Ardour: community driven WIKI

Community Ideas for Ardour
#1

Hi,

I think an active community is very important for Ardour. I think a community driven wiki (users for users), with howto’s, beginners video’s, tips and tricks and sharing music made by Ardour would give a boost to Ardour and his community. Short introduction video’s, demo files and tutorials will help newbies to be able to start with Ardour and I think there is a need for such tools… I understand that Ardour devs don’t have much time to make video’s and the like, they need their time for Ardour and the official manual…

What do you think of this idea?

#2

If someone offers to set up and moderate a wiki, I think it is possible to have it spam free. I’ve a bit experience with wiki.linuxmusicians.com (I’m not the maintainer) and I’ve never seen any spam on it…

#3

We had one once. Like most Wiki’s it suffered from endless vandalism.

Its not going to happen again until someone demonstrates that they are prepared to actively maintain and defend it in the face of vandalism.

#4

I find most wikis pretty terrible, either there are four different pages describing the same thing in different words, or nothing is on there. EIther way, it’s very hard to find things on them… I guess the key is to be properly managed.

Another argument against it (albeit a little bit of a silly one) is that ardour is aiming to be seen as a “pro” DAW. And you don’t see wikis on the websites of Steinberrg, Digidesign etc… Having a wiki might actually put off so-called “pro” people from trying it out.

#5

Yes the key is properly managed.

As the ‘pro’ argument concerns… you could start the wiki outside the official website, with just a link somewhere to it…

Or use an existing wiki and make a special part for Ardour for it, for example wiki.linuxmusicians.com

#6

I think the wiki is a good idea. I run several wikis on different sites and it’s actually relatively easy to keep them spam-free. There are various captchas and extensions that can be installed to prevent spam, and even just one or two moderators would easily be enough to revert the 2 or 3 rare vandalisms that will happen every few weeks.

I wouldn’t worry about the “professionality” of a wiki - the forums here right now have enough spam on them that a wiki may actually be an improvement in aesthetics. Or, just run it on a separate site and set up a disclaimer that says, “This site is run by fans, and is not officially sponsored by Ardour.org” or some such drivel.

#7

The wiki already exists, in a manner of speaking. It consists of a forest of blog-posts and YouTube videos describing the installation, JACK configuration and favorite features of bloggers like myself. I have reached the point where I would like to contribute toward something more complete, but I have yet to install the current version.
Forums, wiki’s, videos and blogs each have their place in the growth of several of the pillars of Free and Open Source software, including WordPress, Blogger, Gnome etc. The question is whether there are enough of us with time and skills to moderate a wiki. There is discussion of developing the manual using a CMS which includes a wiki component.