DV Info Wiki Reference - How About That?
 

Hello all!

Having had the privilege to be a member of this forum for over four years, I have come to rely on the DVInfo community as a very valuable and reliable source of information. The quality of content on DVI is usually very high, and the members of the community are very helpful. Kudos to Chris and all frequent contributors for building, shaping and maintaining this invaluable platform!!

Over the years, however, I have frequently thought to myself: as great as the interactive nature of a bulletin board system may be for this purpose, it often takes a whole lot of time to find the information you're looking for. How great would it be if there was a structured on-line reference for all the aspects discussed on this forum?

Just today, it occurred to me that there may just be a way to accomplish this: establishing a DVInfo Wiki...

If you're unfamiliar with what exactly a Wiki is and how it works, you can get it straight from the horse's mouth: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wiki

Wouldn't it be great to start something like this? A collection of reference material that everyone can contribute to - containing detailed info e.g. on a particular camcorder that isn't written in any user manual? I think it would be excellent!

What are your opinions?

Curiously,

Ron

Hey Ron! This topic comes up from time to time...

http://www.dvinfo.net/conf/showthread.php?t=8692
http://www.dvinfo.net/conf/showthread.php?t=19769
http://www.dvinfo.net/conf/showthread.php?t=44451
http://www.dvinfo.net/conf/showthread.php?t=44976
http://www.dvinfo.net/conf/showthread.php?t=52576

I agree. I vote for this sort of resource too.

With the new intergration of Web 2.0 and using AJAX it should be a lot easier. I agree some sort of reference abiltity would be great.

If it's not too much work, I think a Wiki should be given a trial run.

It would be useful to put some guides up there, i.e. how to light, how to use your camera, etc.

Having links allows people to explore certain topics further. In the lighting section, you could have links on how to construct certain types of lights (i.e. nanolights, DIY reflectors, etc.) and have lighting diagrams. This kind of information is not easily conveyed in a forum.

For specific queries, this message board is the best.
For broad queries (i.e. the basics on how to make a film), I think some sort of Wiki would work the best.

2- Chris mentions that he is afraid that just anyone can edit pages. However, this isn't a problem for the wikipedia. When those particular pages get defaced, they get resored pretty quickly (apparently in a few minutes).

If you just do a trial run, it'll become apparent whether or not this is a problem that can be solved.

Probably better stated that my concern is with the trolls that are occasionally drawn to the light here... I've seen too many brand-oriented hidden agendas (and not so hidden). One way around this would be to give permissions only to those established folks here that we all know and trust (not just the forum moderators). Will look into the available wiki solutions that will integrate with our forum software. I'd want to maintain the one account / one log-in per person thing, so much easier that way.

What about making it a point not to mention a particular product unless it is absolutely necessary? For things like how to light, how to get sound, product names don't have to be in there.

It's probably better to seperate out the product names, since "which product is better?" type discussions are probably better left for the forums. Things change over time.

Chris, you may want to check out MediaWiki. That's what WikiPedia runs on...

http://www.mediawiki.org/

Thanks Ron, I've got that site bookmarked!

Hmm there's a Wikibook project this is a very similar idea to what's being proposed here.

http://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/Filmmaking

Yeah, I agree. Get it start first and we can fine tune and work out the details. I also agree with Chris's view about allowing only trusted members to edit the contents.

This is simply a great idea and the movie making example is the way to go.
I'm sure that 15 or 20 trustees can be recruited to help maintain the pages so they remain accurate and troll free.
I truly hope you go for it Chris since it also brings higher exposure to an already informative site and allow more idea exchanges from an international source. After all I'm sure that's why we all are here.

Without offering any additional solution here, i just say it's terrible useful thing. For instance look at my favorite place here - Alternative Imaging Methods. It's full of keywords which have very fuzzy explanations. Let's take bokeh, hotspot, vignetting. We got there constantly new links outside which are very often reactional. And people very often forget that those are given from pov of photography not from pov of video imaging. And other people just constantly try correct this noise thread by thread and doing zero job in someway.

doesn't it already exist in the form of dvinfo.net (and its related sites hdvinfo.net, etc.)?

wiki sounds like a great idea at first... but i want my encyclopedias to be from authoritative people that know what they're talking about. having the possibilities of a random anyone or a few people editing pages just because democracy is king isn't what education should be. learning is great if the resource knowledge has been tested through fire... but learning plain out lies is a waste of my time =). that's why i never bought into the idea of wiki, nothing against it wholistically as it gets people interested in sharing knowledge... but so did the world wide web. why build ANOTHER tool on top of an existing tool?

Hmm... as far as I'm concerned, most people here on DVinfo are exactly the ones that are testing the issues at hand through fire. Forget marketing speech - real experience is what counts. And a book isn't more error-proof than a wiki just because it's printed on paper. I still think a DVinfo-wiki is a splendid idea, and I hope something will come of it someday...