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Downtime soon / Wiki Discussion


A. Wong

To Wiki or Not To Wiki?  

49 members have voted

  1. 1. To Wiki or Not To Wiki?

    • Yes
      41
    • No
      8


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  • Board Admin

So what is the purpose of this topic? There are two:

1. Information about board software upgrade - PERIOD OF DOWNTIME TO BE ANNOUNCED!

2. Information/polling about a roster wiki.

---1---

Invision Board has released software version 2.2.2 and that means we are going to be upgrading the board here as well. This is going to require some downtime to switch to the new board software. There probably won't be much of a noticeable difference, but they probably fixed some security issues and stuff.

At the same time, I am going to get the hosting company to move us to a server supporting PHP5 so I can install MediaWiki on here if need be - see ---2--- for more info...

---2---

So there was some discussion here after member "Dennis" started a transit roster wiki for the greater Vancouver area. I was going to take this a step further and set up a wiki under CPTDB here for a Canada-wide transit roster editable by any members of this board.

What's a wiki?

Basically it is a webpage editable by anyone who has access. More formally, it is web-based software designed for online collaboration. Anyone can edit the pages and they are updated live, meaning the information is stored and can be updated by anyone at anytime. The most popular example by far is Wikipedia.

So, I need member input. :rolleyes: Is everyone/anyone interested in a roster wiki? If not, I might not bother with the server change.

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I'd love such a thing. some of us might want to know when various busses were built, others might want to know the specific number, and some (like me) just want the number of different models of bus. a wiki can store all that data in a single place, in an easy to manage formate. its a great idea imo.

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1: Do the upgrade if really required. But I ask (and I think I speak for all) you do it sometime near the late night (11pm - 1am EST) so it can be ready for the next day, depends. How long do board software updates take anyway?

2: I would like more information on this Wiki thing before saying yes. Any more detailed information to add?

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  • Board Admin

1: I am not in control of the server move, they told me it should take less than one business day. At the time of transfer, posts on the board will be disallowed. Board upgrade should take me less than an hour.

2: See Wikipedia. :rolleyes:

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I say yes as well. That's what I tried to do initially on dhost, but that was too slow. Then I tried a static version via my transit site, but updating it is too cumbersome.

The wiki, of course, is more flexible, can be updated more frequently by more users, etc. etc.

You sure you don't mind the additional load on your server? :rolleyes:

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  • Board Admin

I say yes as well. That's what I tried to do initially on dhost, but that was too slow. Then I tried a static version via my transit site, but updating it is too cumbersome.

The wiki, of course, is more flexible, can be updated more frequently by more users, etc. etc.

You sure you don't mind the additional load on your server? :rolleyes:

Yeah, I upgraded, so might as well take advantage of it. :lol:

is it possible that this wiki can eventually be extended to more then just rosters?

for example, we could have pages on each canadian transit system?

Yes, we could put anything we want on it. Though the Rosters would fall under the Transit System page anyway. :D
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A wiki is a terrific idea. Such detailed information wouldn't be a good fit for Wikipedia itself, but a specialized wiki to cover rosters, route information, allocations, etc would be terrific.

would it be wrong to begin our new wiki by copying wikipedia's page on the TTC, and Trans Link, etc etc?

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That's plagiarism. :rolleyes: We can certainly link to that page, but we may as well start our own!

Actually, it's not since Wikipedia's content is distributed under very generous terms. So long as you credit Wikipedia, it's entirely legal.

But I think that a transit-oriented wiki would probably structure things differently than Wikipedia does, so it's better to start from scratch.

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Actually, it's not since Wikipedia's content is distributed under very generous terms. So long as you credit Wikipedia, it's entirely legal.

But I think that a transit-oriented wiki would probably structure things differently than Wikipedia does, so it's better to start from scratch.

And, like I said, I think we can do better than the Wikipedia pages on transit systems.

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I would certainly support Wiki, if it'd be about creating the pages for constant updates on transit rosters of interest.

I for one would try to put together the current active Burlington Transit roster together and perhaps others would od the same with other GTA-based systems so that maybe people like me wouldn't always have to figure out what the fleet number really is (for the make/model of bus that it really is)...TTC and DRT best fit that description).

But anyways, good idea.

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I'm one of the 6.

It's a nice concept, however it is way too easy for rumour and innuendo to get passed along as "fact". I guess most of my problem stems from the fact that it can now be cited as a reference, for better or for worse.

That, and I'm just too lazy to bother trying to submit corrections.

Dan

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I'm one of the 6.

It's a nice concept, however it is way too easy for rumour and innuendo to get passed along as "fact". I guess most of my problem stems from the fact that it can now be cited as a reference, for better or for worse.

That, and I'm just too lazy to bother trying to submit corrections.

Dan

The latter is hardly a relevant reason, since you can just enjoy the benefits of other people's work if you want. As for the accuracy issue, that can be dealt with by NOT making it a wide-open wiki like Wikipedia. There is no reason why it could not require an account (hopefully the same accounts already used on CPTDB), and all edits would of course show the identity of the person making the edit.

Your concern about it being cited as a reference is a very valid one. Unfortunately, roster information rarely comes from official sources. The TTC service summary is about the only regularly published official one, and it's usually at least a month out of date when published. So how would a wiki be any less reliable than other roster information sources, provided that a real collective effort is made to keep it updated?

Personally, I'd like to see it anyway, possibly with a disclaimer on the page that states that it is an independent information source and the quality of information cannot be guaranteed.

But we also need to discuss what the content should be. Rosters are the obvious one, and I think we need to have both all-time rosters (both for current systems and vanished systems like APTA) along with current rosters. Should the rosters list every vehicle or just every order? What information should be included for each? What sort orders should be used (year, model, fleet #)?

And there is other content that would be valuable. Route allocations, service summary information (like the TTC provides), route listings, and even collections of old system and route maps and timetables. There is so much information for GTA transit available online, but it is so incredibly fragmented. We have a real opportunity here to create a rich resource. Let's not limit it to just roster information.

Any other ideas from anyone?

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  • Board Admin

There are some good points being raised here.

My ultimate goal is to limit the access to editing the Wiki to just the users on CPTDB. That is, all the current users should be able to edit, and no one from the public can. No re-registration would be required (hopefully).

Most wikis have a rollback feature, so if someone screws up the page with inaccurate information, admins can just revert it back to its previous state. This is one of the reasons why wikis may take up a bit of space.

As for content, the sky is the limit. I would like to see all-time rosters. We should probably split it up into order series, and just have notes on individual units there. But it all depends on the transit system. I'm sure either I or someone else can make a template for everyone else to use. But for example in Edmonton, we could have a listing for each individual Fishbowl in the active fleet, as some are blue and some are white, and some are retired. But for the D40LFs I wouldn't keep track of individual units really.

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