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luvmysuper

My elbows leak
Staff member
Seeking your input here Gents, can you provide some feedback to us on the following questions?

Do you use the Wiki at B&B and if so, what do you use the Wiki for?

What do you like about the Wiki?

What do you dislike about the Wiki?

What affect would the disappearance of the Wiki have on you?

Could the information that is in the Wiki be effectively published in easier to manage forums, threads and posts?
 

rbscebu

Girls call me Makaluod
I find that the wiki on B&B is very poorly organised. This makes it difficult to effectively use.

The way it is now, I wouldn't miss it if it was gone. If it was better organised and monitored, I feel that it would be a great asset to traditional wet shaving.

[Not sure why there are two threads stating the same. Must be a moddie thing.]
 
The only thing I have ever used it for is the gap charts. Oh, and before I started straight razor shaving I learned a bit about the anatomy of a straight razor there.
 
I find that the wiki on B&B is very poorly organised. This makes it difficult to effectively use.

The way it is now, I wouldn't miss it if it was gone. If it was better organised and monitored, I feel that it would be a great asset to traditional wet shaving.
+1

There's some great information in the Wiki.

I use the Wiki Abbreviations frequently. Because of this I know how to find it. I often link the abbreviations page for newbies (and some oldies too) who wonder what the heck we're talking about.

There's other great information I use, but not frequently. Due to this it's a real PITA to find it again.

My opinion:
  1. Keep it
  2. Tweak it*

* i.e. Transform it from user unfriendly to user friendly (and I do appreciate that making things simple is difficult :wink2:).
 

Raven Koenes

My precious!
Phil, The Wiki is an essential part of B&B. Not only for the input provided from fellow members, but for all information, Clubs and Brotherhoods, reviews, glossary and abbreviations. It is also a line to the history, flavor, and culture of B&B. It would be a huge loss to drop it. I concur with Cal: Tweak it and keep it. Information from there is frequently shared in threads, like steep angle and shallow angle shaving diagrams. I've been so thankful it's there as a source to share content without having to search through posts to find it. I may be BOSC, but even I think it would be crazy to remove it, and that's saying a lot. :letterk1:
 
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luvmysuper

My elbows leak
Staff member
I find that the wiki on B&B is very poorly organised. This makes it difficult to effectively use.

The way it is now, I wouldn't miss it if it was gone. If it was better organised and monitored, I feel that it would be a great asset to traditional wet shaving.

[Not sure why there are two threads stating the same. Must be a moddie thing.]
I wanted one in general shaving where some folks with other interests frequent less and one in barbershop where some shaving guys don't venture.
 

luvmysuper

My elbows leak
Staff member
Thanks for the input so far gents, it's important to hear your voices.
FWIW, a huge part of what is in the Wiki was moved there from threads/posts.
Organizing it to be easier to use is a huge manpower sinkhole, it's not easy to navigate and making it easy to navigate is made more difficult because it's so finicky to work with.
We might be able to possibly get a volunteer team together to plug away at it at some point, but we wanted to get a feel for how all of you felt about it.
 
The biggest problem with the Wiki is the search function and index could be better. Plus, many of the photos on the wiki don't load. For example,


At one time I would send newbies to the wiki for information about gripping a razor - but it is useless now.


It seems that with every software improvement, the wiki suffers.
 
I along with a few others put person-years worth of work into the wiki years ago. Like the idea of a membership maintained wiki as I find searching threads for information cumbersome and hit or miss. However, do not see the interest in a meaningful percentage of membership. Also lost interest as the technical platforms changed and/or were unstable, breaking lots of stuff repeatedly.

I now use the wiki for my personal wiki page which has my gear and usage, primarily soap 3017 log. Also keep a list of useful threads.
 
It seems to be a great idea, but right now it needs some help.

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To summarize, it should not require the user to have the skills of a reference librarian to use the wiki effectively.

Some areas for improvement:

Broken links - it seems attempts have been made to reorganize things in the past, but many links are broken (e.g. French Shaving Soap Compendium). Once you encounter enough of these links, it discourages further exploration. There are also quite a lot of links to photos that don't work anymore.

Uneven coverage - there is not much info or no info on some products. Many products that are described are old and discontinued now. What is the process for updating this info or correcting mistaken or out-of-date info?

Search mechanics - there is a separate search mechanism which most users don't know about or don't use. Info in the wiki should be searchable from public search engines.

User awareness - there's a ton of info tucked away in the wiki that many users either don't know about or maybe can't find. Can anyone contribute to the wiki? Who decides what topics to cover and how much info to provide? Does anyone test the entries to find dead links, etc.? Does anyone revisit old topics to update them, remove or re-locate references to obsolete products, make a note about re-forumulations, etc.?
 
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BigFoot

I wanna be sedated!
Staff member
It seems to be a great idea, but right now it needs some help.

View attachment 1329178

To summarize, it should not require the user to have the skills of a reference librarian to use the wiki effectively.

Some areas for improvement:

Broken links - it seems attempts have been made to reorganize things in the past, but many links are broken (e.g. French Shaving Soap Compendium). Once you encounter enough of these links, it discourages further exploration. There are also quite a lot of links to photos that don't work anymore.

Uneven coverage - there is not much info or no info on some products. Many products that are described are old and discontinued now. What is the process for updating this info or correcting mistaken or out-of-date info?

Search mechanics - there is a separate search mechanism which most users don't know about or don't use. Info in the wiki should be searchable from public search engines.

User awareness - there's a ton of info tucked away in the wiki that many users either don't know about or maybe can't find. Can anyone contribute to the wiki? Who decides what topics to cover and how much info to provide? Does anyone test the entries to find dead links, etc.? Does anyone revisit old topics to update them, remove or re-locate references to obsolete products, make a note about re-forumulations, etc.?

Those are some great questions and a big reason we are feeling out the membership. We are aware the WIKI needs a lot of work, it has broken links, tricky interface, outdated, and all of its other problems. It will take a huge amount of resources to fix it. That is why we are asking y'all what you think.
 
I used the wiki for a while to track hardware inventory as a user page. I love wikis and hate to see information lost, but I've found that using wiki markup after heavy use of forum editors makes for a difficult user experience. If xenforo has a feature or plugin that permits creation of pages or articles or databases using the default editor that might be a path worth exploring.
 
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