A thread to discuss naming threads, board policy, new thread suggestions, and anything else that has to do with board administration and maintenance. Guaranteed to include lively debate and polls. Natter discouraged, but not deleted.
Current Stompy Feet: Jon B, P.M. Marcontell, Liese S., amych, msbelle, shrift, Dana, Laura
Stompy Emerita: ita, DXMachina
I'd be for the wiki idea, if there's some software that doesn't make ita's head spin. A wiki would actually be a better way of capturing Buffista culture than the FAQ.
In a wiki, any Buffista could enter information. For example, a Buffista could cut and paste a series of posts about nail polish into the "Nail Polish" category. Later, some compulsive editor Buffista reading about nail polish might edit out the non-nail polish parts. A third Buffista could think "This nail polish entry needs a list of the best black nail polishes." She could post in Natter or wherever, "I'm collecting the names of the best black nail polishes." Then people could make suggestions in the thread or go straight to the wiki.
The problems I see with its being a COMM-like thread are that some of these useful conversations go on for many posts and the thread could rapidly become a mass of stuff that's not really an improvement in terms of finding what you're looking for.
I can see a thread definitely getting unmanageable quickly. A wiki, though, sound like it's tailor-made for us. We talk! And we write, a lot. I'm sure we'd have more than enough people willing to contribute to it to make it truly useful.
Ginger's description of a wiki makes it sound really appealing.
A good example of why single authentication would be important is TVTropes. It used to be kind of a Buffista wiki, now it's not. Which isn't a problem in and of itself, but it's an example of how without a single login for both sites, a Buffista Advice Wiki runs a pretty high risk of turning into something else. It only takes one high-profile link.
I think a thread might work because people would do it.
If it's a thread here, people can tag/describe the subject, and link directly to the original discussion. If there's follow-up or context, it's right there, and nobody needs to be curator/editor. It's more index-y, I guess. So it'd be something like:
Pete asked about low-maintenance houseplants: Pete, Husband of Jilli "Natter 60: Gone In 60 Seconds" Jul 29, 2008 6:33:42 pm PDT
(Responses follow till #417.)
Since the search function already picks up text in the posts
This is another thing that might make quoting entire posts/conversations problematic...
And if we're really clever, someone can maintain an index post. Or maybe summarize a week's worth or a month's worth of posts at a time, like they used to do in some threads back at Table Talk. (Other people's threads, not ours.)
Oh god. Didn't we kerfuffle about that back in the day?
No, that was digesting all of Natter.
Thing 1: I really don't see a thread working because it has the same problem as finding the same useful information in the actual useful information threads where it originally appeared -- threads are sequential, and I'm not looking for advice on troubleshooting my wireless dog at the time it scrolls by; I'll probably remember next week that I saw something recently; but if I'm looking for it 5 years from now -- or even more, if I'm looking for "does the hive mind have anything to say about thing X, with which I'm not familiar enough to come up with great search terms" rather than "where was that thing that Scola said about Linksys wireless dog networks?", I'm pretty much kerfucked.
Thing 2: Nobody (or no small group) should be asked to maintain an index by hand. Way, way, way too much to ask, and if the project is dependent on having a good index, it's much too likely to lose steam when one person gets busy for just a few weeks. Crowdsourced or nothin'
Thing 3: Buffistas only, because of What Jess Said. It's fine if it's browsable if you're not logged in, but no edits except through a Buffistas.org login. Single sign-on, and appearing in the navigation links or footer or some such place that it's integrated into the site. It has to be a part of us and not off somewhere out of sight if it's to work at all.
Thing 3b: ALL Buffistas. Dreamwidth won't work (aside from the sequential thing; the possibility of tagging somewhat fixes that but not totally) because we're not all there, and those of us who are there don't all have the same identities, and those of us who are there don't all have the same
personas
whether we have the same names or not because it's a different community over there and that's awesome but it's not part of this space. The Hive Mind Repository Of All Universal Wisdom should be available to anyone who's a member
here,
as easily as going and dropping a link back to a discussion. (We may very well find that some awesome lurkerbrarians are too shy to speak up in thread but would happily do their bookmarking in email public.)
I can see a wiki working. I can also see something like a rewrite of the bookmark system to allow something delicious-like, with public bookmarks and tagging and really good search. But please not a thread.
