Wiki Q and A

[Daniel Beardsmore]

That's a really interesting question. Anonymous edits would prevent anyone from contacting the editor in question about unreferenced edits where we need to collect photos or references.

Is forum registration a barrier to entry? That's really hard question to answer as we can't ask unregistered people! Who do you imagine is not likely to want to register? Are you thinking people from Geekhack who want to hide their divided loyalties? (The geekhack/DT split is extremely irritating as far as the wiki is concerned.) Maybe Asians who don't speak English, who just want to correct small mistakes without cluttering up our forum member database with unused accounts. I'm like that with forums: I hate registering only to post one comment, leave and never return, and leave a stale account; consequently, I won't register or post. I normally edit Wikipedia with my registered account, but since the stupid site keeps wiping my login session I sometimes can't be bothered to log back in.

I guess it also depends whether the rate of changes is likely to exceed the time available from the people watching for changes.

[webwit]

The wiki gets a lot of hits from "outside". Some LISP beard might hit the Space Cadet article, thinks "hmm it is missing this" or "this is wrong", he may want to edit, but may not bother to register and edit. If you have 10 people like that, some may even register later, after editing. And they may have very interesting information.

Possibly what is wrong with it, is that it would require some monitoring or moderation of contributions, and I'm not sure that's a realistic thing to expect.

[Daniel Beardsmore]

You mean a guy with an actual beard? ;-)

Maybe it's just me, but I have a particular obsession with irreversible data loss and deliberately storing bad data in any system. You can't convert an IP back to a person. Then again, maybe that's because I am just nuts.

MediaWiki does have the edit patrol system, but it's such a faff that I don't generally bother patrolling edits. If that were to be restricted only to unregistered users you could at least pick out the edits that require more careful scrutiny (e.g. rootworm, spam, unreferenced changes that we can't assume are true nor can we assume that what we had before was true, so now we're fubared …)

Something I did with my website was put a form on the 404 page, where you can press a button to notify me, and I get an e-mail with the 404 URL and the referrer. Optionally you can leave an e-mail address, so that I can explain where something has gone, and maybe where it is now. Most people don't put in an e-mail address, so I can't respond back to them.

[002]

Trial run of opening the wiki to anonymous edits for a while maybe? I am happy to help with monitoring/moderation of dodgy edits and if it gets out of hand and/or no interesting information is added then we can just change it back.

[Icarium]

Shouldn't there be some sort of extension that makes it easy to monitor and moderate changes made without an account? I thought Mediawiki had an extension for everything.

[sth]

i proposed this in IRC but i will mention it here since it seems relevant:
i think a (manually run? or set to run in idle time) bot/crawler should be created that scans old articles and attempts to insert links when possible (perhaps just one link to a specific article per page so as not to clutter things up).
then, we could probably come up with some style guidelines for article titles that would make predicting future use fairly easy.

the most relevant example for the utility of this would be running it after new pages in case old pages reference a subject covered in the new page. It would possibly save a lot of time spent manually going through old pages and attempting to link them to newer articles.

this tool, in concert with volunteers who edit old pages and keep them up to date per style and content guidelines, could further enhance the power of the wiki... it's general "wikiness" if you will.

[Daniel Beardsmore]

i proposed this in IRC but i will mention it here since it seems relevant:
i think a (manually run? or set to run in idle time) bot/crawler should be created that scans old articles and attempts to insert links when possible …

Wow, that's going to be tough.

Very often, link names and page titles differ. For example, you would describe a keyboard as "[[backlit keyboard|backlit]]", or "[[backlit keyboard|backlighting]]. Then you have "… with [[Cherry MX Red]] and [[Cherry MX Green|Green]] …" and so many other accommodations for presentable prose including avoiding repetition in lists. You'd have to be aware of plurals, e.g. [[LED]]s (/[a-z]+/ after a link adds the text to the display part of the link), and irregular plurals.

To make this work, you would need to create a lot of extra redirects for every contextual variation and pay very careful attention to exactly when, and how, to link, and to what. Is every redirect be considered a candidate for use in this way?

Wikipedia practice is to only use a link once. I tend to use a link no more than once per major page section. At the very least, a word that occurs multiple times per paragraph should be avoided.

It's an interesting idea, but one that would require care.

[Daniel Beardsmore]

Trial run of opening the wiki to anonymous edits for a while maybe? I am happy to help with monitoring/moderation of dodgy edits and if it gets out of hand and/or no interesting information is added then we can just change it back.

That thought crossed my mind. I don't have any credible objections besides concern of not being able to verify assertions.

Shouldn't there be some sort of extension that makes it easy to monitor and moderate changes made without an account? I thought Mediawiki had an extension for everything. :)

Special:RecentChanges lets you filter out logged-in users, or filter out anonymous users. You can also filter out your own edits, but not filter out others' edits. (You need to access your contributions list for that view.)

I always keep an an eye on RecentChanges, but as the activity volume slowly increases, it does become hard to do this through a glance alone.

[sth]

i proposed this in IRC but i will mention it here since it seems relevant:
i think a (manually run? or set to run in idle time) bot/crawler should be created that scans old articles and attempts to insert links when possible …

Wow, that's going to be tough.

Very often, link names and page titles differ. For example, you would describe a keyboard as "[[backlit keyboard|backlit]]", or "[[backlit keyboard|backlighting]]. Then you have "… with [[Cherry MX Red]] and [[Cherry MX Green|Green]] …" and so many other accommodations for presentable prose including avoiding repetition in lists. You'd have to be aware of plurals, e.g. [[LED]]s (/[a-z]+/ after a link adds the text to the display part of the link), and irregular plurals.

To make this work, you would need to create a lot of extra redirects for every contextual variation and pay very careful attention to exactly when, and how, to link, and to what. Is every redirect be considered a candidate for use in this way?

Wikipedia practice is to only use a link once. I tend to use a link no more than once per major page section. At the very least, a word that occurs multiple times per paragraph should be avoided.

It's an interesting idea, but one that would require care.

yes, i agree one link per section is more than enough.
you are also right about the large number of variations. firstly, a style guide can help with some of that. from there, we could start at the list of the most linked topics and then try to come up with as many permutations of those as we can.

[HaaTa]

The HHKB is not FCC compliant, and hence why it's not sold by them in the US.
Apparently EliteKeyboards just ships in a few at a time so they don't get checked.

[sth]

The HHKB is not FCC compliant, and hence why it's not sold by them in the US.
Apparently EliteKeyboards just ships in a few at a time so they don't get checked.

did you or anyone else ever figure out if it's the controller/usb hub? my hhkb pro 1 has an FCC logo on it but it doesnt have rule 15 or whatever is on most electronics.

[HaaTa]

Nah. It might be possible to search the FCC website for failed certifications. Though they may have discovered the issue before attempting certification.

[Muirium]

Nothing a metal case / Faraday cage can't cure, I presume?

[sth]

if they added anything to the hhkb it would be ridiculed mercilessly for its flagrant extravagance. just look at the hhkb pro 2's usb hub and the hhkbjp.

[Muirium]

Extravagance? Perish the thought…


http://deskthority.net/off-topic-f10/ar ... ml#p106844


http://www.likecool.com/HHKB_Gold_plate ... -Gear.html

[Daniel Beardsmore]

Why would you gold-plate a keyboard and then scrawl over it with a Sharpie?

Then again, are you sure that's gold plating and not just sweet wrappers?

[kint]

http://www.likecool.com/HHKB_Gold_plate ... -Gear.html

...first thought: DECK going gold plated caps....

[Muirium]

The typeface does have that ancient Roman feel to it. A little like Albertus:



But this one's more authentic, what with being applied by hand!

[Daniel Beardsmore]

The wiki gets a lot of hits from "outside". Some LISP beard might hit the Space Cadet article, thinks "hmm it is missing this" or "this is wrong", he may want to edit, but may not bother to register and edit. If you have 10 people like that, some may even register later, after editing. And they may have very interesting information.

OK, here's how I see it.

Take this topic — assuming all switches are the same, we have a new discovery of Polish magnetic reed switches: http://geekhack.org/index.php?topic=54408.0

And another one — some rather shady Apple hairpin spring switches: http://geekhack.org/index.php?topic=49015.0 (which I'd actually missed, and only discovered when looking for better Cherry M8 photos, but interesting as I've only recently documented the genuine Apple switches on the wiki after finding alps.tw's photos of them).

Lots of interesting finds crop up all the time, and they're appearing faster than I can possibly keep on top of them and document them all on the wiki. I don't even have time to reply fully to Sandy's e-mails or process all the information in them. I'm back to nearing a Firefox crash from too many tabs again. I also now have to figure out what the hell KBC/Vortex did with the Poker II firmware.

I just added a couple of recognition diagrams here last night, but without someone to measure them and take better photos, or sell off one of each switch, I won't be able to construct accurate or detailed diagrams: [wiki]Cherry M8[/wiki]

There's more knowledge inside the community waiting to be documented by far (with literally years of backlog to catch up on) than there are people outside who have anything to add. A lot of "outsiders" are only likely to update the wiki with commonly-available knowledge that we could research ourselves. It's here in the community that people are making real discoveries. Also, there are fingers in external pies already: there's at least one person here who's also on the AtariAge Forums who could, but won't, document Ataris, so I've had to find a bit of time to put something up. Ditto Findecanor being left to deal with Amigas.

You're looking the wrong way — allowing anonymous editing is simply facing a void and hoping, instead of turning and facing all the people who could, but refuse, to actually post the knowledge that's right here in front of us, and being turned up on a nearly daily basis. Most of the interesting finds do seem to turn up at geekhack, though, which is why the community split is so stupid. I've wondered on more than one occasion if the wiki should be split off and moved into neutral territory so I don't get absurd things like claims of "conflict of interest" preventing posting to the DT wiki (you can't make this stuff up). At least that way the geekhack people won't feel like evil traitors for getting involved with the enemy.

[tuxsavvy]

tuxsavvy: I don't mean that literally. MediaWiki, like most wikis, is oriented around fully free-text pages with fairly loose tag-style categorisation. The Deskthority wiki is different in that a significant portion of pages are parts or products with specific parameters where it's actually extremely useful to be able to index, tabulate and query these parameters, which is why were are supposed to be getting a dedicated keyboard database.

It's not what wikis were really designed for. However, even with Wikipedia you still have issues with the hugely denormalised data.

I don't know if K Tanaka is still around; maybe ask Sandy?

Ahh ok that somewhat makes sense, I can see why it is partly so (compared to some other wiki I guess) and why it isn't. I mean in some ways certain keyboard lacks being categorised as such. Numerous HHKB I personally reckon should be categorised more as 60% keyboards rather than "hacker" keyboards alone. Then again I am just thinking on the wrong set of frames.

I didn't notice this thread became active until days later only to find out that there was a second page (PEBKAC - lol).

Thanks for the pointers, I asked Sandy but Sandy does not have updated information as well. So I have decided to drop the use of such photos without permission. This would go in line with the compliance with the rules that most wiki carry nowadays. Thanks for the pointer as well as OO2 for confirming on the legality.

[ماء]

Extravagance? Perish the thought…

http://deskthority.net/off-topic-f10/ar ... ml#p106844

why hhkb pro is case mounted!
Sometimes I think that people can not make a custom case like hhkb hg
because people succeed make custom case for RF

[002]

At least that way the geekhack people won't feel like evil traitors for getting involved with the enemy.

I think anyone from either community viewing the other as the enemy is just childish and likely doesn't have the sense to be editing a wiki. I share your frustration (or at least probably a fraction of it ) that there are so many discoveries that go undocumented on the wiki but I don't believe that it's a matter of "fuck those guys", I think it's more a matter of "couldn't be fucked" -- that's the real tragedy...and as you pointed out, it happens here too.

[Daniel Beardsmore]

Ahh ok that somewhat makes sense, I can see why it is partly so (compared to some other wiki I guess) and why it isn't. I mean in some ways certain keyboard lacks being categorised as such. Numerous HHKB I personally reckon should be categorised more as 60% keyboards rather than "hacker" keyboards alone. Then again I am just thinking on the wrong set of frames.

That's not a software issue. That's just maintenance. I only created the 60% category recently, but having done so, it became apparent that such a categorisation may be neither popular nor logical.

Unfortunately we don't have any agreed terms for all the variants: "true 60%" (Poker, Poker II — literally just the bottom-left of the keyboard with one key replaced with Fn), and various styles of sort-of-60% with extras (Leopold FC660*, Cherry G84-4100, Filco Minila etc). How about the Mini Tactile Pro, which has a segregated function key row? Now you're really pushing into the gap between 60% and TKL.

HHKB is a sort of sub-60% as it's a 60% in size, but with fewer keys that there are room for! (Most companies, like Diatec, are trying to find ways to cram more keys in, but the HHKB has a "less is more" design where they feel that the users are so mentally flexible and so competent that you can actually drop the count of keys even further. That's for smart people; most of us want our arrow keys back :-) There are also community-made sub-60% keyboards.

Evidence shows that there will never be any agreement by discussion on terminology or classification of anything; these things get solved when someone has a good idea and just runs with it, and leaves the community to adapt to their decision. Personally I have no particular views on how to categorise these types of keyboards, besides simply having one classification, "Compact", for everything from the HHKB to the G84-4410, but just not the really tiny sub-60% ones.

[tuxsavvy]

I think the idea of "counter-intelligence" on mere keyboard enthusiasts level is rather insane, especially if one were to defect their own preferences of one place for certain things over the other. Knowledge is meant to be free not a source of wealth however as such I guess there are people whom may see such entities as there is a price tag it wears (invisibly and invariably).

It goes to show somewhat that human's own competitiveness boils down to their own roots.

Ahh ok that somewhat makes sense, I can see why it is partly so (compared to some other wiki I guess) and why it isn't. I mean in some ways certain keyboard lacks being categorised as such. Numerous HHKB I personally reckon should be categorised more as 60% keyboards rather than "hacker" keyboards alone. Then again I am just thinking on the wrong set of frames.

That's not a software issue. That's just maintenance. I only created the 60% category recently, but having done so, it became apparent that such a categorisation may be neither popular nor logical.

Unfortunately we don't have any agreed terms for all the variants: "true 60%" (Poker, Poker II — literally just the bottom-left of the keyboard with one key replaced with Fn), and various styles of sort-of-60% with extras (Leopold FC660*, Cherry G84-4100, Filco Minila etc). How about the Mini Tactile Pro, which has a segregated function key row? Now you're really pushing into the gap between 60% and TKL.

HHKB is a sort of sub-60% as it's a 60% in size, but with fewer keys that there are room for! (Most companies, like Diatec, are trying to find ways to cram more keys in, but the HHKB has a "less is more" design where they feel that the users are so mentally flexible and so competent that you can actually drop the count of keys even further. That's for smart people; most of us want our arrow keys back There are also community-made sub-60% keyboards.

Evidence shows that there will never be any agreement by discussion on terminology or classification of anything; these things get solved when someone has a good idea and just runs with it, and leaves the community to adapt to their decision. Personally I have no particular views on how to categorise these types of keyboards, besides simply having one classification, "Compact", for everything from the HHKB to the G84-4410, but just not the really tiny sub-60% ones.

Ahh I see.

I was thinking of writing up a bit of information about 60%, ergonomic, chorded keyboards for instance on each of those categories. I agree that there is no real 60% that manufacturers have agreed upon therefore (like virtually every other categories that I mentioned above) there needs to be one that tries to inform curious readers on what would ultimately be classed as a 60% board. This was sort of why I was thinking of writing up about a "Design" sub-section but then the idea would do more harm than good considering it breaks uniformality with each and every applicable keyboard layout as well as may give rise to biasness, not to mention the upkeep as well. I wasn't being clear about my design sub-section theory but the thought of instead write up a bit of information within the categories themselves would nonetheless be useful.

In terms of 60% keyboards, to my view is the lack of dedicated keys as well as the use of Fn key that is found on laptops as such. Typing on my HHKB Pro JP, it also has it's own dedicated arrow keys which breaks the idea that Dr. Wada inspired as well as the fact that it adds more keys along with shortening of the spacebar. Ultimately 60% keyboard is mainly about having "core" sets of keys being made available with modifiers as dedicated keys. As as result of such implementation I guess one can loosely define the layout of 60% as something that would be no bigger than the size of DIN A4 paper.

There are two other keyboards to consider for 60% such as KeyCool 84 and that other company bearing the same model name but different brand name. Realistically I think 60% is best be loosely defined as anything smaller (dimension-size) as DIN A4 paper whilst retaining a roughly agreeable dimensions for each and every keycaps. Think of Realforce spare keycaps to be used on HHKB. Whilst not all keys may fit HHKB I guess most of it does (definitely alphanumeric keys would). That (once) upcoming guruboard has a similar board bearing trackpoint (I think it was named as yoda something on GH forums). Sub-60% board (community made) suddenly reminds me of "Smallfry 40%" a layout that further does away even more modifier keys.

The last bit of note on terminology/classification I completely agree, had there been layouts that manufacturers could agree on such as in the motherboard area whereby you have ATX of various sizes, KTX of mainly the largest size and ITX of various sizes for compact/minimal style motherboards. The same sense could apply in keyboard realm but in a loosely (and I believe ultimately as) community derived definitions. What I personally would insist on doing is to really discuss the loosely defined variables to any curious wiki readers. There are no set standards for keyboard sizes within the keyboard industry therefore it is best to loosely define on what could be classed as such, and why. Let the wiki readers draw their own conclusions as to what are agreeable terms and definitions whilst being informed on the possible variations out there. I actually intend to write information on 60% keyboards in general as a means to giving end users some insights on the various keyboards and why for instance they are defined as such, etc. Then again I still have various other wiki pages that I still need to look after the best I can.

If I were to expand examples of ergonomic keyboards for instance, I could talk about things like Cherry ErgoPlus vs Lexmark M15, ErgoDox vs Matias ErgoPro, Topre Realforce variable weights, Alphagrip iGrip, etc. There are no set definitions of what it means with ergonomoic keyboards, even worse is the sharing of two or more distinct categories in one keyboard. iGrip is not only ergonomical (as it states) it uses chording functionality which I am sure is more software-centric rather than the keys (or lack part thereof) themselves. Same thing could be said about chorded keyboards (and I am not really knowledgeable in this area at all). You have BAT keyboard probably the size of DIN A4 paper with probably no more than 10 keys per side. In short, it is best to explain on what and why specific keyboards are categorised (by community) as such.

tl;dr - I won't be going ahead with my proposal of design sub-section creation, instead I am basically agreeing on making use of categories but to discuss furthermore about it on the actual wiki page for the category itself.

[Daniel Beardsmore]

yes, i agree one link per section is more than enough.
you are also right about the large number of variations. firstly, a style guide can help with some of that. from there, we could start at the list of the most linked topics and then try to come up with as many permutations of those as we can.

It will be difficult to achieve; the following would have not been picked up, for example:

Code: Select all

− '''Kaihua PG1511 series''' is a family of switches that are clones of the [[Cherry MX]] family.
+ '''Kaihua PG1511 series''' is a family of [[Cherry MX clone]] switches.

The latter link is to a page that did not exist when the article was written.

What I used to do (and still do sometimes) is simply use the Special:Random to find me random pages and see if anything needs doing on the page in question. Sadly, the random number generator is stupid and it keeps giving you the same pages.

This approach hands pages to fresh eyes, and there is far more that can be altered than just links to more recently-created pages.

[Daniel Beardsmore]

tl;dr - I won't be going ahead with my proposal of design sub-section creation, instead I am basically agreeing on making use of categories but to discuss furthermore about it on the actual wiki page for the category itself. :lol:

I didn't spot that a Poker II is exactly the same width as a sheet of A4 paper.

I never said that having a "Design" section on pages was bad, although I still don't understand what you were intending to use it for.

As for the rest, I'll leave you to it :)

[CPTBadAss]

At least that way the geekhack people won't feel like evil traitors for getting involved with the enemy.

I think anyone from either community viewing the other as the enemy is just childish and likely doesn't have the sense to be editing a wiki. I share your frustration (or at least probably a fraction of it ) that there are so many discoveries that go undocumented on the wiki but I don't believe that it's a matter of "fuck those guys", I think it's more a matter of "couldn't be fucked" -- that's the real tragedy...and as you pointed out, it happens here too.

Just wanted to post some thoughts on this here. I'm in charge of the GH Wiki oversight team. The admins on GeekHack have decided to get rid of the current GeekHack mediawiki as it stands and move to the older style Wiki that was there during the time of Ripster. I wasn't around for the Ripster era though but I think a lot of people here were. And the mediawiki on GH hasn't worked for our community. It seems that mediawiki and needing an account granted by the mods were too much of a barrier for an entry.

I believe that the forum based/old style non-media Wiki will benefit GeekHack the most and that is what I've been pushing for. I also believe that the Deskthority is the best keyboard Wiki and I often refer and link to it. Unfortunately my mediawiki skills are lacking and I haven't really been able to contribute anything to the DT Wiki.

Where I'm really going with this is that if the feeling is there should be more collaboration, I'm all for it. I agree that the information should be shared and its a disservice to entire keyboarding community to not document the information.

If you want to chat further please PM me here, on GeekHack, or on IRC. I'd love to chat and hear some ideas. And for what it's worth, the only reason why I'm not on Deskthority more is because GeekHack is more American-centric in my opinion. I don't really understand the DT vs GH, us vs them, thing. Mainly because I'm relatively new to the scene.

[sth]

deskthority will never collaborate with GH because GH can't just pick something and settle on it, and get enough people interested in maintaining it for long enough without deciding to just throw all of the work away and start something new.

trust me i've tried. a few times. it's not happening. it's not even an us vs them thing, anybody involved in doing real work/research and not just swapping keycaps on their boards is a fairly reasonable person who doesn't care about inter-forum drama. it's just that there is a fundamentally different approach to the hobby that prevails on either forum and the way that each community approaches what information is worth documenting. GH is much more community/forum/drama oriented (and i say that as someone who has lovingly participated in all cases) and mkawa's ideas about what should go into a wiki reflect that (group buy info, forum history, community drama etc). with DT, there is more emphasis on the technical side of the hobby, and i think the wiki and the pictures forum here make that pretty obvious.

no need to combine the two, not out of animosity, but for letting the communities be what they are and letting them decide their own ways. if a geekhacker wants to contribute to the DT wiki there is absolutely no reason they can't do so, and i would argue that it's more appropriate for someone from GH with interesting technical information to post to DT where it would be appreciated. plus the wiki content can be accessed and used by anybody. if someone from DT wanted to start a subforum for collecting keycaps and korean customs and running ABS group buys every 7 minutes, they would probably fit in better at GH for that specific purpose. but you can be a member of both and contribute accordingly

[Muirium]

Later to the scene than either of you two, I find the difference between GH and DT quite fascinating. It's not often you find a community with two poles where the user base overlaps as extensively!

Personally, like a fair few people here, I find GH threads hard going when searching for info. There's a lot of forum drama, as Sth said, and a different atmosphere to the conversations. Even with the (welcome!) forum appearance options introduced last year (where I have a DT-style colour scheme selected, and avatars on minimum size) there's no mistaking one forum for the other. And that's while recognising the same users overlapping both!

Only some people ever wonder out loud about "conflicts of interest". Most who use both just seem to get along fine with the duality. I'm certainly happy enough with it this way, as without GH, surely DT would become more GH-like? I joined too late to see the GH refugee era, too…

Wikis are the one sore spot of a community split, though. DT's is more stable and my knee-jerk response is that it's already the de facto main wiki of the whole English-language community. But that's just my own personal preference kicking in again.

[tuxsavvy]

tl;dr - I won't be going ahead with my proposal of design sub-section creation, instead I am basically agreeing on making use of categories but to discuss furthermore about it on the actual wiki page for the category itself.

I didn't spot that a Poker II is exactly the same width as a sheet of A4 paper.

I never said that having a "Design" section on pages was bad, although I still don't understand what you were intending to use it for.

As for the rest, I'll leave you to it

I mean loosely defined hehe. I know there are a few vendors that tends to stretch the rule of 60% being no larger than a DIN A4 paper. That was a term that I believe Dr. Wada coined for HHKB. If such were the case, Keycool 84 would have been also against what would be loosely defined as 60% form factor as it has dedicated Function keys which for instance HHKB did not. Anyway, it is just an idea to roughly discuss about it. It is pretty evident that as a result of 60% not properly agreed and therefore adhered to many vendors and manufacturers alike do whatever they please and let the community define on what would X and Y keyboards should be defined (roughly or actually) as.

The "Design" idea I would now want to declare as a rather excessive idea honestly. I know you were not against it but I can definitely see what you mean there in terms of writing up specific aesthetics of the keyboard designs. As such you went on suggesting the idea of categorising which I later see that would be a far better idea than to write out separate sub-sections for each and every specific keyboard. Effectively speaking, if I were to went ahead with Design idea, HHKB would have seen me pointing out that it is DIN A4 size, that some of the models were inspired by Dr. Wada's proposals, that due to the way the keys are spaced it does not require one to move their limbs too far ahead just to reach certain keys (though that would in some way imply that keyboard users for instance would benefit from "piano fingers" instead of chubby thumb like fingers), etc. I am sure if I were to write something like that for HHKB, and then for Poker II, Keycool 84, Pure, (that upcoming Matias) compact (??), Choc mini, Cherry mini, etc. I would have copied and pasted (with minor modifications) to briefly discuss the advantages for instance.

Like I said, the idea seemed a little nice till I realised my naiveness that it would be un-needed redundant work as it would mean that I would therefore need to write something about virtually each and every keyboard featured on the wiki. Besides it may potentially deter wiki contributors as if the idea were to become some standard it would mean extra work for wiki contributors. Anyway, the idea was stupid and hence I am going to write stuff on the category pages themselves. If you still do not understand what I was trying to get at - you will see what I have decided to do once I start writing stuff on categories. I will point them out if need be as I think writing a bit of description on the specific categories are far more logical and thus ideal than writing out each and every design subsection per keyboard wiki. The idea in itself was an overkill really. I would rather now write descriptions on specific categories to describe roughly/crudely the aesthetics, the possible benefits and also specific keyboard added bonuses. Not going to copy and paste something that I write on HHKB for design aesthetics for instance onto something like Choc mini.

At least that way the geekhack people won't feel like evil traitors for getting involved with the enemy.

I think anyone from either community viewing the other as the enemy is just childish and likely doesn't have the sense to be editing a wiki. I share your frustration (or at least probably a fraction of it ) that there are so many discoveries that go undocumented on the wiki but I don't believe that it's a matter of "fuck those guys", I think it's more a matter of "couldn't be fucked" -- that's the real tragedy...and as you pointed out, it happens here too.

Just wanted to post some thoughts on this here. I'm in charge of the GH Wiki oversight team. The admins on GeekHack have decided to get rid of the current GeekHack mediawiki as it stands and move to the older style Wiki that was there during the time of Ripster. I wasn't around for the Ripster era though but I think a lot of people here were. And the mediawiki on GH hasn't worked for our community. It seems that mediawiki and needing an account granted by the mods were too much of a barrier for an entry.

I believe that the forum based/old style non-media Wiki will benefit GeekHack the most and that is what I've been pushing for. I also believe that the Deskthority is the best keyboard Wiki and I often refer and link to it. Unfortunately my mediawiki skills are lacking and I haven't really been able to contribute anything to the DT Wiki.

Where I'm really going with this is that if the feeling is there should be more collaboration, I'm all for it. I agree that the information should be shared and its a disservice to entire keyboarding community to not document the information.

If you want to chat further please PM me here, on GeekHack, or on IRC. I'd love to chat and hear some ideas. And for what it's worth, the only reason why I'm not on Deskthority more is because GeekHack is more American-centric in my opinion. I don't really understand the DT vs GH, us vs them, thing. Mainly because I'm relatively new to the scene.

I would personally also concur, sure both deskthority and geekhack forums and wikis alike share roughly similar ideals however I also think that for specific things like wiki contributors are somewhat spread a little too thin honestly. That and the fact that there is also reddit as well. I mean really, I would rather contribute to a single wiki (and may split different sections into different wiki if needed) than to write stuff on one wiki and therefore "favour" that wiki over the other. Both deskthority and geekhack shares common grounds for mechanical keyboards however both are targeting individual segments. For instance deskthority is mainly seen as targeting the European markets whereas the geekhack is mainly targeting the North American markets.

To a wiki contributor myself, having contributed stuff on deskthority wiki even though I am more active on geekhack forums (that has somewhat changed more recently to be frank) I get the eerie feeling of neglecting for instance the geekhack wiki (which was what I found out much later on that geekhack did have a wiki). Even moreso is really the fact that there would be chances that deskthority would attract more visitors due to the fact that deskthority wiki contains more information whereas geekhack wiki lacks information. This would then be an interesting scenario considering the HHKB Pro talk pages for instance contains links and references to geekhack forums even though it is deskthority wiki and deskthority obviously has its own forums.

Likewise, the idea of copy and pasting what was said on one wiki to another is an overkill as not only does it gives myself more unnecessary work but also if for instance tension between the two sites stiffen, disputes over certain wiki entries could come under fire and for instance that would give me even more of headache to deal with down the track.

Both deskthority and geekhack may target different continents and different audience but personally for things like wiki I believe both should really compromise to work together and pool the contributors so that it may prevent any unnecessary bickering over trivia issues and ultimately it may benefit both together. The ramifications on what should or could be compromised so that both could somehow benefit one and another has not been settled in concrete but I think for instance deskthority wiki should be seen as providing general information on keyboards for instance and geekhack wiki should be seen as providing modifications on keyboards. Again this is just a very rough idea but realistically if both would link and "co-benefit" each other on the differences it might work out easier and thus nicer to certain groups of people. Not only that but also may somehow ease some tensions between the two even though at the end of the day both are more or less discussing the same thing and that is really keyboards.

The issue is not restricted to just wiki contributors alone honestly, for instance I can see some vendors as well as group buy organisers having to double post, posting a thread on one forum and then on the other either copy and pasting the same information and/or write or link the information to the other forum. This can be a burden in some case really as it not only gives forum posters/goers alike more work for the more or less same result but also an upkeep that may potentially be avoided in the first place.

What I am trying to insist is that both deskthority and geekhack does not need to necessarily need to hold each other hands together and work in harmony but for starters both sites in some ways really need to agree on certain things together so that it may give myself for instance less issues to work with as well as potentially attracting more people into doing certain things rather than seeing the need to post identical and hence redundant information on separate sites to attract even more audience.

Again, I know both deskthority and geekhack targets different sets of audiences and seems to be suited for particular region over another but I am from neither of the region and for me to contribute information to one and not the other in some ways shows my biasness to some people (if they are inclined to think that way).

Actually I should also admit that I am also relatively new to the scene but I think such an idea for instance should somewhat be contemplated rather than leaving an unnecessary "divide" between the two varied community for this very instance.