Orbiter Wiki Cleanup

[fireballs619]

Hey All!

Lately, I have been thinking of cleaning up the Orbiter Wiki, as to make it a much more reliable and easy to use source for information about Orbiter. Wiki-format sites have much potential to be an essential resource. I have a loose plan that I would like to follow, but this is open to change, pending the suggestion of a more efficient or better process. Here is my outline so far, along with a few other notes that should be included (It is on Google Docs, for ease of distribution).

The first section on that should take a while in itself, and will greatly increase the quality of the wiki. The second section of the outline is much less thought out, although the general idea is there. Essentially, the goal is to clean up what is there, and put in guidelines to stop it from getting messy again.

A wiki is a community endeavor, however, so I am putting out the call for help. If you are familiar with wiki syntax and would like to help, post below with what you can do/what your experience is. Depending on the amount of response this gets, I'll divide up the jobs among skill sets, and things should progress smoothly. My goal is to have one group of people making pages from add-ons, while another group links them into the categories described in the outline. Also, I'm sure that there are people who are much more qualified than me to run this project. If you are good with wikis and can really devote time to this, send me a PM and we'll discuss you having leading this.

Anyway, any help is greatly appreciated. I look forward to working with you all!

 

[Nazban]

maybe i missed it, but post a link to orbiter forum!!!!:rofl:

 

[MeDiCS]

May I suggest avoiding putting duplicate information? That is, not accept information into the wiki if it can be easily found on manuals, such as API documentation, MSH file format, vessel operations, etc.

 

[Urwumpe]

May I suggest avoiding putting duplicate information? That is, not accept information into the wiki if it can be easily found on manuals, such as API documentation, MSH file format, vessel operations, etc.

I think we started having such articles for documenting behaviors and caveats, that the documentation did not mention. Also the documentation in the 2006 version was pretty much just a guideline in the right direction, but you still had to test functions and examine their behavior to know what it is good for.

 

[MeDiCS]

I think we started having such articles for documenting behaviors and caveats, that the documentation did not mention. Also the documentation in the 2006 version was pretty much just a guideline in the right direction, but you still had to test functions and examine their behavior to know what it is good for.

True, but if you can find information on the manual, then it shouldn't be on the wiki. Caveats, comments and extra information may though. IMO, information from manuals should only be used when quoting.

 

[Wishbone]

Wiki will almost always lag behind the development. It takes a community one order of magnitude larger to keep things in order, based on law of large numbers.

 

[Carmen A]

I have some expertise doing research on and revamping automotive related wiki articles. I also like to finish up incomplete wikipedia articles, or proofread them, provided the article is within my knowledge base.

Although I don't work in an aerospace related field I'm pretty good with flight theory but the truth is I haven't looked at the Orbiter wiki yet to know what it needs. Maybe there is a task for me - I'll let the original poster decide.

 

[flying coffin]

The LRO documentation can be removed from the wiki. It is incomplete and outdated at this point.

I would also like to thank Urwumpe for letting me use the wiki to develop the docs for LRO. It was a fantastic resource for that.

 

[Arvil]

See my post at https://www.orbiter-forum.com/threads/orbiter-wiki.635/#post-573280 concerning the 12k pages of spam.
Also, not so sure that info from the manual shouldn’t be in the wiki. The wiki should be all there is to know about orbiter. Then one does not have to go back and forth between sources, Wiki could be a one stop for everything. I also find that a few of the manuals don’t describe everything, I don’t know what something does when it’s not well described, or it’s a bit hard to understand. Here, multiple users would strive for an understandable description of everything and maybe checklists could be included. Just my thought. Otherwise, the Wiki is by far the best resource for the sim.