Idea for a news page in the Wiki section

[Laird]

That all seems well-considered to me. I'll make those changes in a little while unless you get onto them first.

I noticed something like that too. Unfortunately, it looked as though it was due to a bot which was slurping up multiple pages at the same time from multiple IP addresses in a range it owned, making it seem like a bunch of different people.


I guess we could create a "commentary" thread, and split out all of the comments into the commentary thread. One problem is that then the comments would lack context, which we'd have to reinsert, making it quite a bit of work (but doable). I'd not be in favour of simply deleting comments though - that wouldn't be fair to the people who put the time/energy into writing and posting them.

Is a commentary thread something like you had in mind, tim?

Thanks, Laird. My original idea with that NDE thread was just to have the experience alone and a suitable background description to it because most people on here accept the reality of NDE's (at least that there is something going on) and don't want to argue about it particularly. 

However, a lot of additional comments appeared, including quite a few "arguments" etc which have (IMHO) spammed up the "thread" ….a thread which was not actually meant to be a thread but more a compendium of lots of interesting NDE's, many of which other forums don't have, to attract newcomers into the forum.

I fully understand members who don't/wouldn't want their comments messed about with or deleted but seeing as how the forum is growing, I just thought it might improve that section (which does seem to be popular) if it was paired down to just NDE's alone. I mean in five years time, who will want to read my comments arguing with someone about when a person is really dead etc ? I think it detracts from the NDE's themselves.

I don't want to cause anyone any hard work in achieving this. If members agreed to it, then the comments would be better just got rid of completely as they won't make any sense isolated. I don't remember anything profound being said (definitely not by me) or anything that a particular member has put a lot of work into (apologies if I'm wrong) comments wise, so I don't personally see what would be lost.

However, my opinion is just one. It would need to be agreed (or not) by everybody with an interest, as the case may be. And that's perfectly alright with me. Just thinking about improvements. So if we don't think it improves it, forget it, no worries, everyone.

[Laird]

Fair enough, tim. I'll take a little browse of the thread to get a better sense of things for myself, and then get back to you. Perhaps, if, as you say, the comments wouldn't make sense in isolation, and mostly don't contribute much of value, then we could put it to a vote as to whether or not to simply delete them. I do think it would need to be a community decision rather than a unilateral one by you or me.

[Laird]

By the way, tim, there's another possibility that you might like to consider: (re)posting all of those accounts into a page on our wiki titled something like "A compendium of NDE accounts". Going forward, you could then cross-post to both, and conversations could occur in the forum thread that wouldn't occur on the wiki page.

By the way, tim, there's another possibility that you might like to consider: (re)posting all of those accounts into a page on our wiki titled something like "A compendium of NDE accounts". Going forward, you could then cross-post to both, and conversations could occur in the forum thread that wouldn't occur on the wiki page.

Yes, that's possibly a good idea, Laird. Let's see what Ian and others (mods and members) think, then.

By the way, tim, there's another possibility that you might like to consider: (re)posting all of those accounts into a page on our wiki titled something like "A compendium of NDE accounts". Going forward, you could then cross-post to both, and conversations could occur in the forum thread that wouldn't occur on the wiki page.

I think that is one way in which the Wiki section can be useful - in making more accessible what is essentially reference material posted to the discussion threads, and preventing it from becoming invisible through the passage of time or being swamped by ephemeral discussion.

[Laird]

Agreed, Chris.

One problem is that the editor for our wiki is not a rich-text/WYSIWYG editor, which makes creating new wiki pages daunting to non-technical users. There is a visual editor extension for MediaWiki, however, it depends on a separate Node.js service, which, on our shared Hostgator server, we would be unable to set up... which chalks up another advantage for moving to a VPS, where we would have sufficient control of the server so as to install such a service.

[Laird]

By the way, tim, there's another possibility that you might like to consider: (re)posting all of those accounts into a page on our wiki titled something like "A compendium of NDE accounts". Going forward, you could then cross-post to both, and conversations could occur in the forum thread that wouldn't occur on the wiki page.

Yes, that's possibly a good idea, Laird. Let's see what Ian and others (mods and members) think, then.

G'day again, tim. I've just skimmed the first four pages of the "NDE's" thread, and it seems to me that there is a lot of commentary in those four pages, which I would be very, very wary of deleting, but of which I also agree with you that it would be too decontextualised to move to a separate thread. I would, then, personally encourage you (us) to go the wiki page route. However, I suspect that my comment to Chris above applies in your case: you are probably not already familiar with the syntax of wikitext, and are probably (also) not interested in learning it - and we are currently not able to make editing of the wiki easy enough for you that you don't need to learn how to edit wikitext.

So, here's an offer: I will set up the wiki page for you, and repost all of the NDE accounts in that thread for you and for others who have posted them. Then, if you want to learn how to post further accounts to the wiki page yourself, and - as I suspect - are not already familiar with wikitext, I will provide you with any assistance that you might need. Otherwise, I will simply continue to serve as the proxy for you and other posters to the thread, reposting to the wiki page any accounts that you and others post in the forum thread.

What say you?

[Laird]

What say you?

And if it's "Dude: wikitext? I coded that crap when I was in preschool", then I will be suitably humbled. :-)

I would also say that the basics of the wiki format - paragraphs, bold, italics and links - are really quite easy, and those cover nearly everything people commonly use in forum posts.