.org/wiki) looks to be a good choice. The software is free, in wide use, and has a loyal following. The primary weakness of PmWiki is that it doesn't have a WYSISYG integrated in to the package, however, there are lots of good third party editors available.

 

Option 3: Outsource the project to a third party. There are a number of companies that make a living hosting third party Wikis. Some of these are free and advertising driven. Others charge for the service.

 

In a none-too-surprising development, there is a pretty good wiki on creating new wikis. http://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/Wiki_Science:...to_start_a_Wiki

 

My own take is that option 3 is probably the best choice in the short run. However, we'd want to make sure to preserve the option to transfer the Wiki to some other hosting model. Ideally, I was hoping that anyone interested in this type of project might be willing to checkout some of the different services listed on the “How to start a Wiki” page and provide feedback on which formats and sites that they like.

[inquiry]

I am a fan of the Wiki concept. One problem is "spammers" and "vandals". As long as you have a small wiki, this is not too big of a problem, but if it becomes larger, well then problems exist. We had similar problems in this forum and eventually had to go to a model where you had to register with a BBO nickname to be able to post.

 

The wiki model allows anyone to post and to edit exisiting post. So for example, a recent wikipedia entry on the Florida gators winning the basketball championship was essentially deleted and a vile profanity laced discussion of the florida team and its players was subsituted in by a vandal. Questions about how to avoid this, of course, would be of great concern if such a site was run on bbo servers or somehow had bbo name associated with it in some official capicity.

[pbleighton]

No objection to a wiki, but here's a short-term solution which I believe wouldn't require any programming effort:

 

Establish a new folder Hall Of Fame Posts, which would be a sibling of General Bridge Discussion. It would have a fairly large number of subfolders on various topics, such as Basic Declarer Play, Advanced Declarer Play, Basic Standard Bidding In Uncontested Auctions, Strong Club Bidding, etc. Posts would be moved to the appropriate subfolder by BBO personnel. Forum members could nominate posts for Hall Of Fame status by messaging Ben, etc.

 

Peter

[cherdano]

I also think a wiki would be great. To work well, it would require someone to write a few plugins to enable bridge hands layout, though.

 

As a help to get good posts on this forum more attention: some forum software allows users to give "stars" or ratings to posts they find excellent. I think that would be great for BBF, but I don't know whether (this verions of) Invision PowerBoard allows it.

[helene_t]

I like Peter's proposal, but maybe a more flexible way of achieving essentially the same would be to improve on the search feature, taking "fame" into account.

 

Many on-line forums have a rating feature, by which you can express your liking of a post. Then the search mechanism can sort search results based on number of thump-ups.

 

Also, the search mechanism should be able to find individual posts, not just threads. It's impossible to find a book review, since all you will get is the "Book reviews" thread which is some 25 pages.

 

As for the Wiki thing, I think it would be a good idea if we all considered making Wikipedia entries out of it once something has crystallized out of a thread. I think the purpose of this forum is different from that of a Wiki - here, I can write all kind of subjective, sarcastic and half-thought-through stuff which may be of some interest to fellow BBFers who know me. On Wikipedia, I would only write about those limited issues that I really know something about, and stick to a much dryer writing style.

 

I could be wrong, though. I don't know too much about the Wiki technology. Maybe its scope is much wider than I think.

[cherdano]

Also, the search mechanism should be able to find individual posts, not just threads. It's impossible to find a book review, since all you will get is the "Book reviews" thread which is some 25 pages.

It can do this. Just click on "Show results as posts" in the lower right.

[ArcLight]

>As a help to get good posts on this forum more attention: some forum software allows users to give "stars" or ratings to posts they find excellent. I think that would be great for BBF, but I don't know whether (this verions of) Invision PowerBoard allows it.

 

I like this idea, if its possible.

[TylerE]

I am a fan of the Wiki concept. One problem is "spammers" and "vandals". As long as you have a small wiki, this is not too big of a problem, but if it becomes larger, well then problems exist. We had similar problems in this forum and eventually had to go to a model where you had to register with a BBO nickname to be able to post.

 

The wiki model allows anyone to post and to edit exisiting post. So for example, a recent wikipedia entry on the Florida gators winning the basketball championship was essentially deleted and a vile profanity laced discussion of the florida team and its players was subsituted in by a vandal. Questions about how to avoid this, of course, would be of great concern if such a site was run on bbo servers or somehow had bbo name associated with it in some official capicity.

The ideal situation would be to have the forums and wiki both driven off the BBO login accounts. Most of the major wiki packages support required registration for editing, and tying the the registration in with the BBO database shouldn't be too difficult.