While looking at the Vectrix collaborative handbook I had this inspiration - of the obvious, by the way - that thing should be pinned to the top of the Vectrix forum to make it easily findable. And once I did that the other (obvious) inspiration is there should be a "collaborative handbook" for each forum, pinned to the top of the relevant forum.
This is so obvious that on the one hand I'm surprised it took this long to sink it into my head - and on the other hand it will be helpful.
The "collaborative handbook" feature has been with us for a long time - and it's always been configured so that any registered member can add pages. Any member who adds a page can edit the page they add at any time - this is unlike the editing rules for forum posts. Further specific people have the right to edit any handbook page (if anybody wants that right, contact me). The collaborative handbook is then similar to a wiki but not quite the same. We've discussed wiki's before and decided not to implement that on VisForVoltage.
With the per-forum handbook page pinned to the top of the relavent forum it should obviously be more findable than the current situation.
Good idea, thanks!
By now Google finds the Vectrix Collaborative Handbook with most sensible search strings. You might want to think about a reciprocal system to guide people to the other parts of V from the handbooks, too!
One concern about the sticky handbook link is that many people might start using it like a forum, and write all sorts of unsorted, "off topic" stuff in it. It's bad enough as it is now, because I have little time to sort or re-write/condense entries.
We need more people to participate in sorting and weeding out the fat in the threads!
Now, with the sticky link on top of the list, more people might be tempted to use the "Create new page" feature to write up something they know a lot about.
R comes to mind - how about a summary of your production chronology data?
Now, finally, new additions to handbook threads will show up in the "Recent posts list" - at least I think so. I'll try it out.....
EDIT: I've tried it and added this page to the handbook: http://visforvoltage.org/book/ev-collaborative-hand-books/8061
But it does not seem to show in the Vectrix recent posts page: It still says last addition to the handbook by Rady on Dec 9th, 2009.
That's a problem! It must show an alert for newly added pages to be truly useful in the recent posts list!
This information may be used entirely at your own risk.
There is always a way if there is no other way!
Yeah, each of these handbooks should link to the relevant forums.
Yes, please. FWIW There is a "handbook maintainer" role available which gives you a bit of extra power to edit handbook pages. I intend to grant that role pretty freely.
I'm confused - which recent posts page do you mean? There is one for Scooters (including Vectrix), there is the Vectrix forum, and there is the Recent Handbooks page. They each have different settings and I agree you're pointing to pages that fall into a gap between them.
Handbook pages aren't terribly easy to distinguish as to whether it's a Vectrix handbook page or BionX handbook page. Have to research that a bit .. But one can look at the Recent Handbook page to track edits in the handbooks overall. So far as I know there wouldn't be a way to find edits to the Vectrix handbook pages and include that in the list in Recent Scooters or the Vectrix forum.
- David Herron, The Long Tail Pipe, davidherron.com, 7gen.com, What is Reiki
I mean the page you called the Vectrix page (that's probably the better name for it): http://visforvoltage.org/forums/vectrix
So far I've used a workaround to make handbook additions appear on the Vectrix page: Start a thread in the Vectrix section, then move it across into the handbook via the "outline" button. That makes people aware that there is a new entry, but looses the main function of a book page, that is the ongoing edit-ability of the first post.
This information may be used entirely at your own risk.
There is always a way if there is no other way!