Hi,
Mises.org really needs a wiki. I have searched the site and been unable to find one. Most of the anarcho-capitalist wiki's seem to be woeful at best.
What I would like to see is a place where consice articles on topics such as Roads, Phones, Police, Law, Prisons, Welfare and similar will work, so when someone brings up the same old "Yeah, but what about...?" I can just paste a link, instead of having to say or write a page, and the back up and understanding required for that page. It can't be a forum post, since it needs to link to other articles and it needs to be consice.
Is there something like this already setup?
Would the Mises institute be able to set this up?
Thanks,
Uriah
uriah:Does your account need a certain level of permission?
Hmm, looks like it. Why don't you tell me what Wiki you want created. I need a name, address (/Community/wiki/[address]) and a brief HTML description.
You should make it clear that this is an individual initiative and does not represent a Mises-Instituted sanctioned project.
LibertarianNation.org is pretty good for that. But they drastically need a search bar!
Hrmmm, this isn't bad, but it's not very consice. It seems to be more of an aggregation of links, and I don't think we can add/remove from it.
And yeah, badly needs a search bar!
Setting it up is not the problem. The issue is who will maintain it, and fill it with content? There is a reason that most of the ancap wiki's are weak. It's likely a shortage of volunteer labour.
I would make a great bureaucrat. Wanna see? Click here. It's fun.
If it's on the mises site, and people start using it, i believe it would take off.
For one, these forums and the austrianforum.com forums can be used to generate the first material for the site.
Then over time it will become better.
As for maintaining it, if there are admins or similar at mises, perhaps the same people who maintain the forums.
Yes, admins would be a problem. I worry about that. We are seriously understaffed as it is .
Jeffrey TuckerEditorial VP, Mises
Hrmmm, what if people in the community could be admins, and the changes were locked to usernames? Anyone can sign up, and make changes. But if changes are made by a user (or bot), they can be rolled back easily.
I think this would be the primary administration concern.
As for users not writing good information, the information would get better with time.
I would help monitor it while it's in its infancy, I would set my self up with the "Recent Changes" RSS feed and just monitor what gets put up. I'd also go into the forums and pull some stuff for the setup of the categories and etc.
This would be something really handy for us to have and would help us communicate our message.
uriah:Mises.org really needs a wiki.
I prefer the blog format to a wiki format. There are two problems that can occur with wikis:
1. Nobody reads or uses them. In that case, why bother?
2. There's a lot of users. Then, you have edit wars and flamewars. In that case, why bother?
I'm thinking of writing a better wiki engine, but blogging is a more efficient use of my time.
I have my own blog at FSK's Guide to Reality. Let me know if you like it.
Blogs are soapboxes, they rarely become the scene of a community or knowledgebase. They are not organized semanticaly, they are ordered typically by calendar date.
A wiki is a great idea, but I am not interested in getting into a new project just yet, or taking on something like this by myself. If several people were interested in it, and came up with a vision for it, then I could lend some skill to producing and maintaining it.
If you're just using another site's wiki engine, such as MediaWiki, you'll have the same problems as Wikipedia (if you're successful).
I might write my own wiki engine someday, but I don't have the time or energy right now. Someday, I may move my blog from Blogger to a self-hosted format. Then, I'd have more flexibility. For example, I could add some static pages in addition to the posts.
pbwiki is a fantastic product.