Archived Forum

"a forum account holder automatically gets a wiki account after having had 5 responses to their posts or something?"

Unfortunately, that was tried and the result was that a potentially lethal hardware design was posted - actually I think it was GitHub, not the Wiki - but under the OEM 'Banner' nevertheless. I think you'll understand why G&T had to close the doors.

If you'd like to tell me which particular gems you have in mind, we can have a discussion and time permitting I'll try to do something about it.

Yeah this forum has a particular 'vibe', maybe because major posters are not much technical savvy and stuff good technical threads with basic issues that create noise.

Follow general guideline: Use your first thread messages for summary and conclusions (edit regulary), leave the answers for discussion...

"Unfortunately, that was tried and the result was that a potentially lethal hardware design was posted"

OK, perhaps a workaround to this is to show a disclaimer on all pages with respect to safety - something along the lines of "Electricity can be dangerous - please read [this page] before producing making of modifying hardware etc.".  Key ("official") pages get locked to a subset of users, and the disclaimer removed.

Whilst I agree the above situation isn't great, I think there's an implicit "reader beware" on any info published on the Internet (more-so on something which is clearly a wiki).

It wouldn't hurt to add a warning to the edit page - "if you're unsure of the safety or efficacy of the information which you are posting, then please check on the forum first".

Alternatively - split the wiki across two hostnames (this is what Google does - official stuff lives under xyz.google.com - unchecked user stuff goes under xyz.googleusercontent.com), or change the hostname of the wiki so that the "thirdpartyness" of the wiki is explicit in the hostname.  The main landing/index page would need to be on communitywiki.openenergymonitor.org 

There are plenty of sites (wikipedia, fixyer, intructables etc.) which face the same problems, but which operated on a user-editable basis successfully.

"time permitting I'll try to do something about it"

This is the nub of the problem, for a wiki to be effective, you need to make contribution as quick as possible with as few barriers to entry as possible - relying on a few documentation editors will never be as effective.

"if you're unsure of the safety or efficacy of the information which you are posting, then please check on the forum first"

The trouble with that is there are many who think they know what they're doing and don't. "Fools rush in where angels fear to tread", "A little knowledge is dangerous", etc.

"you need to make contribution as quick as possible with as few barriers to entry as possible"

That is part of, if not the main, function of the forums, surely? Wasn't your original idea to cherry-pick out of the forums good ideas that have been peer-reviewed and move them into the Wiki? Then the Wiki remains a considered, reliable and trustworthy source.

The trouble with that is there are many who think they know what they're doing and don't. "Fools rush in where angels fear to tread", "A little knowledge is dangerous", etc.

I'm sure there are, but that's their problem?  I think in the eyes of the (England and Wales) law, if someone follows dangerous advice posted by Joe Random off the Internet, they've only got themselves to blame - especially if the advice is accompanied by a suitable disclaimer.

"That is part of, if not the main, function of the forums, surely? Wasn't your original idea to cherry-pick out of the forums good ideas that have been peer-reviewed and move them into the Wiki? Then the Wiki remains a considered, reliable and trustworthy source."

Sounds good in theory, but it doesn't really look like that's what's happening at the moment.  Wikipedia is the 6th most popular website on the Internet - it's publicly editable and it's a model that clearly works pretty well - I'm sure there's all sorts of advice on there I could follow in order to do myself a mischief, but I can't remember having heard any calls for it to be shut down.  They (still) don't even require you to be logged in to contribute either (not that I'm advocating that, I'm sure they put a lot of resources into spam removal).

It's obviously considered sufficiently reliable, trustworthy and peer reviewed to get more hits than twitter, amazon and ebay...

The Open Energy Monitor wiki averages less than one edit every two days, and they're nearly all by Glyn.  He's doing a sterling job, but I think it would be far more useful resource, if it were publicly editable (worse it currently implies that it is, but in fact isn't - apparently giving contributors the cold shoulder).

I personally came to Open energy monitor because it is an open source project (hardware and software), but for open source projects to be successful, the barrier to contribution has to be low - it doesn't really seem low enough at the moment, either for code or documentation...  It's certainly a good project, but it just feels like it's not currently achieving it's potential, and a lot of potential contributions and contributors are lost.

Tim.

Tim, the forum represents a specific open source range of products, and is supported by technically qualified and experienced moderators & contributors. It would not be prudent, responsible or ethical for us to sit back and allow potentially dangerous processes to be published on the basis that 'they've only got themselves to blame'!

Paul

I'm not suggesting that it's a desirable state of affairs that the wiki contains suspect advice or information.  This was the case (for a small subset of info) in the past, and it got spotted and fixed.  Such is the nature of wikis.

Maintaining the wiki and/or adding suitable disclaimers (and/or clearly differentiating 'official' vs. 'non official' pages) seems like the right response here.  All that's offered is advice and knowledge - it strives to be correct but may not be so.  Caveat lector.  Clearly state that any potentially high-voltage designs should be reviewed on the forums first, and the problem is unlikely to recur.  In extreme cases ban particular users if really necessary.

Stopping public wiki edits seems to be throwing out the baby with the dirty bath water.  If the wikipedia founders had taken the same decision, then the 6th highest traffic website on the Internet wouldn't exist, and the world would be a poorer place for it.

The forums are useful for many things, but they are failing to maintain useful structured documentation and/or history of investigations and patches/customisations - they are holding back the Open Energy Monitor project in my view, and putting a too-heavy burden on "central" contributors to maintain this documentation, whilst turning away the contributions of others.

If not a wiki, then how else do you fix these issues?

Account to edit the wiki can be requested: http://wiki.openenergymonitor.org/index.php/Special:RequestAccount. I would love to make it open access (like a wiki should be) be we just had too much spam! I will try and approve authentic accounts as quickly as I can. 

Thanks @TimSmall, i agree there does need to be an easier way to highlight or find particular forum threads and a process for developing a more static documentation form if the development reaches a particular level of development. Its an ongoing challenge, and I dont have easy/fast solutions but am interested in working on it.

The decision to make the wiki non-public editable and add the requirement of new users having their permissions upgraded to oem power user happened after we realised that there was a lot of spam content that was hiding as unlinked website pages or wiki pages. It is possible to request an account on the wiki and we would very much welcome contributions, we havent managed to work out a way around the spam issue yet for a more public wiki.

+1 for Tim's point.  There is a lot of info around the forums, websites and github repos but finding what you need/want is another matter.

I understand where Paul and Robert are coming from but any curated wiki will become quickly out of date because its clear Glyn, Trystan and others clearly do not have the time to put it to make it a first class resource.

I understand fully the safety fears but much of the stuff I'm (and many others) interested in is not about that side of OEM.

As always there is a balance to be drawn.  But an approach predicated on the "worse case" is limited and limiting.

[Duplicate of this post deleted - Moderator (RW)]

I did offer to try and do something about the problem, but if you're going to turn it into a sniping exercise, I'm quite capable of losing interest.

I made some comments this morning supporting Tim in this thread.  

I saw it had appeared in the thread but has now disappeared.

Is there a problem with the wiki software?  Shall I post again?

It is frustrating and a lot of good points have been made, my point of view (fwiw) is the wiki should not be open to all users, to encourage knowledgeable users to contribute their time and efforts there needs to be some level of assurance that documentation won't get spoiled by less important, less relevant or inaccurate information as well as unsafe entries.

Chaveiro's comment about "noise" is valid although maybe a little harsh as there probably wouldn't be quite so much "noise" if users could find the answers themselves and the forum is the right place to ask questions. I like the suggestion of using a threads first post as an editable source of information, obvious really in hind sight but not utilized as much as it could be. Expanding on Tim's 2-step route to the wiki could be to be to start in the forum (using Chaveiro's suggestion) have a discussion etc, and then copy the article or guide etc to the wiki (with some links) so that the forum thread continues to function as a ongoing place to discuss that topic and edits, variations etc Pointing out a potential (or perceived) error would be much easier to reference and discuss, plus the broader discussion topics may help searchers zero in on the correct wiki page too. This way a lot of stuff gets peer reviewed prior to inclusion in the wiki.

Copying the info over and "maintaining" the wiki is obviously asking way too much of a handful of users (mods & maintainers etc) so the wiki access should be expanded to include a much larger band of enthusiastic contributors by application or invitation only and not granted just because someone asks (ie anti-spam), but because they have a good track record, understand the aims of the site and know when to verify or seek advice etc.There are many users that could and many that want to contribute but as Tim points out are currently excluded, however on the other hand just being human and a frequent poster doesn't make you an authority either.

I agree the likes of wikipedia do a great job at what they do, but they have many systems in place to try and police entries and even then the data is well known to "require verification" and to verify something we get from wikipedia we would go to a reputable site that provides a better level of information that can be trusted to a greater degree because it isn't a public wiki. I'd like to think this site is that reputable source of specialist energy monitoring information.

While safety warnings are a good idea for both safety and legal reasons they should not be a disclaimer for "bad" information that is unverified, obviously inaccurate, misleading etc etc. I for one would really like to know when I read something in our wiki it is to the best of our collective knowledge, correct, otherwise I have to recheck pretty much everything because it won't be obvious what's good and what's not. which sort of undermines it's usefulness to a degree.

Paul

Sounds a good way forward to me, especially widening access to the wiki by invitation.

Paul

"... then copy the article or guide etc to the wiki..."

That is exactly how the two diverter articles in Building Blocks started life.

I also struggled to find answers to some of my early questions, and I wanted to suggest a Frequently Asked Questions section for the site - aimed at new users, perhaps people who had bought the kit, and just wanted to use it for simple home energy monitoring, and didn't necessarily want to register just to post questions.

I spent weeks reading many forum posts convinced that my problems must be simple and common, and that I would find an answer if I kept looking, and I didn't want to waste people's time with dumbo questions.

When I did post, Robert Wall was quick to help, but I still felt like his time could be better spent helping the people doing complex stuff, or who were looking to develop the technology. I had thought the emonPI might appeal to more "users" like me (as opposed to s/w & h/w developers) due to it's all-in-one package, and I suspect some of them will encounter common problems, and can be helped more efficiently with either an FAQ, or a troubleshooting section in the wiki.
 

There have been a couple of occasions in the past when I have also suggested that the site needs to be improved to make things a lot cleared and I've had some private emails with Robert on the topic.

If as it seems there is reluctance to have free access to the wiki due to issues around unsafe hardware (which is obviously a good thing), could there be a way to split the wiki into two parts one for hardware, strictly controlled and one for software which is more open.

I for one would also like to see some kind of release process in place where the software for the variety of set ups is properly published with details of the functionality. If you look at many other sites there is almost always a download area where the latest tested release can be downloaded and then an area where newer functionality is being published which is not properly tested but may be of interest to some users.

To create the latest 'official' library of code would still take some work, I have noticed in the past in some sketches partly developed code which would have to be removed. I think this was in some of the test sketches, I'd have to go back and work out which ones I mean.

But that aside, what does anyone think about managing the software and hardware sides of the wiki in different ways?

Simon