# Wiki Threads



## jayoungr (Sep 16, 2019)

Are they still a thing?


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## robus (Sep 16, 2019)

Was just coming to ask the same thing


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## Morrus (Sep 16, 2019)

No, they were an unsupported hack of vBulletin.


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## robus (Sep 16, 2019)

That's too bad, they were a neat feature.


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## robus (Sep 16, 2019)

@jayoungr - looks like you're on the hook for updating those 'Enhancing' thread indexes!


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## jayoungr (Sep 16, 2019)

Pity!


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## jayoungr (Feb 11, 2020)

Reviving this thread to say that six months later, I'm really missing wiki threads.  Is there any way something similar could be revived?  I realize it probably can't be done on the forums themselves, but is there a way to make a wiki list of links etc. somewhere else on the site?  Anything?


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## Morrus (Feb 11, 2020)

We could start a separate EN World wiki using some hosted wiki service or something. This software itself doesn't include any wiki functionality.


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## Morrus (Feb 14, 2020)

Turns out there is a wiki plugin which creates a separate wiki with the forum powering the comments. But given how little the current Resources section is used, I’m hesitant to add another graveyard to the collection.


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## jayoungr (Feb 21, 2020)

Morrus said:


> Turns out there is a wiki plugin which creates a separate wiki with the forum powering the comments. But given how little the current Resources section is used, I’m hesitant to add another graveyard to the collection.



I get your point.  Maybe make a survey somewhere to see if anyone besides me has interest in it?

Alternatively, what about being able to tag posts or threads?  I know the Big Purple has that functionality, but I'm not sure how it works.


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## Morrus (Feb 24, 2020)

jayoungr said:


> Alternatively, what about being able to tag posts or threads?



What does that mean?


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## Umbran (Feb 24, 2020)

Morrus said:


> What does that mean?




On the previous boards, you could label a thread as beign for a particular edition - click on the label, and if filters to just posts about that edition.  That was a form of tagging.

Unfortunately, what users would probably want is_ freeform_ tagging, in which a user can type in whatever words they want to tag a post or topic for later filtering. In a large population freeform tagging quickly becomes a morass in which you can find nothing, as there's no consistency in the tags.


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## Morrus (Feb 24, 2020)

Umbran said:


> On the previous boards, you could label a thread as beign for a particular edition - click on the label, and if filters to just posts about that edition.  That was a form of tagging.



You can do that now!



> what users would probably want is_ freeform_ tagging, in which a user can type in whatever words they want to tag a post or topic for later filtering. In a large population freeform tagging quickly becomes a morass in which you can find nothing, as there's no consistency in the tags.



Ah yeah. We’ve done that in the past. It doesn’t work very well, as you say. 

Not sure how any of that replaces wiki threads though!


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## Umbran (Feb 24, 2020)

Morrus said:


> Not sure how any of that replaces wiki threads though!




It is a user-experience thing.

In theory, you can find everything with just plain search.  In practice, there's a whole lot of noise.  If you are looking for discussion, that's probably just fine - any thread on a given topic may be close enough for chatting in.

But, if you are looking to store and recall particular information, the general search is clumsy.  In theory, tags could make that easier.  In practice... tags would be a mess just like the rest of the content.


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## Morrus (Feb 24, 2020)

Umbran said:


> It is a user-experience thing.
> 
> In theory, you can find everything with just plain search.  In practice, there's a whole lot of noise.  If you are looking for discussion, that's probably just fine - any thread on a given topic may be close enough for chatting in.
> 
> But, if you are looking to store and recall particular information, the general search is clumsy.  In theory, tags could make that easier.  In practice... tags would be a mess just like the rest of the content.



The point about wiki threads isn't discoverability, it's the fact that everybody can edit them. They're used for collaborative projects. It's an entirely different thing to tags.


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## Umbran (Feb 24, 2020)

Morrus said:


> The point about wiki threads isn't discoverability, it's the fact that everybody can edit them. They're used for collaborative projects. It's an entirely different thing to tags.




Sure.  Whatever.


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## jayoungr (Feb 25, 2020)

Morrus said:


> The point about wiki threads isn't discoverability, it's the fact that everybody can edit them. They're used for collaborative projects. It's an entirely different thing to tags.



In particular, I'm kind of sad that we can't add to the "Best of the 5E forum" wiki thread anymore, except by posting.  That was probably the one that got the most use from multiple people.

The initial posts for the "Enhancing" threads were nice too.


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## Morrus (Mar 1, 2020)

I activated the wiki. It's empty right now, but here it is.









						Welcome to the EN World Wiki
					






					www.enworld.org


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## robus (Mar 2, 2020)

Morrus said:


> I activated the wiki. It's empty right now, but here it is.
> 
> 
> 
> ...




Looks like Wiki threads are back also? But perhaps it's not possible to convert a thread to a wiki thread? We have a bunch of enhancing threads that would love to be wiki-fied (but not by losing all the replies which is where the good stuff is...)


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## Morrus (Mar 2, 2020)

robus said:


> Looks like Wiki threads are back also? But perhaps it's not possible to convert a thread to a wiki thread? We have a bunch of enhancing threads that would love to be wiki-fied (but not by losing all the replies which is where the good stuff is...)



A wiki page and a wiki thread are the same thing in this software. I’m not ware of any function to convert a thread to a wiki page, but I’m as new to this as you are, so it might be there!


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## robus (Mar 2, 2020)

Morrus said:


> A wiki page and a wiki thread are the same thing in this software. I’m not ware of any function to convert a thread to a wiki page, but I’m as new to this as you are, so it might be there!



Ah OK


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## jayoungr (Mar 3, 2020)

Hooray, wikis are back!


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## Morrus (Mar 3, 2020)

jayoungr said:


> Hooray, wikis are back!



Let's hope it gets used! Took a lot of work to get working!


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## jayoungr (Mar 3, 2020)

For the "Enhancing" threads, I think the easiest thing would be to make a new wiki page for each and then just add a link to it in the opening post for each thread.  I created most of them, so I can edit those in pretty easily in most cases.


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## Morrus (Mar 3, 2020)

I think there may be a manual workaround by merging threads. The original post would need to be copied to a wiki page, and a fresh discussion thread started. Then I would have to merge that with the original thread.

I haven’t tried this. Might be worth an experiment to see if it works.


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## Morrus (Mar 7, 2020)

So, uh.... anybody actually gonna use this after all that hullabaloo?


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## robus (Mar 23, 2020)

Morrus, I made a boo-boo in the wiki while trying to make a wiki thread. This wiki page: Enhancing Dragon of Icespire Peak should be deleted (if it can). I didn’t immediately grok the process. I have since created the wiki thread post I wanted.


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## jayoungr (Mar 29, 2020)

Morrus said:


> So, uh.... anybody actually gonna use this after all that hullabaloo?



I fully intend to, but it happened just as I'm going into crazy season at work.  When I claw my way out of the pile, I'll figure out how to convert the old "enhancing" threads back to wikis.  Would you recommend I make a new wiki thread and have it merged?


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## jayoungr (May 12, 2020)

Morrus said:


> I think there may be a manual workaround by merging threads. The original post would need to be copied to a wiki page, and a fresh discussion thread started. Then I would have to merge that with the original thread.





robus said:


> Morrus, I made a boo-boo in the wiki while trying to make a wiki thread. This wiki page: Enhancing Dragon of Icespire Peak should be deleted (if it can). I didn’t immediately grok the process. I have since created the wiki thread post I wanted.



It's taken this long, but I have a little bit of room to breathe and think about remaking old theads again.  I feel like taking on the project of restoring wikis for the previous "enhancing" adventure threads.  Would one of you be willing to post a step-by-step list of instructions so that I don't make whatever mistake Robus just made?


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## robus (May 12, 2020)

jayoungr said:


> It's taken this long, but I have a little bit of room to breathe and think about remaking old theads again.  I feel like taking on the project of restoring wikis for the previous "enhancing" adventure threads.  Would one of you be willing to post a step-by-step list of instructions so that I don't make whatever mistake Robus just made?



I'm trying to remember what I did, but you definitely don't start with a thread post! Create a wiki page and the page + any "discussion" becomes the thread. What I'm forgetting is how the page gets connected to the right forum.... Once the thread shows up you can tag it with the wiki moniker (but that's purely for forum readers - it has no magic "wiki" effect.)


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## Morrus (May 12, 2020)

Yeah, you go to the wiki and create it there. You can't create it from the forum itself.


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