On Thu, 2012-10-11 at 15:31 -0700, Brent Beach wrote:
> All the topics we discuss on old tools could gradually migrate into the
> wiki and people would go to the wiki before asking a question.

I've often thought something like an OldTools wiki would be a good
project.  Not for me to set up, though; someone with some technical
abilities in the computer field would surely be far more successful in
that endeavor.

But I've also thought, just as often, that having the collective wisdom
of the porch-sitters distilled into a wiki could possibly have the
unintended and undesired effect of killing participation in the porch,
especially by newcomers.

I'm especially thinking of my approach to resolving computer problems.
I use Linux and I'm far from being a computer geek.  When I don't know
how to do something, what do I do?  Usually I bring up Google, type in a
few words related to my problem, and (almost) instantly the results pop
up.  A quick scan of the search results and I find, usually in a forum,
the answer to my question.  The problem has already been encountered,
discussed, resolved, and documented on some online forum.  No
participation, no human interaction, no getting to know the people on
the forum is necessary on my part.  That's precisely what I'm afraid of
should we do a wiki.

I know that some of the old timers here on the porch probably get a bit
tired of the same old questions popping up over and over again.  I
believe that the recent thread about the Leachmeister and the "Where did
so many of the original Galoots go" question at least briefly speaks to
that.  I suppose that a computer support forum that has 500,000+ members
really doesn't want or need to have the same questions posed in the
forum time after time.  That's a tremendous amount of bandwidth to
waste/pay for.  And on many of the support forums one often sees the
poor guy who makes the mistake of asking a question deemed too simple
derided unmercifully by the "elite" members of the forum.  But we're a
much smaller group, a niche group, if you will.  Really, IMHO, it is a
combination of the polite answering of the same old questions, the idle
chatter, the humor, the delightfully eloquent prose of some of our
members, the very real human interaction that we have here on the porch
that makes it what it is.  And what it is is a very special thing.  I
can't imagine any of the huge forums having anything even close to a
Galootaclaus event.  Or FMM.  Or flea market/auction/estate sale reports
and the associated gloating and the inevitable "You suck" comments.  Or
the wonderful civility and lack of flame wars that we have.

Now please don't anyone interpret all this to mean that I'm opposed to
the idea of a wiki, or to any changes to the list.  Really, a lot of
really neat and positive changes could be made.  Perhaps they could be
made in such a way that the list itself doesn't change; it merely gets
expanded to take advantage of newer technologies for those who are
comfortable with it.  But I'd like to go on record that I think any
changes ought to be carefully thought out.  We have something very
special here and I'd hate to see it lost to "progress".

Solo mis dos centavos, compadres...

-- Steve

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