The Song Fight Bulletin Board

Generic wrote:it wouldn't have fallen out of use

This is where I think you're absolutely wrong. Just because you don't use something, and just because regulars did not edit it, does not mean that the information within was not and could not still be useful.

preferring instead to assume that we must all see the obvious value in having a wiki

I see inherent value in information, regardless of whether it's well maintained or relevant.

There's already a full archive of music and art, as well as an FAQ, linked from the front page.

This. This is the problem. The artist pages, the FAQ, pretty much everything should be on the wiki. Why? Searching is easier. Cross-referencing is more comprehensive. Editing is easier. Not bugging Spud to update the website is inherently valuable. He requires us to make art and review threads - let's take it to the next step. The more we can do, the less he has to do. The less he has to do, the quicker the fights get updated. The quicker the fights get updated, the less time I have to post on the forum. It's a win for everyone, really.

what kind of information would you want to be on it?

Artist information: bios, pictures, external links, cross-referencing.
Title information: picture, lyrics?, winner information which can then be cross-referenced, maybe even links to the mp3s
Recording information: so i can link people to the double-tracking page
Song Fight information: history, live events, photos from live events, notable events

Who would you expect to edit it

1. We automatically pull the fighter bios in.
2. Then we pull in the fight information.
3. Art, so you don't need that random account thing to submit art.
4. Whoever's waiting for the fight to go up - make it a requirement along with art and thread.
5. Me when I'm bored.

who would you expect to read it?

Me. Because I don't know any of Irwin's artist names - seriously, what's wrong with that guy?

The Unofficial Song Fight! Jukebox wasn't created by committee. Somebody worked their ass off to demonstrate it's usefulness and make it useful. If you build it and it's good, they will come. Go for it!

Roymond, as lovely as that sounds, I don't know where it's located. Another one of those hidden aspects of song fight that would be GREAT to have on a wiki! oh but how do i find the wiki to find the link?

Well, whatever, I'm writing a bot to import all the artist information into the wiki at sf.net.

OK, why not coordinate with Sam so that any data that is wiki'd is available to the jukebox? That's one way to gain momentum.

Good idea.

Where is the description of how to get an artist page? I'm trying to enumerate all the datafields I have to parse.

Edit: found it http://songfight.net/forums/viewtopic.p ... ation#p102 Yet another reason we need a wiki.

Ugh. That wiki has uploads disabled. Maybe I just need to set up my own somewhere. Except then it won't be 'official' and will end up the same fate.

When I have time (ha ha) I plan to write a Web crawler to import the artist info from songfight.org into sfjukebox.org. I don't know of a "simpler" way of doing that, like I do for importing the archived fight info (though that is not necessarily "simple" either).

I don't see why people would be anti-wiki. Open it up and let somebody work on it. The people who don't use it continue to not use it. People who want to use it will use it. Where's the problem in that? If you don't like it, continue to not look at it. If MG wants to spend hours updating it, why not?

Manhattan Glutton wrote:This. This is the problem. The artist pages, the FAQ, pretty much everything should be on the wiki. Why? Searching is easier. Cross-referencing is more comprehensive. Editing is easier. Not bugging Spud to update the website is inherently valuable. He requires us to make art and review threads - let's take it to the next step. The more we can do, the less he has to do. The less he has to do, the quicker the fights get updated. The quicker the fights get updated, the less time I have to post on the forum. It's a win for everyone, really.

This kind of sentiment has come up many times among many people, myself included. I think that if Spud wanted things to be easier than they are, he would change things. He may complain about this and that, but ultimately I decided to just assume that he is content with things as they are. Not using a database, updating things by hand, all the manual work, etc. it's all OK otherwise it wouldn't be that way. I may not agree with that, but ultimately it's not up to me (or you). If you want Song Fight! 2.0, you will have to build it. Maybe you can beat me to it since I am going to be very time constrained for the next six months and have had to forget about that particular pipe dream for the time being.

EDIT: The Jukebox can be found in my signature, btw. I would have used songfightjukebox.org but I didn't want to use "songfight" in the domain so as not to irk the fightmasters, since it's an "unofficial" project.

I'm with Manhattan Glutton here. I really don't get the defeatist attitude that runs rampant in this thread. Well, actually I do.

The old wiki has a problem: it wanted to achieve something difficult. Quoting its goal: "to become the primary resource on the Web for home recording and songwriting." Well, that's hard. It's a goal that would take years of concerted effort to achieve. Not to mention that teaching people stuff, which is kind of the thing you want to do if you want to be a great resource on home recording and songwriting, is hard even in small doses.

What MG, and the rest of us IRC folks, were going for is something completely different: a wiki that collects information about Song Fight, i.e. about its artists, its community, its on-the-side and so on. This is much, much easier. (I was also suggesting to allow for collecting the kind of content the wiki currently has, but to not make it the wiki's primary focus.) It also has much more of an immediate benefit for everyone who's active in Song Fight: all current events can be documented there. It gives us one place to collect all the stuff most of us would miss otherwise, or have trouble finding later. It's not particularly easy to find details about those past side fights that never ended up on the official side fights page... and that's just one example. How about liner notes? The thread in the forums is hard to find if you don't already know about it, and it's not exactly a friendly format to browse liner notes in.

And, as MG already said, we are making it really hard for new folks to see all the sides that there are to Song Fight. When I first joined, all I knew about was the main page and the forums. Everything else that was remotely interesting was buried between completely unused stuff (e.g. the links on songfight.net) and within the depths of the forums.

So, before you keep arguing against all the ideas, please be aware that we're not intending to do the same thing again. The only thing the old wiki and our plans have in common is that wiki software is involved.

An out-of-date wiki isn't just out-of-date, though, it's a magnet for spam and defacement. You need to have an active population keeping a close eye on it or else it just becomes yet another graffiti-filled cesspit of the Internet.

Having a better centralized collection of artist information is great. I'm all for that. I don't think a wiki is necessarily the right way to go.

Yeah, that's why I fear we'll have to set up our own thing in the end.

Eh, a few user account safeguards will probably be fine.

Unfortunately, a lot of the advanced wiki configuration (like - gasp- uploading images) requires me to have admin access, so I'm working off my own site right now. I'll reveal the URL once my import script has done its magic.

jast wrote:stuff about Song Fight! related sites

I think there is a limit on how many different sites/services people will pay attention to, though. I don't think adding a wiki will put us at or over that limit, but I don't think it's realistic to expect a majority of the community to follow the .org site, the boards, the wiki, IRC, side fights, etc. etc. At least, not when those things aren't really integrated very well, like you need separate logins for them, and they just link to each other, but don't share data.

Owner of 900 random wikis here (I think there's only 4 really) with my two cents. I'm totally behind the idea of Songfight having a wiki to have a link to our lush history.

The problems the original wiki had wasn't notoriety (it was well advertised at first) but people just moved on to other things instead of doing upkeep. Also, every once in a while, you'd have a long article full of information replaced by some joker who writes "(fill in the blank) is a cool dude who writes good songs" instead.

MG, I'm 100% behind have a Songfight wiki. I'm a fountain of Songfight info (Just checked my hard drive the other day. Doing the Nur Ein and those Songfight year end countdowns gave me an unbelievable amount of stuff...). Just ask and I'll provide.

Note: I think a wiki is a great idea BUT you'l find that keeping interest in the wiki will be the challenge. Just like the IRC chat room, we have it but not everyone uses it. You may find the wiki treated the same way.

Well, my script to import songfight.org archive worked... now I just need a better domain name and a wiki layout plan.

I'm watching these events and discussion unfold with interest. It's interesting to me: initially, I was with Jon Eric on this one. My primary question was: why? what do we need a wiki for? One of the great things about Song Fight! for me is the comminity, it's a living search engine and depository of information about music.

My turning point was once MG more clearly enumerated what exactly would be on the wiki. Along with Jast's iteration that this would be a running archive about Song Fight! itself (i.e., the evolution of the community, a chronicle, really), this really cements it for me.

I'm pretty useless when it comes to coding, but if there's something that I can do to contribute (grunt work, advertising, just updating my own information), then I'm very willing.

Niveous wrote: The problems the original wiki had....

WTF?!?! Who writes this shit?!?!

I tend to be of the feeling that if a wiki was needed, it wouldn't be so hard to get one to take hold. However, if someone starts one or revives an old one, I will be glad to post it on the front page of songfight.org until such time as it no longer has a pulse or is overrun by joke posts, just like last time. You kids, I swear.

Caravan Ray wrote:WTF?!?! Who writes this shit?!?!

HA!!!

WELCOME TO WEB 1.0. You can now search artists and fights by related properties, link them in ways never imagined, view additional graphs and statistics, and easily peruse fight history.

SFBASE.NET

The fight archive is still importing, but the user pages are mostly up.

What I need is:
1. For people to find this data interesting. I would hate to have done all this work for just myself.
2. Bug reports, artist aliases (to map fights to the correct artist if they have weird naming issues), and suggestions.
3. Some enthusiastic chaps to want to join the fray, documenting Song Fight! chronicles and other pertinent topics (recording, free vsts, etc). I'd be glad to answer wiki questions.

Have fun!

I've started adding lots of gratuitous details about my songs. Also a bit of general mucking about.
http://sfbase.net/wiki/Jan_Krueger

Awesome! And you know how to template too!