These forums are great for getting model railroading help. I think I would have given up a long time ago if I didnt have the help everyone here provides. The problem is, new people are always joining up,and so the same questions are always popping up (questions on track cleaning, water, etc). Not that there is anything wrong with this, everybodys gotta start somewhere. The problem is sometimes some people dont want to answer the same questions again and so they say suggest using the search feature to look for past threads. Ive tried the search feature, but to be honest it isnt great and takes a while to find relevant threads.
What I think would be a good solution isif someone could set up a wiki site to be used in conjunction with these forums. so, say, if someone found a good new way to make certain types of trees, they could write an article and post it to the wiki. Then, when someone wants to start making trees, they could go on the wiki and see all the articles about trees. but if they wanted they could still get a personalised answer on these forums. I really think an International wikisite could help the hobby.
Hopefully I wont be kicked off the forum for suggesting heresy, Im just givin my [2c].
I agree a chronologically organized forum isn’t the best that’s available in today’s internet for building an online encyclopedia of model railroading how-to information.
But also look at it from Model Railroader’s perspective. They have a magazine we all pay for and it keeps them in business. How would building a free wiki help MR keep their doors open?
The answer is: it wouldn’t.
And wiki’s have their own set of problems – the democratically posted content could be inaccurate or just plain wrong. It could suggest the use of techniques that may be questionable and that you use at your own risk. And the format of the content could be all over the map, from really good to really bad. How would a newcomer tell which was the good stuff and which techniques were bad ideas?
Then who would police this content … or edit it so it would be a consistent format? And would all this be free?
One thing we get when we pay for an article in MR is the eyes of an experienced editor to format it so we can make sense out of the content – and perhaps even more important, we get the benefit of their experience in the hobby as to whether or not the technique will work. The editor filters out the questionable material naturally as a part of the submission approval process.
If we stood up a free wiki, we could end up with mostly all the junk no one could get published, since the incentive would still be to submit your article to MR or one of the other hobby print publishers and get paid for it.
The difference with a forum is that the lastest-thread-to-the-top-organization makes it easy for people to jump all over a new post that’s obviously got problems.
And most people consider a forum to be more conversational in nature, and we all know people can say anything they want to say when we’re talking to them – what they’re saying could just be a bunch of bull. That’s why they call it a “bull session” when people get together to discuss things. A forum is more like a bull session in its structure, so people will naturally take it with a grain of salt – as they should!
A wiki, however, uses more of an encyclopedia format and it’s not easy to comment on the content without feeling like you’re “breaking” the posted wiki article. People will more naturally think of a wiki article as " the gospel", since it’s far less conversational in nature.
There are answers to these problems with a wiki, but a good wiki takes dedicated editors who act as watchdogs to make sure junk doesn’t slip in. The next question becomes how to motivate those editors if the wiki is free? And how do you “screen” the editors to make sure they know their stuff?
In short a good wiki needs to be run like a business with a support staff, people in charge, etc. A totally democratic wiki with no chiefs will quickly turn into a quagmire of disjointed articles, with a few gems mixed in with an awful lot of chaff.
Tom, these two threads are very useful, at least to those who know they’re there. But how would a newcomer go about finding them? Maybe if the title was, Basic Model Railroading, or something of that nature, they would be easier to find. Some forums have a site where threads about a variety of topics are archived. Not a bad idea.
Yes, there are ways that might make a free online wiki (encyclopedia built by the audience – see Wikipedia) of model railroad knowledge sorta work, but I have to ask: why would MR want to do that?
We pay right now to get their material delivered to us in print form as a value-added high quality package, so why would Kalmbach want to build a free online version of this resource? If modelers could get good model RR how-to information online for free, why would you want to pay for print products? Seems like Kalmbach would be shooting themselves in the foot – just thinking like a business person, that is.
Now this forum is quite handy, but it’s not a replacement for a knowledgebase like Kalmbach’s print products are. The real time “bull session” nature of a forum generates energy and excitement for the hobby, so the two complement themselves nicely.
But as to doing a wiki, I don’t see that MR has any incentive to start making a large online encyclopedia for free when they can today make money providing that same information in a value-added hard copy package. And if they start making too much free online stuff available, how are they going to keep their doors open?
What about a pay-per-view wiki? Or a wiki with an annual subscription? That’ll probably go over like a lead balloon. [tdn] Yes I know stuff on the internet is supposed to be free, but you can’t keep the lights on that way!
I’m just another modeler like the rest of you, but I’ve
Like we need a hole in the head. The almost insurmountable problem with a wiki is that much of the information put up is just rubbish. You’ve only got to look at the nonsense that gets posted here by people who know nothing about a topic, but who have an overwhelming need to add their “2c worth”…
For a MR wiki to be of any value, it would have to be edited/adminstered by a very knowledgable person or persons, on a full-time basis. As Joe quite sensibly points out, why would Kalmbach spend money on something like that?
Yes, there are ways that might make a free online wiki (encyclopedia built by the audience – see Wikipedia) of model railroad knowledge sorta work, but I have to ask: why would MR want to do that?
We pay right now to get their material delivered to us in print form as a value-added high quality package, so why would Kalmbach want to build a free online version of this resource? If modelers could get good model RR how-to information online for free, why would you want to pay for print products? Seems like Kalmbach would be shooting themselves in the foot – just thinking like a business person, that is.
Now this forum is quite handy, but it’s not a replacement for a knowledgebase like Kalmbach’s print products are. The real time “bull session” nature of a forum generates energy and excitement for the hobby, so the two complement themselves nicely.
But as to doing a wiki, I don’t see that MR has any incentive to start making a large online encyclopedia for free when they can today make money providing that same information in a value-added hard copy package. And if they start making too much free online stuff available, how are they going to keep their doors open?
What about a pay-per-view wiki? Or a wiki with an annual subscription? That’ll probably go over like a lead balloon. [tdn] Yes I know stuff on the internet is supposed to be free, but you can’t keep the lights on that way!
Several people have said why would Kalmbach do it for free,but I actually dont think it should be free in the sense that this forum is free. There are quite a good few product reviews and How-To’s on the Trains.com website, but a lot of them are not actually free, you need to be a subscriber to MR to access them. I only learned this a few months ago when my subscription expired. I agree free wikis are mostly rubbish, And I dont know a lot about making websites, but I cant imagine it would be too hard to make a rating system. A lot of regular posters on these forums have really good personal websites (Spacemouse and others) it just seems a shame to me we cant have all this stuff in one place.