nacoran
8146 posts
Dec 07, 2014
11:05 AM
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I was reviewing the wikipedia page on harmonica. It's better than it was a few years ago when we tried creating a blues harp portal only to be shut down, but it's still lacking. There are rules on wikipedia. It's not a 'how to', just sort of an organized information dump. I think it's useful if you know exactly what you are looking up, and it's probably fine if you are an academic just looking to learn about harp, but it doesn't have much use as a learning tool, in my opinion. Those are the rules of the game at Wikipedia. It is what it is.
There are, however, other Wiki tools out there, and I think there is a useful niche we could fill. Our software here doesn't let us directly host a wiki, but we can put a link to it, and put backlinks on the wiki.
What I'm proposing is a MBH harmonica wiki that will aim to keep some of the neutrality of a regular wiki. We won't, for instance, say 'Adam is clearly better than Little Walter, Jason Ricci is better than Sony Boy I & II and you should only buy combs from Tom or Andrew, and Nacoran is secretly the most influential harmonica player in the world' but we won't be reined in as tightly against going into the minutia of LP vs. TB as long as we present the information clearly and in as unbiased a format as possible.
Wikipedia, because it is a general knowledge site, requires some citations for information from deeper sources than we might need for what to us is general knowledge, but when possible we should still cite. I'd like us to also delve a little deeper. It also focuses on secondary sources over primary sources. It's harder for a site as broad as Wikipedia to deal in primary sources than a focused wiki. That said, there are some people who are very valuable sources of information who may also have a conflict of interest. We will have to sort out a way of dealing with that. It may be as simple as just requiring people with conflicts of interest to note that. We have a little freedom to decide what this will be.
At this stage, I need some help figuring out which software is the best. There are several free Wiki hosting sites, and several pay services. If we can get by with free, that's the best choice. I've done a little research and if I don't get feedback I'll move ahead on this stage, but I would like some feedback. Aside from the basic wiki stuff I think it would be useful to include links to tutorial videos. If the software we choose doesn't support hosting them directly, I can set up an account and play the upload game. Even although Wikipedia is open source, we can't plagiarize them. Our content needs to be our own. I'm inclined, unless we get problems with people defacing the page, to leave editing wide open.
I want this to be a group project because we have a lot of people here who know way more about harmonica than I do. It's got to be harp related, but generally speaking, I think the same range of material as we have on the forum is probably fair game- artists bios, unbiased information on harps and harp gear, and information on how to learn to play. That's the goal.
Who is in?
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First Post- May 8, 2009
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