Season 2012 - Site suggestions

[Julian]

@zyzzyva98: I thought that was very well put. It is important that the leadership understands and can articulate the mission of the wiki and this website, less we stray off course or focus on trivial matters.

I agree with your vision for each wiki page to contain valuable information for both beginners and veterans alike. I am sure this is attainable at some point in the future, but it won't happen without a dedicated core of writers who are experienced in their events. That's arguably the most important step to improving the wiki, but so far I haven't been able to come up with any viable way to increase this number.

Thanks for letting me know about the editing policy. I still think that the Thermo page contains unnecessary information that may be intimidating for a new Olympian, but I won't remove any of it. Do you know if the wiki supports hiding paragraphs, via something similar to the hide tag on the forum? This would be one possible way to keep the page from looking cluttered while still retaining the more technical information for older members. My only concern with the event pages trying to be comprehensive is that it leads to a lot of copy-pasting or paraphrasing of another source, which seems unnecessary and counter productive. In my opinion, what would be more ideal is a short blurb about each topic and then links to specific videos or webpages (not just a general link to Wikipedia) that explain the subject in more detail.

For example, on the Thermo page, there is a section on the Carnot cycle that is essentially a wall of text. A fairly well written wall of text for that matter, but it looks messy, complicated, and makes itself so easy for the eyes to just glaze over and keep scrolling down. A classic example of something that is not helpful to the beginner, and not useful to the veteran. Experienced members will realize that the Carnot cycle is an important concept in thermodynamics and you can be sure he or she has studied it from a more reliable and comprehensive source. Therefore, it would be more helpful to everyone if the blurb talked about the general idea behind the Carnot Cycle (without equations!) and emphasized that "Hey! This is one of the things you better figure out if you want to be successful!" and then linked to a video like this from Khan Academy or a textbook that explains it well and/or in greater detail. What do you think?

I'm a big fan of the wiki, and I would love to see it be used more by everyone. But in order to do this, I think we really do need to reevaluate the functionality of the wiki from the perspective of the user, rather than from the viewpoint of a writer who's idealized goal is to have a comprehensive webpage of the event.

As for Skink's last comment, just posting the rules of the event is not the most helpful thing to a newcomer. Ideally, our audience is not the ignorant users who post open ended questions like "Hi, I'm new to this event. How do I make a thermo device?" I think we should target the members one step above these people, who have taken the time to read the rules and are now looking to explore the event in greater detail. The rules only tell you so much. For Thermo, it won't tell you how to build a device or what the basic ideas are. I think the Mousetrap Vehicle page does a good job of explaining the idea behind the event and, as you say, distilling the page down to be helpful and informative to a newcomer, without copping out and throwing the rules at the reader (which is illegal anyway). It gives a general description of the concepts that are most popular, without explicitly saying what works best or giving an exact procedure to building a nationally competitive car. That part can only come from experience and practice in the event itself.

So in short, the rules are not the most helpful thing to a newcomer, rather it is giving the reader a general sense of the event, what it entails, what it generally looks like, what subjects to study, and how to go about being successful in the event. I believe all this can be accomplished without really referring to specifications in the rules or giving away competitive secrets.

[robotman]

Ok I really enjoy the ideas flowing around here, this is how the wiki (and in turn the whole site) gets improved.

Just to clarify: Rules are not allowed on the wiki (or anywhere else on the site), it is a violation of the soinc copyright if rules are online, so lets avoid directly copying full sections of the rules onto the wiki.

Second there is a <spoiler> tag that should help you hide the info that is in the way/outdated for this year/extra.
Should look like this in use:

Code: Select all

<spoiler text="Title Text">Text to hide</spoiler>

[starpug]

I just felt like chiming in here.

I feel like Julian has a great point here. We need to focus on making sure that the average Olympian who goes on the wiki after they've been put on the event two days before regionals has a clear and concise description of the event. We want the article to point them in the right direction so that in two days they can be extremely efficient with the studying they do. We don't want to bog them down in more complicated concepts before they really understand the event. This is definitely something we should strive for.

I feel like the reason that some pages end up with a lot of specific information is that it's the easy way out for editing the wiki. All you have to do is recall or copy a bunch of information about a subject related to an event. As zyzzyva said, this too has a place on the wiki. There's nothing wrong with doing this, except for the fact that it blurs the purpose of the event pages. Sometimes the wiki can help you learn a concept because whoever is editing the wiki is able to put it in terms that are more understandable than a textbook or wikipedia. I believe the problem stems from simply trying to do too much on one page.

We might be able to fix this problem by separating the two tasks, doing an general event overview, and the specific information that is meant to help someone studying. This has already been done to an extent on the wiki, you just have to look at the Anatomy page and its subpages to see a very well organized event section (for the most part). We also have pages like rocketman's GMOA Notes Wiki which are basically a more concise version of a ton of information from a textbook or something like that. For a while now there has been a dot on the [wiki]Category:Needs Work[/wiki] If we simply took the information for people studying and event, like Thermodynamics, off of the main page and moved it to say [wiki]Thermodynamics/Important Topics[/wiki] (or a sub-page for some other event) and focused the main page on general event info like has already been done for Anatomy, then I think we'd have a wiki that was a lot clearer in what it was doing.

I dunno, just a suggestion.

[Julian]

Thanks for the feedback starpug. I appreciate it. You brought up a really good point that I had trouble articulating in my earlier post. Just for the record, I am in full support for an event page that provides detailed and informative information about the topics that could be covered on the test. I agree with you though, that the main issue is this is very hard to pull off, and often results in a bunch of copy-pasta from other sources (e.g. Thermodynamics), rather than a condensed and distilled form friendly to most Olympians (e.g. Anatomy).

For that matter, the Anatomy page is a great model for what I envision the other event pages could be. It does a good job explaining the event, the different sections and topics, and most importantly how to prepare for the event. The sample questions near the end could be easily replaced with a link to a simple practice test, but does not subtract from the excellent quality of the page. And, as you said, it also illustrates successfully branching off into separate subtopics that explain each organ system in greater detail. Unsurprisingly, the Anatomy page is one of the most viewed pages on the SO wiki.

There are a lot of "hidden" gems out there too. For example, I have never seen GMOA's notes before, and they are really useful and well organized. Unfortunately, since it's not specific to any event, it won't be featured on the main page of the wiki and so less people would check it out. As a side note, I haven't done a GMOA event before, otherwise it is likely that I would have stumbled upon it sooner. Even the special pages has provided some good insight into the wiki. It's no wonder that the most popular pages tend to be the most well written pages on the wiki (although I do realize some events have just been around longer and collected more views). Conversely, the poorly written or constructed pages have received relatively fewered views. Also, it goes to show that the Test Exchange gets a lot of traffic, even though I believe it has not reached its full potential as a premier SO resource. This is a very positive sign for another facet of the SO experience that I would like to work on in the future.

Also, Balsa Man suggested in one of the Tower threads, the wiki would be a good place to put an FAQ for events with A LOT of common questions. I see that this occurs in the build-its a lot, and if we put a bit of effort to make a well written FAQ for common, reoccurring questions, we could direct new users who post these questions to the FAQ without worrying about shortchanging them or make it seem like their questions are being blown off. We are fortunate to have a lot of active, experienced members, but I find that often their higher-leveled discussion are sidetracked or derailed by new members asking questions that have been answered so many times before. By giving them a location to direct these questions, they can spend more of their valuable time discussing unexplored aspects of such events like Towers, Gravity Vehicle, and the like.

Also, thank you robotman for showing me the spoiler tag. It will in handy when I try my hand at editing the Thermo page later this month.

[Luo]

A nice convenience would be to have more space to store private messages. I think that, say, space for 100 messages instead of 50 would be reasonable. If this would be too much to proffer to all users, then perhaps it could become a perk of being an exalted member? Just a thought.

[tuftedtitmouse12]

A nice convenience would be to have more space to store private messages. I think that, say, space for 100 messages instead of 50 would be reasonable. If this would be too much to proffer to all users, then perhaps it could become a perk of being an exalted member? Just a thought.

Agreed. It's such a pain having to delete messages with you've met the limit and you've got messages on hold because of that...

[starpug]

A nice convenience would be to have more space to store private messages. I think that, say, space for 100 messages instead of 50 would be reasonable. If this would be too much to proffer to all users, then perhaps it could become a perk of being an exalted member? Just a thought.

Agreed. It's such a pain having to delete messages with you've met the limit and you've got messages on hold because of that...

Oh trust me...it's a perk. Just not for you guys...

Anyway, you do realize if you make extra folders and things like that you can keep more than 50 messages. I just think that you can't have more than 50 messages in your main box.

[Luo]

Anyway, you do realize if you make extra folders and things like that you can keep more than 50 messages. I just think that you can't have more than 50 messages in your main box.

Thanks! I was unaware that you could create additional folders.

[tuftedtitmouse12]

A nice convenience would be to have more space to store private messages. I think that, say, space for 100 messages instead of 50 would be reasonable. If this would be too much to proffer to all users, then perhaps it could become a perk of being an exalted member? Just a thought.

Agreed. It's such a pain having to delete messages with you've met the limit and you've got messages on hold because of that...

Oh trust me...it's a perk. Just not for you guys...

Anyway, you do realize if you make extra folders and things like that you can keep more than 50 messages. I just think that you can't have more than 50 messages in your main box.

But you can only make so many folders...

[Littleboy]

You can only have 5. And besides, you still have to move them, making it just as time consuming as deleting.