Bananas.org - View Single Post

MediaHound · 03-13-2007, 12:02 PM

It's nice to see this thread because I really enjoy reading feedback about the website.
First, to address the speed issue, I'm aware that there have been moments lately when the site has become unresponsive. This is a shared server, sometimes other websites get busy and so the load starts to impact other sites. I'm watching things pretty close to see if we need to make any changes here because of it. The only thing I can suggest that everyone do to save some frustration, and I do this all the time when I surf the web, is before submitting some text that you wrote to whatever website you are on, copy all that text to your clipboard or paste it into notepad before you hit submit. This will prevent you from having to retype a well thought out post if it was an unsucessful attempt. There's no way to tell till you hit submit what will happen to all those words. In the time that it took you to write the post, the website that was previously ticking like a clock could have went offline and so new tasks submitted to it get lost in space. Without getting too technical here, just please take the advice to copy your text somewhere safe before you hit the submit button. Anywhere, any website.

Secondly, now that the wiki is up and running (it is, after all, still very new), we have identified the things that will be the main challenges.
Mainly, I think the wiki has a huge learning curve. It's a little confusing and requires a little time to learn how it operates. But as we all spend a little bit of time here and there with it, we all get better at it, and feel more comfortable using it. And thats when it starts to become more and more useful.
Another of the main challenges is the customization aspect. I would like to see a certain structure given to all the pages and as time goes by, change a few small things here and there till we finally get the picture of whats needed and whats not needed in the wiki. For example, I setup a template to create pages about different cultivars. You can find the templates here:
http://www.bananas.org/wiki/Templates
I do envision a more robust system as far as that goes, but for now, this setup works great.
The third main challenge is organization. We need all the pages to link to each other in one way or another, like a tree structure so things are easy to find, but also where the branches overlap at the bottom. For example, this link generates a report of all the pages that do not yet link to other pages in the wiki:
http://www.bananas.org/wiki/Special:Deadendpages
These pages listed there would be helped out if some members would like to find some of them that can be linked together or linked to others that are already not dead enders. In other words, the idea here is to make sure that not a whole lot of pages are lost in space without bridges (links) to them.

Everyone can help out with the wiki in one way or another - even if you have nothing to say or feel shy about publishing your words in the wiki, you can still volunteer your time by houskeeping chores such as linking pages together or checking the task list found here:
http://www.bananas.org/wiki/Bananas_Wiki:Task_List

As far as the 11 or so links to Ae Ae, they all land at the same place.
They were created using redirects so that regardless of how one spells Ae Ae, they can still find the right place (and not create a seperate page thinking that one does not exist already). For anyone ever interested in learning about using redirects with the wiki software, I urge you to read up about them here: http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Redirect
The list of redirects we use in our wiki can be found here:
http://www.bananas.org/wiki/Special:Listredirects

I agree that we need a central place to list all the genus, species, and cultivars of the various banana plants. We already have a page dedicated the the genus Musa found here, it does have a list of species and cultivars are at the bottom:
http://www.bananas.org/wiki/Musa
The Ensete page is at
http://www.bananas.org/wiki/Ensete
so on and so forth...

I hope this gives more insight as to whats taking shape over at the wiki.
Thanks to everyone for your contributions and your help.

I do have some tasks I can delegate if anyone wants to send me a private message, I can get you going with some data we still need put into the wiki (thanks Joe Real and Agristarts and everyone else you know who you are)

Let's brainstorm the wiki some more so we can really get it setup properly and organized and useful for everyone.
The homepage to the wiki is at
http://www.bananas.org/wiki and if anyone even wants to change that page around feel free to!

03-13-2007, 12:02 PM	#12 (permalink)
MediaHound Tally-Man MediaHound's Photo Gallery Location: Florida Find me on the map! Zone: 10 Name: Jarred Join Date: Jul 2005 Posts: 5,260 BananaBucks : 1,991,577 Feedback: 66 / 100% Said "Thanks" 3,855 Times Was Thanked 5,078 Times in 1,352 Posts Said "Welcome to Bananas" 2,086 Times	Re: Who has trouble with the Wiki? It's nice to see this thread because I really enjoy reading feedback about the website. First, to address the speed issue, I'm aware that there have been moments lately when the site has become unresponsive. This is a shared server, sometimes other websites get busy and so the load starts to impact other sites. I'm watching things pretty close to see if we need to make any changes here because of it. The only thing I can suggest that everyone do to save some frustration, and I do this all the time when I surf the web, is before submitting some text that you wrote to whatever website you are on, copy all that text to your clipboard or paste it into notepad before you hit submit. This will prevent you from having to retype a well thought out post if it was an unsucessful attempt. There's no way to tell till you hit submit what will happen to all those words. In the time that it took you to write the post, the website that was previously ticking like a clock could have went offline and so new tasks submitted to it get lost in space. Without getting too technical here, just please take the advice to copy your text somewhere safe before you hit the submit button. Anywhere, any website. Secondly, now that the wiki is up and running (it is, after all, still very new), we have identified the things that will be the main challenges. Mainly, I think the wiki has a huge learning curve. It's a little confusing and requires a little time to learn how it operates. But as we all spend a little bit of time here and there with it, we all get better at it, and feel more comfortable using it. And thats when it starts to become more and more useful. Another of the main challenges is the customization aspect. I would like to see a certain structure given to all the pages and as time goes by, change a few small things here and there till we finally get the picture of whats needed and whats not needed in the wiki. For example, I setup a template to create pages about different cultivars. You can find the templates here: http://www.bananas.org/wiki/Templates I do envision a more robust system as far as that goes, but for now, this setup works great. The third main challenge is organization. We need all the pages to link to each other in one way or another, like a tree structure so things are easy to find, but also where the branches overlap at the bottom. For example, this link generates a report of all the pages that do not yet link to other pages in the wiki: http://www.bananas.org/wiki/Special:Deadendpages These pages listed there would be helped out if some members would like to find some of them that can be linked together or linked to others that are already not dead enders. In other words, the idea here is to make sure that not a whole lot of pages are lost in space without bridges (links) to them. Everyone can help out with the wiki in one way or another - even if you have nothing to say or feel shy about publishing your words in the wiki, you can still volunteer your time by houskeeping chores such as linking pages together or checking the task list found here: http://www.bananas.org/wiki/Bananas_Wiki:Task_List As far as the 11 or so links to Ae Ae, they all land at the same place. They were created using redirects so that regardless of how one spells Ae Ae, they can still find the right place (and not create a seperate page thinking that one does not exist already). For anyone ever interested in learning about using redirects with the wiki software, I urge you to read up about them here: http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Redirect The list of redirects we use in our wiki can be found here: http://www.bananas.org/wiki/Special:Listredirects I agree that we need a central place to list all the genus, species, and cultivars of the various banana plants. We already have a page dedicated the the genus Musa found here, it does have a list of species and cultivars are at the bottom: http://www.bananas.org/wiki/Musa The Ensete page is at http://www.bananas.org/wiki/Ensete so on and so forth... I hope this gives more insight as to whats taking shape over at the wiki. Thanks to everyone for your contributions and your help. I do have some tasks I can delegate if anyone wants to send me a private message, I can get you going with some data we still need put into the wiki (thanks Joe Real and Agristarts and everyone else you know who you are) Let's brainstorm the wiki some more so we can really get it setup properly and organized and useful for everyone. The homepage to the wiki is at http://www.bananas.org/wiki and if anyone even wants to change that page around feel free to! __________________ Apologies in advance if I am slow to reply to your PM. I suggest posting in the forums for support if you need something urgent.