IT Wiki / Repository

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Hello Everyone, I got SimonV's permission to post this before you wonder. LOL
SimonV, I wasn't sure if this was the best place to post this so feel free to move it if needed.

Anyway
I am thinking of doing something and I would love your opinion and thoughts.

While this site is kewl for asssisting people in getting their Certs.

I am thinking of a creating a project, basically a repository of problems, symptoms, and fixes for those issues.
They will be based on forums like here (vBulletin) with Tutorials and Articles like here but I would want the site to be more about the repository, Almost like an IT Wiki of issues and fixes.

The site will be MS, Linux, Cisco, Mac, Web Design, ETC. All IT will be fair game.

I would have links to here and a few other sites I frequent for people working on getting their certs as well as need Tech Support.

The site will have a few basic computer help forums as well but very basic, mostly pointers to here.

Again, I am just trying to get opinions before I put the time and expense into it. Expense is not really a problem, but I'm more curious as to whether you think it would be worth it. I know most techs use Google or Bing to find answers than anything else but if they have single place to go to find what they are looking for, instead of searching hundreds or thousands of links provided by those search engines, the chances of people returning are greater.

It's a big project that will take alot of time to grow into something worthwhile and I am hoping over time sites like this one and the other sites I frequent can collaborate.

 

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I've often thought about doing an IT Wiki for fixes and learning but never gotten around to it due to the time involved, as a solo project.

I'd be more than happy to work with a team though.

 

Thank you BB88, That's exactly what I am thinking. Individually this would be impossible, but, if we can get a good solid team together it could be turned into something really worthwhile.

 

Sounds like a good idea to me! You will need a team from the start as it sounds like the planning of this will be major!

 

Yes, it will take a team of willing participants even to get it started.

If I get enough people interested to get it started, I will set the site up and we can take off.
I've got feelers out to a few sites like this one to see if interest it great enough.

Thank you for your feedback, it's most welcome. ;)

 

If you do decide to go for it, count me in. Sure I could help in some way!

 

Not sure what I could contribute, but I'd give it a go.

The problem is, as you say, nearly everyone will go to google to find a fix. It's amazing how many different opinions on the same problem you get though.

 

Not too sure if a forum is the right back end for this, you need a dedicated WIKI style engine to allow searching etc, if you leave it simply as a forum then I think you're going to hit a wall sooner rather than later.

You should ideally be looking at something like Confluence (this has a licence cost to it so I am not actually suggesting that.), MediaWiki or some other style of Wiki back end in front of a simple web page (much like Wikipedia has it).

 

Simon, Excellent point about the forums backend. Check this out
https://www.vaultwiki.org/
It's a Wiki designed specifically for vbulletin forums.
It's basically a wiki that uses the forums to store the data but looks nothing like forums and the forums used to store the data are not accessible from outside the wiki software.
I already own a license as I was going to use it for my gaming site but then thought against it when I found 2 large wiki sites for the game. So moving it to the new site will be easy.

Excellent, Very good point, especially about the Google, at first its just going to be us adding entries. Hopefully when the site gets large enough and we start showing up more and more in google results that will change. Granted, like I said in the beginning, this is going to take quite a while and quite a bit of dedication.
I have asked a programmer about creating a web crawler to assist with something that can pull data from the web to assist us to get started.
Thank you, Love the Avatar BTW.

 

LOL, I like your first Entry, very funny and kewl

Seriously, I would never knowingly steal (Copywrite) or rip off others work so many things will have to be verified and this will obviously make it take even longer.

A place where people can ask questions and get answers though, between here, Techsupportforums.com, sysnative.com and other sites like this, there are already tons of places to do this. And I will have links to all the major ones, especially ones I frequent.

I will have a few support forums though but the bulk of the site will not focus on it.

Yeah, it'd be nice to get as big as Answers.com some day though. ;)

 

Well, it appears from lack of interest on all the sites I posted this, that it just isn't worthwhile.

Thank you for those that did show interest.

;)

 

As IT and Computing are such broad catergories and have so many niche and quirky things with each entity, it would be VERY hard to be complete without years of work. Thus, with next to no support, it is as close to impossible as you can get, and I don't believe in impossible