Merging newbie help and programming help

[Hexadecimal Disaster]

Not WIKI! Please! Unless it's some sort of limited WIKI, because I'm afraid that a lot of people of this community are too immature to handle a WIKI without posting spam, junk or pseudo 1337 h4x0r1ng. Maybe I sounded harsh, but I think that's true.

oracle:

*breathes deep*

A Wiki is a collaboratively-edited website which many people also view as an anarchistic publishing tool. The distinguishing feature of wikis is that they typically allow all users to edit any page, with full freedom to edit/change/delete the work of previous authors. Other typical wiki features include:

• A simple set of TextFormattingRules which allow access to a subset of HTML.
  
• Easy creation of links to wiki pages, either by joining capitalized words or surrounding them with special characters (like [[Free Links]] which becomes http://Free Links).
  
• Easy creation of new wiki pages. On many wikis a link to an undefined page is displayed with a question mark (like SampleUndefinedPage?).
  
• A RecentChanges page, which lists pages that have been edited recently.

The oldest public wiki (the [Portland Pattern Repository]) was created in 1995, and remains active as of early 2003. Bo Leuf and Ward Cunningham wrote a book that tries to explain it all: The Wiki Way, ISBN 0-201-71499-X.

*end of blah-blah*

But, did you know, oracle? (Ironic, eh? An oracle that doesn't know) If you learn how to use Google, your life will be easier:

http://www.google.com/search?q=%2B%22wha...l=es&meta=

[na_th_an]

Yeah, HD, I'm QUITE AWARE of that. The WIKI I am suggesting is a *very* limited one, just for la crême of QBNews community. Trustable people, you know who I mean

[Hexadecimal Disaster]

So you say accessable for everyone, but editable just for a few. Well, then that's not a WIKI, just by concept. Doesn't matters, your idea is pretty interesting (for creating a communitary FAQ, that's it)

[oracle]

Doesn't this give the site a potential to be destroyed by a user/hacker?

I only chose the name oracle because I'm not one. Thus is the way of the web :wink:

[na_th_an]

So you say accessable for everyone, but editable just for a few. Well, then that's not a WIKI, just by concept. Doesn't matters, your idea is pretty interesting (for creating a communitary FAQ, that's it)

Well, let's call it pseudowiki Just take the way a wiki is organised and edited, but add a passwords system.

Wildcard, what do you think about adding such a feature to the site?

[wildcard]

Nathan: Sounds like a excellent idea. The simplest way I could think of adding a feature like that would be to add a FAQ forum with moderators who only post to it or the like? Similar to how the QBNF Awards was done?

[na_th_an]

HMMM... Maybe the forum form is not very suited for that purpose, as what I was thinking about was in some kind of online-editable document, so if I post an article about off-screen buffering and I commit one or two errors and some wrong stuff, then someone could edit my document and change things.

But hey, a FAQ forum would be a nice start.

[Hexadecimal Disaster]

Well, a "FAQ forum" isn't very suitable for making a proper FAQ, IMHO, because FAQs oftenly uses a different "structure" than the style found on this forum; also sometimes is really needed the freedom to change and reformat things, and last, the forum isn't suitable for a proper question: answer. The "limited WIKI" thing is a good solution, we could modify the code of an existing WIKI to limit the creation and the edition of pages to just some users/admins. For instance, Hello Wiki seems simple enough (it's coded in Perl, BTW) to be modified.

Just my point of view.

Another links of possible interest:

http://twiki.org/, another free Wiki made in Perl
http://c2.com/cgi/wiki?WikiWikiClones, related links
http://phpwiki.sourceforge.net/, made in PHP (maybe easier to integrate with the authentication system of this forum)

[na_th_an]

My vote goes to phpwiki, as HD said, it would be easy to modify it to integrate it with this site.

Maybe we should run a poll or maybe ask for possible contributors before coding a single line, 'cause I'm quite sure we don't want a dead section where nobody writes.

[LATER]

Check this one: http://www.roboticboy.com/blast/
It is damn simple, thus easily adaptable. Tell me what you all think about it.

[Hexadecimal Disaster]

Hmmm... it's in beta stage, but seems very functional... and simpler, impossible. The code's ludicrously easy:

VIEW.PHP

Code:

<?

$result = mysql_query("SELECT * FROM blast WHERE keyword = '$blast'");
$blastData = mysql_fetch_array($result);

?>

<html>
<head>
  <title><? echo $blastData["title"] ?></title>
  <link rel=stylesheet href="blast.css" type="text/css">
</head>
<body bgcolor="#ffffff">

<span class="title"><? echo $blastData["title"] ?></span>
<br>
<span class="subtitle"><? echo $blastData["subtitle"] ?></span>
<br>
<span class="blackb"><? echo addBlast(addLinks($blastData["description"])) ?></span>
<br>
<p>
  <span class="black"><? echo addBlast(addLinks($blastData["body"])) ?></span>
</p>
<hr size="1" width="100%">
<span class="black">
<div align="right">
<? echo $blast.' - '.$blastData["date"].' by '.$blastData["author"] ?> (<a href="">home</a>) (<a href="?blast=<? echo $blast?>&what=edit">edit</a>)
<? if ($REMOTE_ADDR==$myIpAddr) { echo '(<a href="admin.php">admin</a>)'; } ?>
</div>
</span>
</body>
</html>

There are an Admin area, but it seems that's only for deleting pages. (if you're using phpMyAdmin, that area's pretty useless, BTW) :roll:
About the restrictions, we can use the same authentication engine that this forum uses, (sessions) or... look, easier than that: since this WIKI uses IP numbers to identify the author, we can restrict the access of the EDIT and NEW modules to be accessed by only the IP numbers contained on an "authorized" table. Far easier, but a bit problematic with dynamic IPs.

What do you say?