Subject: Knowledge Base (was RE: Restoration technique [Was: Re: Bay Area: IBM 4341 and HP3000] - test-drb@ccmp.vtda.org

16 Jan 2015

I am relatively new here but joining this mailing list has helped me almost immediately.
Thank you Jay and others for doing this and contributing a professional grade
infrastructure. The wiki is an idea, but an alternative that I wish would exist is a
repository for restoration logs. Something that you could follow and comment on, and that
allows attachment of slightly richer media to posts (photos, docs) in the context of
someone's specific restoration project. You learn so much from these. I know people
already do it individually, but not in a centralized searchable place (you have to chance
upon them), and often in an annoying reverse chronology "blog" format that's
ill adapted for this usage. Or a museum style static website that does not relate the
problem solving path (including things that fail) that a restoration is. In other
"build oriented" groups I belong to, we do this very successfully by encouraging
individual build log threads in a Forum format. That's in addition to a catch-all
"string of consciousness" mailing list like this one. Is that anything that
could be considered? 
Marc

...
  Message: 21
 Date: Wed, 14 Jan 2015 14:42:34 -0600
 From: "Jay West" <jwest at classiccmp.org>
 To: "'General Discussion: On-Topic and Off-Topic Posts'"
    <cctalk at classiccmp.org>
 Subject: Knowledge Base (was RE: Restoration technique [Was: Re: Bay
    Area: IBM 4341 and HP3000]
 Message-ID: &lt;004a01d0303a$a11eefa0$e35ccee0$(a)classiccmp.org&gt;
 Content-Type: text/plain;    charset="us-ascii"

 So.. about this "knowledgebase" of restoration techniques.

 Apparently new folks don't know and some older listmembers don't remember...

 We did start a "wiki" for people to post restoration tips, repair tips, etc.
 This was done about 8 years ago. When I first brought up the idea there was
 a lot of discussion on the list as to if it was a good idea or not. Many
 people had very good thoughts as to why it would be wonderful, and many
 other people had equally good thoughts as to why it would not be wonderful.

 In any case, I set it up. We found that there was an initial flurry of
 posting, and then virtually nothing. Statistics showed it was not used very
 much at all. There were a handful of issues as I recall (not my
 implementation of it, but in the general idea of a
 repair/troubleshooting/restoration "wiki"). I only remember one of them at
 the moment... and that was that someone would post an article without really
 having detailed expertise in that given area and then someone that DID have
 expertise in that area would (for lack of a better term) contramand that
 article or write a separate one with conflicting info which made it hard for
 a novice to really sift through the information. In short, everyone has an
 opinion and at times the articles directly conflicted with another and
 someone seeking knowledge wouldn't know who to believe.

 That being said, if people really want to give this another try, I would be
 happy to turn on the old classiccmp knowledge base (I'm 99% sure it's stored
 but just not turned on), or I could easily have one of my support staff dump
 a wiki installation to a folder there (under classiccmp) and we could give
 it a try again. I'm all for it, but for it to be successful - it has to be
 due to contribution/acceptance by the membership at large. My proclivity at
 this point would be to install a new wiki and then pull articles already
 posted in the old "wiki" into it.

 And yes, if it's to be in the classiccmp.org domain, I'd have to host it. I
 have not yet seen a scenario where we'd be willing to point an a-record
 off-site (but that's not to say some future situation might get a different
 response).

 Best,
 J 