Irish Airsoft Info Site - Suggestions/Volunteers

gerrowadat

Howdy folks,

I'm looking at starting an Irish Airsoft info site, which would probably be wiki-based. This would be not-for-profit (i.e. the hosting I'll probably be using expressly forbids making money) and unaffiliated with any retailer, team or organisation. Ads, pimping of retailers or sites, or anything that isn't purely informational won't be allowed. I'm hoping to provide a good, unbiased source of info for the many, many newbies the sport has and will be having over the next while.

The reasoning behind it is that I guess there are a lot of people with a lot of questions, and as the sport grows, "Read the Newbie thread" isn't going to scale as a means of getting people the info they want quickly. This isn't meant to 'compete' with any other website, and in fact I'm hoping it'll be a valuable resource for boardsies (whatever board they frequent). I'm talking things like each site, retailer, team, etc. having their own wiki page that they can edit, people can add directions, gps coords, etc. Also if people are into it we can have a reviews section for various bits of kit. I know www.airsoftwiki.com exists already, but this is specifically about giving Irish players the info they need to get started, whereas otherwie they might get discouraged by information overload, etc.

This is in the early stages of planning for the moment, and I just want to gauge interest for the moment. I'm also looking for people who'd be willing to be content providers and editors, with people who've worked with mediawiki-based websites before (i.e. wikipedia) being preferred. The site will be run based on merit and overall level of dedication -- you put in the work, you get the credit. Like I said, this is not affiliated with the IAA, Boards, IAF, any team, or retailer, so for you conspiracy theorists out there, this won't be run by 'the usual suspects' (whever they are).

Thoughts, suggestions, gripes? Cake?

ED E

Ok, dont mean to be pessimistic but we've seen a good few sites similar to this start up before, with alot of effort put in, only to just sit there unused.

On the other hand, I've been running (With Richies help now) the Irish Airsoft Players Group(www.bebo.com/irishairsoft). We help a decnt numbers of people though the activity has dropped a little recently(Working on that).

I would be willing to help, dont really have any experience with wikis but I know Photoshop, can video edit, I'm learning flash atm and I'm reasonably good with tech stuff. Most importantly, being a student, I've plenty of time to put in.

The main thing is exposure, you need to try get the site high on google or put signs up at airsoft venues.
Simon

gerrowadat

Cheers. I'm stuck in at the weekend so I might spend that time doing up a skeleton layout of the page. It'll be basic for the moment, and I'll either populate it with the newbie thread, or contact site/shop owners to see if they want to maintain their pages.

kevteljeur

Damn you, Gerr, I was actually planning to assemble and launch exactly such a site once I got back from holidays (in a week and half) - and here you are, pimping such an idea! I second the motion. I thought about the very same issues, for the very same reasons, but my own conclusion is to use Wordpress as a foundation, because the tagging and plugins make it far more extensible and user-friendly than a Wiki (well, both have their strengths). And although Wordpress is synonymous with 'blog', it can easily scale to a good general-purpose site-management system, with solid search and categorisation systems.

What I was thinking about was to form an editorial team, and then solicit material from parties who could guarantee well-written accurate orginal material on specific subjects, particularly reviews of equipment and technical information, comparisons, how-tos, and some neutral starter information.

Kentar

I'd be up for helping out, having spent the last 2 months crawling through threads learning what I can, I can see the value of having a resource like this.

gerrowadat

Interesting. Do you have an example of wordpress used in this way? I'm biased because I have mediawiki set up already, of course :-)

Yep, was looking for some interested parties to come up with a basic idea. I'll grab a list of folks and send out a group pm before the weekend. Project management skillz, engage!

kevteljeur wrote: »

Damn you, Gerr, I was actually planning to assemble and launch exactly such a site once I got back from holidays (in a week and half) - and here you are, pimping such an idea! I second the motion. I thought about the very same issues, for the very same reasons, but my own conclusion is to use Wordpress as a foundation, because the tagging and plugins make it far more extensible and user-friendly than a Wiki (well, both have their strengths). And although Wordpress is synonymous with 'blog', it can easily scale to a good general-purpose site-management system, with solid search and categorisation systems.

What I was thinking about was to form an editorial team, and then solicit material from parties who could guarantee well-written accurate orginal material on specific subjects, particularly reviews of equipment and technical information, comparisons, how-tos, and some neutral starter information.

TheDoc

dave id be interested in helping anyway i can.

Have vast experience working as a journo for some of the biggest video gaming brands in the world.

I'm well spoken and have a vast vocab, and a deadly spellchecker:p

let me know what i can do

gerrowadat

[DM]-TheDOC- wrote: »

dave id be interested in helping anyway i can.

Have vast experience working as a journo for some of the biggest video gaming brands in the world.

I'm well spoken and have a vast vocab, and a deadly spellchecker:p

let me know what i can do

Capitalise? Punctuate?

TheDoc

er l1k3 l01 d0n7 mak3 m3 g3t 1337

kevteljeur

gerrowadat wrote: »

Interesting. Do you have an example of wordpress used in this way? I'm biased because I have mediawiki set up already, of course :-)

Yep, was looking for some interested parties to come up with a basic idea. I'll grab a list of folks and send out a group pm before the weekend. Project management skillz, engage!

It's mostly that it's completely customisable without too much work; but I've set them up as blogs or managed-content sites before. So you'll have to dig around to find an example of a wiki-type site.

The latest version of WP has versioning of content built-in, I haven't used it yet but I can't wait to give it a spin. It has a user-hierarchy system too, so some users can submit content, but not publish (an editor would have to do that). This is good, because I think a site like this would need to be well-written and consistent to be useful.


Sure, we'll discuss it at an airsoft jamboree of one type or another in a week and half, when I get back.

thomasward

i can help make he site i have experience but dont do a wiki.....wikis are gay do a proper website.......ican make you up one in dreamweaver or else............ihave a license for VB so u can start up a forum ?

Dr_Pepper

Nah we dont want a forum.
Nor do we want a site.
Its clearly just for info freely editable etc.
It'll need to be a wiki

gerrowadat

thomasward wrote: »

i can help make he site i have experience but dont do a wiki.....wikis are gay do a proper website.......ican make you up one in dreamweaver or else............ihave a license for VB so u can start up a forum ?

Site's already made, and it's a wiki. The trouble with a 'proper website' for information that's as fluid as things are with Airsoft in this country, is that you need a dedicated team of people who are going to update it. This is the kind of information wikis are made for.

Also, how is a VB license going to make it easy to start a forum? We already have several airsoft forums, anyway.

ED E

Another idea I just had. Events blog/section/calender. With the number sites we have, and it growing fast, it can be hard for players, especially new ones, to see whats going on when and where. I'll add it to the google Doc in a sec. Ger, can you email me a link to the site?
Thanks
Simon

gerrowadat

Lethal_Bullet wrote: »

Another idea I just had. Events blog/section/calender. With the number sites we have, and it growing fast, it can be hard for players, especially new ones, to see whats going on when and where. I'll add it to the google Doc in a sec. Ger, can you email me a link to the site?
Thanks
Simon

We can do this with a shared public google calendar, or if anyone else has a suggestion for a good publically-editable calendar app to use, that'd work too (I used to use one, but I forget its name)

ASI Casper

Perhaps an alternative idea might be to have a non-public wiki-site just for the team of content-contributors and editors to actually create the content. Then just upload that content to a templated or wordpress type website for the public end. Continue to revise and work on the wiki and then release those revisions of the content every few months as and when necessary.

Although, something to bear in mind when considering my idea above is that I have yet to use either a wordpress or wiki type content-management system ( although plan to shortly ). So maybe I'm taking out my ass?

gerrowadat

ASI Casper wrote: »

Perhaps an alternative idea might be to have a non-public wiki-site just for the team of content-contributors and editors to actually create the content. Then just upload that content to a templated or wordpress type website for the public end. Continue to revise and work on the wiki and then release those revisions of the content every few months as and when necessary.

Although, something to bear in mind when considering my idea above is that I have yet to use either a wordpress or wiki type content-management system ( although plan to shortly ). So maybe I'm taking out my ass?

You're not talking out your ass :-) It's something I considered, since I'm not all that comfortable with the fully editable system. However, I'd like to try the fully editable system, to see if it works out. We may end up locking it down a bit (i.e. making you register to edit pages), but I'd rather not do that.

I don't want all the content produced by a small team of editors, because then it's no different from a plain old boring website (which usually never gets updated), and it's in danger of then becoming biased. The last thing I want is to be accused of being some sort of information fascist, and having the content produced by the community is a perfect way of doing that :-)

In any case, I have a few interested folks now, and a plan. The site is currently under construction, and we should have something next week.

Stercus Accidit

gerrowadat wrote: »

Capitalise? Punctuate?

Whats the internet acronym for not a "lol", but a sort of muffled harrumf.

Like laugh out loud but not out load, but better than just "l".

loi, laughed on inside.

Whatever, what a waste of several sentences, but I look forward to this wiki, means we can all contribute.

Kentar

Most intrigued.

thomasward

gerrowadat wrote: »

Site's already made, and it's a wiki. The trouble with a 'proper website' for information that's as fluid as things are with Airsoft in this country, is that you need a dedicated team of people who are going to update it. This is the kind of information wikis are made for.

Also, how is a VB license going to make it easy to start a forum? We already have several airsoft forums, anyway.

because he wouldn't have to pay like 200 quid for a license i was gonna give him my one that has like a year left on it from when i shut down my forum..............

gerrowadat

thomasward wrote: »

because he wouldn't have to pay like 200 quid for a license i was gonna give him my one that has like a year left on it from when i shut down my forum..............

Now I see that you mean VBulletin and not Visual Basic. D'oh.

kevteljeur

Motosam wrote: »

Whats the internet acronym for not a "lol", but a sort of muffled harrumf.

Like laugh out loud but not out load, but better than just "l".

loi, laughed on inside.

Whatever, what a waste of several sentences, but I look forward to this wiki, means we can all contribute.

Don't worry, Sam - it just added to your post count, and we all know that this is what you really wanted all along.

gerrowadat wrote: »

You're not talking out your ass :-) It's something I considered, since I'm not all that comfortable with the fully editable system. However, I'd like to try the fully editable system, to see if it works out. We may end up locking it down a bit (i.e. making you register to edit pages), but I'd rather not do that.

I don't want all the content produced by a small team of editors, because then it's no different from a plain old boring website (which usually never gets updated), and it's in danger of then becoming biased. The last thing I want is to be accused of being some sort of information fascist, and having the content produced by the community is a perfect way of doing that :-)

In any case, I have a few interested folks now, and a plan. The site is currently under construction, and we should have something next week.

I'm actually in favour of something with an editorial team, but content from any registered users. Just reviewed before publishing is all, so that ropey/badly-written/inaccurate content can be caught and filtered. WP allows for that. Wikis strike me as too flat and disorganised and don't allow enough for time-based content and editorialising which might be a good idea for something like this, to keep the standard high enough, as well as features on specialised subjects...

TheDoc

i have to admit

being spearheaded by two of the most articulate people ive ever met, i really think this is going to work well, and will demand high stanards.

Stercus Accidit

kevteljeur wrote: »

Don't worry, Sam - it just added to your post count, and we all know that this is what you really wanted all along.

Hurray, another post :rolleyes:

That and I got to say, wiki please

Kentar

Having used both at one stage or another,

I'd recommend wordpress.

gerrowadat

[DM]-TheDOC- wrote: »

i have to admit

being spearheaded by two of the most articulate people ive ever met, i really think this is going to work well, and will demand high stanards.

Jaysis Dano will you ever punctuate, you're giving me eye strain.

andros

There are few solutions:

1. You can start wiki on wikipedia. I have rights as wikipedia writer.
2. I have my own business hosting. I'm paying for it anyway so you can feel free to use some of my server space. You just need to register a domain.
3. Or you can do it cheap way like bebo and stuff.

I can also do some graphics for you if you need any (2d and 3d) maybe some animations if I'll have time. There is also possibility of creating inspirational music.

gerrowadat

Folks,

The wiki is now online at http://www.irishairsoft.info -- see the newbie forum for a more full announcement.