State of the Wiki: December 2012

[Skink]

I'm planning on cleaning up the B pages tomorrow morning as well as adding the IL invitationals to that page. The former doesn't mean adding content necessarily, though I'll take a look at those overviews mentioned above.
...I don't want to get too involved in this because it's probably a larger job than it sounds if you let yourself get sucked in.

[fishman100]

Just curious but why are pages such as Junkyard Challenge 2011 Wiki in the "Needs Work" category? It (along with others such as Balloon Race) haven't been events for a few years now, and if they return I'm guessing they won't be similar to the aforementioned pages (especially if it's a building event).

Of course this is all speculation but I really don't see the point in heavily editing old event pages if they haven't even been events for a while...

[zyzzyva980]

We keep pages in the Needs Work category after they've rotated out because, well, they still need work. Obviously we don't set as high of a priority on editing them (that's why we have a list at the top of the page for high-priority projects), but since we don't know when they'll rotate back in as a trial or regular event, we still try to get as much information as possible on the page.

Yes, the rules might change, but we want the page to still be a good starting off point for people looking for the general idea of what to expect. There's nothing wrong with having too much information, but not having enough is always a problem.

[knittingfrenzy18]

What really irks me is that there is no place I can really learn about these things to add information to these old events, as I am obviously not an old enough olympian to know about these events. I want to help reduce the number of needs work pages but that makes me feel helpless. And asking my other teammates, who are only, at max, 1 year more experienced at scioly, how junkyard challenge works, and so forth, is kinda awkward. "why do you need to know about junkyard challenge?" "oh I'm editing the wiki on the student center."

[foreverphysics]

I can do Junkyard, I think.

[Skink]

There's no point. Nobody is going to reference the Junkyard page since the event has been out of rotation, what, two seasons now? When in-rotation events still need work, what sense is there in going back in time? I don't see anything wrong with having 'Needs Work' pages that, odds are, nobody is going to read in the forseeable future. Yes, I don't have traffic data. Still, I suspect common sense is on my side.

[knittingfrenzy18]

Hey guys, (lol I'm spamming up the thread) wondering if it might be okay if I converted everything on the test exchange to PDFs? I find them much cleaner, and word docs from the internet are...never a cool sight, in my eyes. Any reason anyone might have why I shouldn't do this?

[foreverphysics]

Hey guys, (lol I'm spamming up the thread) wondering if it might be okay if I converted everything on the test exchange to PDFs? I find them much cleaner, and word docs from the internet are...never a cool sight, in my eyes. Any reason anyone might have why I shouldn't do this?

Some of us like to somewhat edit the questions, and changing it is somewhat annoying. Also, not everyone has a PDF reader. (as in, my computer at home certainly doesn't.) That's the same reason .doc is preferred over .docx.

EDIT: @Skink
The Junkyard Challenge page has been accessed 778 times, compared to the Thermodynamics page, which has been accessed 29,544 times, or the Astronomy page, which has been accessed 39,469 times.

[Skink]

The benefit to PDFs is that they're easily opened by anyone. I don't know what the site policy is, but I'd wager they don't want you doing that. My reasoning...

1. You shouldn't go editing others' documents.
2. The convenience of the Test Exchange, aside from the fact that it has practice tests in the first place, is that you can easily go and edit the document to suit your needs (unless some are saved as Read-only or something). PDFs are not as easily manipulated.

In fact, Word docs on the Internet are quite common as, for example, college lecture notes and the like.

[knittingfrenzy18]

Got it. I guess it's just my personal feelings against word docs on the internet, though they be common.

Whee Cleanup category is my favorite part about wikis.