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Re: New LLorg Wiki articles

Posted: Tue Nov 27, 2018 7:55 pm
by fcoulter
zenmonkey wrote:
smallwhite wrote:Why do we use a separate wiki site when there’s the main LLorg section we could use? Or probably more idiomatically, Why are we using a separate wiki site when there’s the main LLorg section we could use?


Technically: The wiki software used is hosted on a separate site. To place it on the main website at www. or wiki. would simply need a redirect to that hosted content or setting up our own wiki hosting and point to that.

Why are there two locations for content? One is wiki software allowing for live editing using wiki like language (the life of that site is outside the control of the admins) the other is a blog with version control and publication management (by the admins) on github - and it’s better structured for single blog posts and not wiki like hyperlinks (publication steps require some approval).


I think I mentioned the possibility of merely creating a redirect from wiki.language-learners.org to learnanylanguage.wikia.com/. It would appear to be our own site, at least when first going to it. But as you manuever around the site it would become obvious to anyone looking at the address bar that it was a separate site. And we wouldn't have control over it, but be subject to whatever bright ideas Wikia has.

The advantage would be simplicity and lack of work. But you get what you pay for.

Re: New LLorg Wiki articles

Posted: Tue Nov 27, 2018 8:12 pm
by rdearman
fcoulter wrote:
smallwhite wrote:When you become admin, will you be able to change the name of the wiki to something LLorgier?


I doubt it. I think the reason the original name is what it is (and this is just a guess) is that it was supposed to support both forums. Therefore having the name be either of the two forum names would be insulting to the other group.

On the other hand, since I don't have access to the Administrative Control Panel, that could be a possibility. But if it was done, then all the links to the current wiki from outside would be broken. Would that be worth it? Before I did anything that drastic, I would definitely poll the two forums.

It might make more sense for whoever the owner is of the language-learners.org domain to map the wiki subdomain to the existing wiki. Then you could get there by going to wiki.language-learners.org as well as learnanylanguge.wikia.org. But that's way beyond what I think a wiki administrator could do. (The same could be done from the other forum's domain, too. There's no rule that says you can only map one domain to another.)

As for "when" I become admin? That hasn't happened yet, and may not happen. Right now there's a seven day window for people to contact wikia (or maybe just post comments to the blog post; I'm not sure of the way to say "no") and say that I'm an obvious Nazi and shouldn't be allowed anywhere near an admin control panel.

That is something EMK could do, he is the domain owner for LLORG. I'll point it out to him.

Re: New LLorg Wiki articles

Posted: Wed Nov 28, 2018 1:36 am
by smallwhite
My opinion is:

Accessing via wiki.language-learners.org subdomain is a must.

Now whether that subdomain points to an external wiki or a LLorg-hosted one - the former means once the user clicks on a link on the wiki, his browser address bar doesn’t show LLorg anymore and the typical logo at the top left of the page doesn’t lead to anything on LLorg, is that right? So, someone searches “SRS” on Google, lands on LLorg, sees a post where Serpent refers to the wiki, and bye bye our potential member is gone? If so, hosting wiki software on LLorg is a must OR using the current static/blog/whatever pages to house wikiish information is a must. Whatever keeps people inside LLorg.

Why would we promote wikia.com?

Re: New LLorg Wiki articles

Posted: Wed Nov 28, 2018 11:35 am
by jeff_lindqvist
Not that I'm a regular visitor to the wiki, but I don't have any real problems with it not being part of Llorg - or HTLAL for that matter. After all, it was created more than ten years ago (April 24, 2008), long before Llorg existed, and as a complement to HTLAL (see Mission statement).

See also:
The wikia also serves as one of the gathering places in case of an outage to these sites, along with the Facebook and Twitter pages. Be sure to check if you can't access these forums.

If there's anything about the wiki you'd like to know: please visit the IRC-channel #learnanylanguage on irc.freenode.net.


Maybe the wiki can be migrated to a Llorg subdomain. But is it a must? Who decides what can/should be moved? Who has the skills? (Emk?)

Re: New LLorg Wiki articles

Posted: Wed Nov 28, 2018 1:29 pm
by zenmonkey
jeff_lindqvist wrote:Maybe the wiki can be migrated to a Llorg subdomain. But is it a must? Who decides what can/should be moved? Who has the skills? (Emk?)


It won't be moved. At best the subdomain would point to it. It would still reside were it does now.

If we wanted a wiki only on a subdomain you'd have to pay a fee to wikia or set up the wiki here. A while back I did that with a different forum (hosting option) - it would be nice to integrate the phpBB & wiki software (single login, user pages, etc...) but it is a big enough change that it won't happen. It requires too much time from the admins for relatively little additional value.

Edit: it looks like wikia no longer white brand hosts for other sites. Our only option would be (if we wanted it sitting only on our url) to host it.

Re: New LLorg Wiki articles

Posted: Wed Nov 28, 2018 1:37 pm
by zenmonkey
smallwhite wrote:My opinion is:

Accessing via wiki.language-learners.org subdomain is a must.

Now whether that subdomain points to an external wiki or a LLorg-hosted one - the former means once the user clicks on a link on the wiki, his browser address bar doesn’t show LLorg anymore and the typical logo at the top left of the page doesn’t lead to anything on LLorg, is that right? So, someone searches “SRS” on Google, lands on LLorg, sees a post where Serpent refers to the wiki, and bye bye our potential member is gone? If so, hosting wiki software on LLorg is a must OR using the current static/blog/whatever pages to house wikiish information is a must. Whatever keeps people inside LLorg.

Why would we promote wikia.com?


We can create links over there pointing here.
The only way to force it so it only accessible via our subdomain would be to set up wiki hosting server here and copy content here. The wikia exists over there and will continue to do so (and it generated revenue for them via advertising).

It's relatively easy to set up a wiki server but requires a lot of work to maintain and admin.

Re: New LLorg Wiki articles

Posted: Wed Nov 28, 2018 1:42 pm
by Serpent
smallwhite wrote: So, someone searches “SRS” on Google, lands on LLorg, sees a post where Serpent refers to the wiki, and bye bye our potential member is gone? If so, hosting wiki software on LLorg is a must OR using the current static/blog/whatever pages to house wikiish information is a must. Whatever keeps people inside LLorg.
The wikia still has tons of links to forum posts. That's why I'm in favour of replacing links to htlal with links to LLORG instead of summarizing the content.
also, one is unlikely to find the forum with such a basic search term. Meanwhile if you search for subs2srs, our wikia is the third hit, while forum posts are at the bottom of the page (but it's still all on the first page :D)

Re: New LLorg Wiki articles

Posted: Wed Nov 28, 2018 2:04 pm
by zenmonkey
Serpent wrote:
smallwhite wrote: So, someone searches “SRS” on Google, lands on LLorg, sees a post where Serpent refers to the wiki, and bye bye our potential member is gone? If so, hosting wiki software on LLorg is a must OR using the current static/blog/whatever pages to house wikiish information is a must. Whatever keeps people inside LLorg.
The wikia still has tons of links to forum posts. That's why I'm in favour of replacing links to htlal with links to LLORG instead of summarizing the content.
also, one is unlikely to find the forum with such a basic search term. Meanwhile if you search for subs2srs, our wikia is the third hit, while forum posts are at the bottom of the page (but it's still all on the first page :D)


If we want to improve ranking on Google, the thing to do is implement an RSS feed and a google site map. Manually trying to do that from the wiki is just too much manual overhead.

Re: New LLorg Wiki articles

Posted: Wed Nov 28, 2018 2:10 pm
by fcoulter
zenmonkey wrote:It's relatively easy to set up a wiki server but requires a lot of work to maintain and admin.


Since I'm not volunteering to administer the wiki server software (which is different than being a wiki administrator), I will bow to your knowledge. It's doable, but probably not worth it.

I do have to add that migrating 300+ articles from the wikia site to a new site would probably not be that bad, assuming you can get a good list of all the articles. All you need are two monitors, with each site running in one of them. On the wikia site, go to the classic editor and copy the source code. Then paste it in a new article on our site. This could be done by a crazy person in one weekend. At first all the internal links will be red, but as the articles populate they will turn blue.

A migration tool would make it easier, but it wouldn't be essential.

Re: New LLorg Wiki articles

Posted: Wed Nov 28, 2018 2:22 pm
by zenmonkey
fcoulter wrote:
zenmonkey wrote:It's relatively easy to set up a wiki server but requires a lot of work to maintain and admin.


Since I'm not volunteering to administer the wiki server software (which is different than being a wiki administrator), I will bow to your knowledge. It's doable, but probably not worth it.

I do have to add that migrating 300+ articles from the wikia site to a new site would probably not be that bad, assuming you can get a good list of all the articles. All you need are two monitors, with each site running in one of them. On the wikia site, go to the classic editor and copy the source code. Then paste it in a new article on our site. This could be done by a crazy person in one weekend. At first all the internal links will be red, but as the articles populate they will turn blue.

A migration tool would make it easier, but it wouldn't be essential.


I'm not suggesting we set up a wiki server. I was clarifying the effort load.
Current availability of the admins time and the complexity of hosting design are the limiting factors (and cost of hosting too). So I doubt it will happen, or like you say, if it is worth it.