Both forums need an introduction

[Laird]

I'd been thinking that associating items with discussion threads might make the lists a lot more useful than I'd thought. For example, it would be very useful to have a list of books on a particular topic, and then click through to find a list of reviews and discussion threads for each book. But perhaps it's better not to try running before we can walk.

A while back, for another wiki, I developed a custom skin that supports this kind of thing, but it's kind of unwieldy and out of date (not mobile friendly), and I'm not sure it's such a good fit for our purposes. I'll share it just in case it sparks ideas: http://clc-wiki.net/.

Basically, it adds a treeview component to the left sidebar, and repurposes MediaWiki "redirects" to serve as "aliases", so that the same article can appear under multiple places in the treeview based on its aliases (although I'm not sure there are any examples of that in practice on that wiki at the moment - there are examples of aliases that don't appear more than once in the treeview though, e.g. http://clc-wiki.net/wiki/The_C_Standard).

The unwieldiness comes in because creating redirects is even more tedious than manually adding an item to a bunch of lists on our current Skeptiko Index wiki page.

Anyhow, as I said, it might spark some ideas.

[Laird]

I'd feel much happier if it were set up to only permit founding members to edit the front page - that would exclude me of course, but I could always write some text and offer it to you.

Without that restriction, I think the front page will attract attention and someone will join in order to hack that page! Remember, if that page works well, this forum will become a red flag for materialists!

Let's deal with that if/when it happens. Right now, we don't have any problematic forum members, and we perform various checks of new registrations to minimise the possibility of spammers or (repeat) trolls and sock-puppeteers joining, so I think we're pretty safe. Also, it's very quick and easy to simply revert a bad edit.

Let's deal with that if/when it happens. Right now, we don't have any problematic forum members, and we perform various checks of new registrations to minimise the possibility of spammers or (repeat) trolls and sock-puppeteers joining, so I think we're pretty safe. Also, it's very quick and easy to simply revert a bad edit.

OK - well we will see how it goes, but hopefully enough of us will enter via the front page to notice if something goes wrong.

If you like, I will write a first draft of something, or you can do it (probably better because you are far more aware of the contents of the forum) - almost anything that describes the purpose and idea of the forum will be much better than nothing! It will of course contain a link to drill through to the forum main page, as well as some links to specific discussions.

David

[Laird]

OK - well we will see how it goes, but hopefully enough of us will enter via the front page to notice if something goes wrong.

There are ways for us to monitor the page. One is simply to set a "watch" on it (e.g. by checking the "Watch this page" checkbox when editing the page or by manually editing it into your watchlist), which will inform the watching user of changes via email. Another is to monitor recent changes to the wiki via its RSS feed. Another is to simply check its Recent Changes page manually.

If you like, I will write a first draft of something

Go for it!

OK - well we will see how it goes, but hopefully enough of us will enter via the front page to notice if something goes wrong.

If you like, I will write a first draft of something, or you can do it (probably better because you are far more aware of the contents of the forum) - almost anything that describes the purpose and idea of the forum will be much better than nothing! It will of course contain a link to drill through to the forum main page, as well as some links to specific discussions.

David

Dave

I'm going to put this as nicely as I can. I'm willing to let bygones be bygones as regards to what happened in the past. However, I'm just letting you know, if you are given any jurisdiction whatsoever in this forum, that will be the end of my participation in it, period.
I don't think you actually are suggesting that you be given a role in administration but if you should be tempted at any time in the future, that's how I would feel anyway. Just letting you know, not trying to upset you.

I personally love both of these ideas.

Re a wiki: they're quite easy to set up, and in fact I even set one up some time back in case anybody wanted to help with the Skeptiko Index: http://skeptiko-resources.creativeandcri.../Main_Page. It could be repurposed, perhaps under http://psiencequest.net/wiki/, for more general use by the community of both forums. The introduction could "live" on that wiki, and any of us could edit it. Perhaps we could even integrate logins so that one could log in to the wiki via one's PQ account, without having to create a separate account.

I just like the idea of a Wiki we can edit here! I did a little bit of editing of articles on Wikipedia some years ago, but never got too in-depth with the tags, and never created a new article.

I'd love to create a few pages to hold links to papers and information on particular subjects that tie in with EM fields. I have loads of collected stuff, but I've found I can never commit time to writing it all down in a single article. Being dyslexic, the practical mechanics of writing up the thing, interfere's with my ability to think about what I want to write. But building up something piecemeal over time seems so much more achievable.

This is what I wanted the SPR to do, thus allowing people with an interest in a subject to create referenced articles that ventured further than the fairly traditional articles and view points that they have commissioned from established academics so far.

There are lots of different views on subjects, and I'd like to see them *all* argued for/against on a page, instead of just having one authors biased position, or, the biased editing that goes on in Wikipedia. The PSIence forum is nice to discuss stuff on, but as others say, information becomes difficult to find.

[Laird]

I'd love to create a few pages to hold links to papers and information on particular subjects that tie in with EM fields.

You're good to go, Max. The wiki is locked and loaded - fire at will.

It seems to work just fine. Have set it up live and migrated the existing wiki from http://skeptiko-resources.creativeandcritical.net/wiki to http://psiencequest.net/wiki

Feel free to create a new page for which to draft the introduction and edit at will - you and any other forum members!

I can't login using my existing PSIence username and password.

When I try it responds:

"Incorrect password entered. Please try again."

[Laird]

I can't login using my existing PSIence username and password.

When I try it responds:

"Incorrect password entered. Please try again."

Hmm. It works for me with both my usual account and the "Non-Admin Test User" account, under both Firefox and Chrome.

Which browser are you using? And are you sure you're entering the right password?

[Laird]

Nevermind, I see what the problem is. It's the underscore in your username. MediaWiki auto-converts those to spaces. Will investigate further and try to come up with a fix.