PS2 Scene Wiki?

Here's an idea:

What if someone started a Wiki? Seems like it'd be a better way to organise information about PS2 hacking/homebrew than a message board (no offence). The message board would obviously still be around for discussions, but it'd be a great central point to keep tutorials and to gather *known* information as it progresses...

As opposed to, say, our numerous GT4 threads where every page we have countless questions like 'has anyone gotten it working yet?', 'why hasn't anyone gotten it working yet?', and my personal favourite, 'i heard that if you use [method that has already been carefully explained several times not to work], it will work! is this true????' See, cos they wouldn't need to ask. It would all be there, and they wouldn't have to sift through pages to find it.

If you're wondering what a Wiki is at this point, this may help: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wiki (irony: the linked page itself is part of a wiki!)

I'd start one, but I have neither the server resources nor the desire to administrate it. Although, administration shouldn't be a huge problem, since the wiki's users basically administrate themselves, and (free) software like MediaWiki (what Wikipedia runs) make getting rid of trolls easy.

What do y'all say? Anyone interested? If you vote in the poll, perhaps elaborate on your reasons for your opinion here.

Appendum: before y'all call me a noob who can't use the search function, I did notice <G>'s post here, but it appears he was only talking about emulators. My proposed idea would encompass all PS2 hacking/homebrew/etc (not warez obviously), and anyone should be allowed to contribute.

Aye, makes sense to me. Would (hopefully) help keep down the number of idiotic posts asking the same thing over and over ><. And would be easy to find information for what you're looking for, as things would be on their own permanant page 'n stuff, as opposed to wading through tons of topics and posts. Not to supplant the message boards, of course, but more as a suppliment to it, as a place for known information to go and such. And I just realized it's 2:30 am, and I'm posting on a message board about ps2 in regards to a wiki... I'm pathetic XD

I use Wikipedia all the time, but I now just noticed that i can edit it. What the hell stops people from basically edited history to their liking or adding a bunch of horse shit?

Good question, necro. All changes are logged in the history, and you can see who edited them and exactly what they changed. (On any Wikipedia page, click the History tab to see what I mean.) MediaWiki has a special function so that if it is discovered a certain troll has defaced many pages, you can in one swift move ban that troll and reverse all changes they have made.

Also, as I mentioned before, anyone can contribute. At any given time you're going to have more people that want to be helpful than who want to cause a ruckus. Those (the former) people can easily revert or change any bad information. If there is a dispute about the content of a page, all pages have a linked 'discussion' page where the involved parties can discuss what they think the page should say and why, and a consensus can be reached (usually by voting). MediaWiki also has 'watchlists', so if you're especially knowledgeable about a particular topic (e.g. HDLoader), you can add that page to your watchlist and see when anyone changes it, so you can make sure it's all on the up and up.

Like anything, it's not perfect, but there are tools to keep it going smoothly. Just look at Wikipedia; they've got gazillions of users, and therefore at least a handful of trolls, but they manage to keep it under control.

Im sure most people wont mind signing up again one more time, i wouldnt, that alone would stem vandalism, aswell as a probation period, i think its a GREAT idea, purely to clean up the forums. It also becomes a great way to share information on various topics.

i already thought of this and it wont ever happen. I asked for people to help out with the tutorial section before and little to nobody submitted anything at all. What makes you think someone is going to publish something productive on a wiki when we gave them an opportunity do so many times here before?

Well, with a wiki, there's less of a burden on any one person: you don't have to write a whole tutorial yourself all at once. You can just flesh it out... and either come back to it later, or let other people fill in the blanks. Or you can find something someone else started and just add what you know. It's collaborative. It's a continuing work in progress. Little by little, it gets done, until you have something useful. Rome wasn't built in a day, and neither was Wikipedia...

To a lesser extent, there's also a thing about having it immediate. I'm not implying that people don't trust you'd post it to the site if they e-mailed you a tutorial, but when you click an 'edit this page' link and moments later it's live, there's a slightly different mindset. I think people would be more willing. After all, it's not as if nobody's ever posted any useful helpful information in these forums, right?

There's a different mindset between the two. A wiki would provide kind of a cross between the two, the more permanant-ish tutorial section with the interactive forum. Wow, that sounded like a ton of bs thrown together to sound like it actually means something ><. But there really is a different mindset between the two. I didn't really understand it until an IRC community I frequent decided to set up a wiki; after becoming involved with it, I'm beginning to understand why a wiki is so useful. If someone wrote up a tutorial, it would be much easier for them to update and fix anything they screwed up, and for others to provide insight; it's more difficult to do that by the traditional means. For instance, look at xbox-scene's tutorial section. It's not bad, by any means, but much of it is outdated and not useful; if you want to know something, you mainly check the forums. And this is waay too late and I'm not making any sense, so I'll just shut up now.

Edit: Oy... Aero, are you spying on me? Replied at the same time almost... heh

Okay, here's an update: despite my reservations about administrating it, and uncertainty about the resilliency of my host, I really wanted to see this happen. So I've started one up.

The PlayStation Wiki aims to provide a comprehensive source of knowledge for hacking, homebrew, etc. for all current and future consoles in the PlayStation product line, and is now open. If you're interested, especially if you'd like to contribute, feel free to stop on by ^_^

It's a bit lacking in information so far, as we've just started; but as for myself, anyway, I'm going to continue to be adding information, and hopefully others will too.

I'm obviously not making any money from this, I'm just doing it for the fun of it and to share knowledge. I'm considering it an experiment; if it's successful, great! But I don't mean to push it on anyone.

Cheers,

Aero