Hi you two. Ya, I set the upload limit incorrectly. There was also a file upload but no image upload on comments and an image upload but no file upload on Forum topics. All should be fixed now.
Right now Fido - Greenhouse Monitoring with Text Message Alerts is our most complete example. You can edit Fido's Tool Wiki to see how some of the formatting is achieved. You will also find some good examples over at the Tool section on http://publiclaboratory.com/tools (our #1 influence for the current Tool section). Feel free to ask me questions directly (http://www.farmhack.org/user/8/contact), I would be more than happy to help out and I am working on the website so our discussions may lead to usability improvements for other users as well.
A Tool's Wiki is collaborative document that represents the collective knowledge of a tool that bubbles up from the Tool's Forum.
I like that answer because it describes our collaborative process using Forums and Wikis but it lacks insight on exactly WHAT should bubble up from the Forum to the Wiki.
Before we set any strict guidelines I think we should see what happens, and in doing so, see what works and what doesn't, and I have a feeling that "What a Tool Wiki should be" will depend on the Tool. But, we may be able to start setting a few guidelines as to "What Tool Wiki pages are not." Wikipedia uses a list of "What Wikipedia is not" to help describe what Wikipedia Articles on Wikipedia are http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:What_Wikipedia_is_not.
# My first idea on what Tool Wikis are not
It's worth mentioning that the use of Instructables embedded directly on a Tool Wiki as opposed to just a link to an Instructable is at odds with the definition I suggested above. Specifically, an Instructable in not the "collective knowledge of a tool that bubbles up from the Tool's Forum". The Instructable is on another site and the owner of the Instructable may be unaware that there is a forum about their tool on Farm Hack where new information is coming to light. An Instructable is also not a "collaborative document" because only the original author of that Instructable can edit it. I make this sound worse than it it really is :P. In my opinion Instructables should ABSOLUTELY be listed on our Tool Wiki pages but displaying it in a way that makes it look like it's part of our site is confusing as to the nature of that documentation. So for Instructables, I think a simple link would to the Instructable suffices.
This leads me to my first suggestion of what Tool Wiki pages are not:
A Tool wiki should not contain other embedded websites but may contain links to other websites.
Per my first pro points on each model, the former has been proven to work well when developing software where forking is a possibility (forking helps to mitigate the issue of abandonment), the later has worked well for Wikipedia when documenting things that already exist.
Comments
Hi you two. Ya, I set the
Some example Tools to check out
First try at a definition for Tool Wiki
At the moment I'm feeling
Per my first pro points on