Wiki

Olli

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What about adding wiki to site? There could be page for every dash cam, and infobox too. Also comparison charts etc. Maybe restrict editing only for registered members, this way, would avoid spam.

I think MediaWiki is best option for wiki software, for example Wikipedia uses it.
 
This is an interesting idea. Are you suggesting we have wiki pages instead of the FAQ pages on the main site? Pretty much any popular dash camera has an FAQ page and I will update as necessary if someone points out an issue or wants to add information. Users can also create an FAQ topic in the forum as well and I will make it a sticky. This way our members can "own" that content and it actually makes it very easy to make an FAQ page.

Do you know of any product related / review sites that have a wiki and do this well? I would like to take a look and see how it compares to the Comparison Table + FAQ pages we have now.

Thanks
 
The FAQs already feel a little Wiki like to me with the way Contents and everything else is displayed.
I tried to Google and could not find any product wikis just video game ones.
Also having to figure out a way to lock it down to maybe like forum members with at least 25 post or something so that some of the vendors that are on websites and trying to sell misrepresented product as the real thing don't just sign up and sneak sell links into the wiki pages.
 
I don't know one, sorry. But Wikipedia gives good look of it.

The benefit would be that members could correct things easily, also adding new dash cams would be easier. And the wiki markup is easy, the "infoboxes" for example are very good looking.

Maybe you DashCamMan could install Mediawiki to server, just as a test? I have knowledge of MediaWiki software.
 
I will take a look. My primary concern is that wiki pages are great for "generally accepted" information but may not be the best for reviews since there are vested interests between manufacturers, retailers, users who are big fans and disgruntled users. Obtaining consensus will be difficult, resulting in pages that will not help a user reach a buying decision.

I can give you an example. When I was looking at forum software, I narrowed it down to 2 solutions, vBulletin and Xenforo. If you look at their Wikipedia pages there is not enough information to make a purchasing decision.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/VBulletin
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/XenForo

They don't provide enough "real world" experience. It has the facts that I guess conflicting parties can agree on but not much more than that.

The key points that swayed me to Xenforo are NOT in the wiki pages. Apparently over 40% of vBulletin users are running version 3.8 which is 2 generations old (See here and here). People are not upgrading to v4 and definitely not v5. Note that v3 was originally released in 2004. Also you can see people migrating away from vBulletin.

Also look at this thread "showcasing" vBulletin v5 sites. Many sites who migrated to v5 gave up and switched to other solutions. Others complain about performance and there are really only a few small forums running v5. None of these points are mentioned in the wiki pages.

So, if I come across a popular review site that utilizes Wiki pages and works better than what we have now, I will consider it.
 
A wiki is great as a resource but should only ever be about listing factual specifications, tech specs, change log etc, using it for anything beyond that stifles discussion, forums are about interaction and sharing ideas, discussion etc, without that they die (my opinion anyway fwiw)
 
Great Idea!

If it's done right, and rules are followed to keep things formal and not off topic it could be pretty cool! You could either keep it open, or limit it to certain members etc. It makes sense though, we don't want DashCamMan getting burned out at all. So far he seems to enjoy it though for now :)

Why don't we just use Wikipedia itself? We could create a new article per camera. It might not be as flexible enough though not sure.
 
Why don't we just use Wikipedia itself? We could create a new article per camera. It might not be as flexible enough though not sure.

You'd have to be really careful. I have seen this tried before for a few items and if you don't word it right Wikipedia considers it sales pitching or promotion and deletes it. The current sort of generic Dashcam Wiki Page is rather lacking as well. Maybe if someone took the time to start there and expand it, and then create pages that are linked to from there, but again there is no guarantee that the page won't be reverted.
 
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