PaulOdin

MediaHound, this needs some explanation? I would have thought this whole forum was a 'wiki'? How do you imagine this section of the forum being used? Any projects in mind?

Paul

MediaHound

Paul, sure, I can explain.

We're here in the forum, now. It's a great place to talk to others about a general topic, find conversations and specific in-depth discussions that interest you, you can send messages, and pages. This is where everyone talk to each other.
The wiki is something different. It's aim is to create one document for each topic vs. how in the forum we have many documents for each topic.
The wiki is not a general discussion area, rather all discussions that get stirred from the wiki will be directed here to the fourm for the talks.
The wiki will present one page for each banana cultivar. Every member can tinker with the content on that page, overwriting the last author's words if there are errors, omissions, or spelling mistakes. The wiki will also serve as a place to document, for each variety of banana, where folks are growing it. It has an interactive map that everyone can zoom in, out, and pan around to see where people have (successfully) grown the banana presented.

The wiki will serve as one destination to research particular bananas, whereas the forum could have several destinations (threads) that discuss that same particular banana. In those regards, the wiki will be very organized, much easier than digging through tons of pages of threads to find the cold-hardiness, for example. The wiki's pages will actually link to useful threads about the banana, everyone is encouraged to add links as they find them, to the respective page in the wiki. This way, visitors that land on the wiki from other links on the web will be able to be led to the thread(s) for even more reading.

To explain why this forum isn't a wiki, that's because it's not a mass collaboration; one cannot edit another's posts. And the conversations take on an ebb and flow that you won't see in the wiki. The wiki will have more crickets chirping, per se, if you think of it like that. It will feel more lonely than the forums feel.
To add to this, keep in mind that we have a photo gallery that also gets it's own share of discussions. The photos all allow for comments to be posted, and the ensuing talks thereof create a forum within a forum.
Still further, when viewing threads about Ae Ae here in the forum, you're not presented will all the great photos of Ae Ae that we have in the gallery. You may not even know about them. The wiki will serve to bridge this void because all those great photos will be able to be inserted right there on the dedicated page! I'm even hoping to get them imploded automatically so the wiki shows all the photos that have the proper tag (keyword). But that's a longshot, It's not as easy as I would wish, its going to require a hook and some programming to overcome the bridge from one system into the other. The bridge to share the forums' memberbase was a fun feat, itself. So right away, we may not have this photo insertion feature, but in time, we may. It's already one of those "to do" things for the wishlist. But everyone will be able to add photos from the gallery by hand to the wiki, a few at a time, that's a snap.
We have our forum, we have our photo gallery, and now with the wiki, we will connect the dots and create a thorough platform for people all over, for generations to come, to contribute their information and make it a better place for others to learn from in the future.
I hope this gives you a better perspective about it. lmk!

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MediaHound

Allow me to add to what I wrote prior.
This part of the forum, "Wiki Discussions" is used as such.
Pages in the wiki will each have a tab at the top for "discussion" that will lead folks to here, the forum. This gives each page in the wiki a place to talk about what's presented on the page. This includes pages that describe how to use the wiki - almost all the pages in the wiki system allow for discussion. When someone clicks this "discussion" tab, if there is no existing discussion, the system automatically creates a thread. If there is already a discussion (the thread was already created), the person will be taken to that thread.
Hope this clears it up a little better and gives you more of an understanding. And of course, it'll all make more sense when you start digging into the wiki.
It's coming along very nicely, too

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NANAMAN

Keep up the great work Jarred!What a reference source we will have for all musa's. I can't wait!!!

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