After collecting user feedback both here on the forums, as well as the Fire Panel Discord server, feedback from the community has been pretty clear - We want a wiki that is editable by the community as a whole, and not hosted in Discourse.
I’m happy to announce, that with loads of help from @Joseph we were able to get an instance of MediaWiki up and running, and the former wiki has been migrated there ready for users to contribute! Users can log into https://wiki.thefirepanel.com using their Forums account (must have Trust Level 1 or higher to log in!) to begin making edits. Please be patient as we continue to make the Wiki better for your use, and provide feedback for how we can make the experience better. Our goal is to provide a place for knowledge to grow, and hopefully be a good source for professionals and hobbiests alike for years to come. So for that reason, make sure what you post is accurate, and if you see something inaccurate, be sure to fix it (and add citations!)
What edits should go in the Wiki
Citations
Pages dedicated to manufactuers
Right now, only overview pages exist
Pages dedicated to specific panels SERIES (ex. Notifier Onyx, Simplex ES, EST 3)
Pages dedicated to specific devices
Should contain things like voltage, compatability (if addressable, which panels), and wiring diagrams/pictures if applicable
Anything for testing/procedures/codes (specify standards with citations!) can go here as well
What should not go in the wiki?
Questions
Hobby-related posts
Your collection
Content Creator bios
Individual users CAN create their own ‘about me’ page on the wiki under their profile settings.
^ All these things, and more, may be better fit for either the forums or Discord. Basically ask yourself “Is what I’m posting strictly informational/educational?” and if the answer is no, it likely doesn’t belong in the wiki.
I was trying to make a fandom wiki about fire alarms and stuff but I stopped because I didn’t have enough time for the project so I aboanned but I did make a few pages about a few fire alarms. Maybe I can migrate them over to this new wiki. MediaWiki is better then fandom
I made my first page, I copied it exactly from my former wiki and there are a few spelling errors that might need fixing and the page may be incomplete
One thing I dont see a link to easily make a new page directly from the homepage. Otherwise this is a nice development since I have always wanted there to be a Wikipedia for fire alarms and I tired it myself but it did not work out for a few reasons.
Just a few questions here:
Can we make pages about fire alarm systems in buildings including famous buildings like the WTC?
Can our pages about anything life safety or just fire alarm aspect of things?
Systems in specific buildings is fine by me, so long as they are famous buildings (like WTC, Empire State, things like that)
Anything life safety is fine. I wouldn’t get too specific with any kind of outdoor warning sirens though, since a wiki for that already exists Air Raid Sirens Wiki
We’ll work towards figuring out a good layout for the front page
Gosh dangit, I was in the process of making my own xD. Was trying to make something new that wasn’t on Fandom, so I used Miraheze. Was very barebones tho since I don’t know much on how to use the software.
I’m still learning MediaWiki as well. It’s really not my forte. Please feel free to post on here, and don’t feel like you cant setup your own if you want to.
Looks like I found a bug: the logo when using the classic mediawiki UI shows up like that
Also I would like it if users where given a choice to stay logged in (for up to a year) when logging on like on wikipedia.
The logo was a quick slap on before going live, there are a couple of versions of the logo we need but it’s on the back burner while we work out backend stuff. As for the session staying alive for one year, we need to have user’s check in periodically so we can get up to date information for their profile, it’s not really feasible at this point.
To add to this though, I did notice that the sessions are very short, where users are basically signed out after (maybe only an hour?) of inactivity. That’s something we’ll address to the best of our abilities.
Despite the fact people should not make articles about community members, I feel like community members should still be mentioned if they have made a large enough impact on the topic the article is mentioning and if it fits under “informational/educational”.
I know what page you’re referring to, and I disagree. In particular, the reference about that community member feels more like hobbyist drama than it does informational contributions. I agree with the removal of the mention of that user in that page, and have locked the page for 2 weeks so we don’t continue to have back and forth on the matter for now.
Now that being said, I’m unsure how I feel about pages regarding community members. That feels like something that may open up a can of worms. If we decided to allow pages about community members, where do we draw the line for who does and doesn’t get a page? For example, I could make the argument that @NewAgeServer could have a very interesting wiki page, but what about the small YouTuber who’s just starting out? Or the user who maybe posts a video a year and has a few hundred subscribers?
It’s a fuzzy thing - and right now I’m at the stance of until we figure out how to do that, explicit mentions of community members likely don’t belong on the wiki.
This is, as usual, open to community input. A proper outline needs to be set before we start down that path.
I decided to make my own wiki strictly for stuff about the fire alarm community only, and not about fire alarms or life safety: https://firealarmmembers.fandom.com/
For addressable protocols, should there be an article with the protocols, or should the protocols just be in the article for the company that uses them? I ask because many protocols are used by multiple companies, and several are very similar to each other.
