Wiki How-Tos - Need Input Please Options

[Coomer]

Right now I'm finishing up the Wiki stuff for how-to articles, so that people can collaboratively contribute to the how-to articles, keeping them up to date and constantly improving them. For details on what a wiki is, see this page at Wikipedia.

Right now, the how-to articles can be edited by any logged in member, through a form that looks like the following:



As you can see, there's basic formatting controls for links and images. The trouble I'm having is deciding how to display the given how-to's images on the edit page so that an editor can easily see the image ID number and add it into the how-to text. Some how-tos have tons of images, so displaying them all isn't such a good idea, especially since I want to keep the page minimal, and I already still have to add a description on guidelines for editing how-to articles.

Regardless, once an edit is complete, management must approve the edit to ensure that it's not spam, copyrighted material, misinformation, etc. I'd rather not do it this way, but there are a few people/spam bots who would take down the entire how-to section by posting garbage and whatnot out of anger.

Once management approves the how-to, the newest version will show up in place of the old version. There will be a link to view previous versions of each how-to article.

Members may also add how-to photos to any how-to article. Again, these must be approved by management before they show up publicly, but at least if you're the poster of an image, you'll be able to see it, to add it into how-to articles that you're editing and whatnot.

Finally, and member will also be able to add a new how-to article. Again, these will need to be verified by management.

I'm also considering doing away with comments on how-to articles, as I don't want the how-to detail pages to be huge.

What do you guys think? What do you want to see? Any overall thoughts, feature requests, etc. are encouraged, because I'm really at a loss as far as exactly what direction to go.

Attached image(s)

 

[Supersprynt]

I would have said rich text editor, but if you don't want to show the pictures you might want to make sure they are named easily (1,2,3, etc) and like adding posts, have the original below so they can reference.

This post has been edited by Supersprynt: Jun 21, 2007 - 3:00 PM

[ILuvMyCelica95]

I agree with doing away with comments on how-to articles. The comments are usually things that should be asked through PM. idk they clutter things IMO

I also think there should be a printer friendly version of how tos?

[BloodyStupidDave...]

What do you guys think? What do you want to see? Any overall thoughts, feature requests, etc. are encouraged, because I'm really at a loss as far as exactly what direction to go.

I think mediawiki and tikiwiki get it about right. It is a bit of a hastle finding the id from a different window and pasting the url or whatever into the correct place but not something I think you should attempt to solve. Afterall, it is the way we currently create posts - put the image in photobucket, copy the url and paste it into the post.

Regarding the comments on the articles, how about having a link to a thread on the forums - "discuss this article"? Create a system that will generate a unique thread for each article - clicking on the link will take you to the thread if it already exists or create the thread and then take you to it if it doesn't.

[96bluevert]

i think if we were able to put how-to videos, that would help out a lot of memebers. I don't know how much extra work that would be to make happen, but it would be very helpful since some people are mostly visual learners.

anyway, just a suggestion.

[Supersprynt]

Pictures are visual.

[cHinaman727]

pictures are great but when you have someone actually doing it in motion, it is much more helpful IMO. Good luck Coomer!