WikiStatus

Background

The Amiga Wiki was started back in 2003 with high hopes for a resource that would help Amigans share and get the information they required. Back in those days, Wikipedia's Amiga content was extremely sketchy, and this site would also be able to host content such as tutorials which don't fit on Wikipedia.

The Amiga Wiki never really took off, and in the meantime Wikipedia has become a great source of the sorts of information that should have been here; our content is pretty embarrassing by comparison. For example, look at Wikipedia's and our articles on the original chipset. While there are a few pages here which wouldn't belong on Wikipedia, they're few and far between. For these reasons, I'll be sticking a header on all pages that advises visitors that other sites likely have better information.

Why read-only?

Unfortunately, while there have been very few real page edits, there has been a great deal of vandalism by spambots. While much has been kept at bay by the anti-spam robot on this site, enough still makes it onto the pages to mean I have to remove links every couple of days. In theory, it's possible to install a module onto the wiki that forces editors to answer a quick Amiga-related question before editing. The problem is that the core wiki software we're running is now several versions out-of-date and wouldn't work with the newer modules. Upgrading the wiki software is perfectly do-able, but frankly this site gets so little use that it didn't seem worthwhile.

Instead, I've locked all the pages down so you need an editor password to change them. If anyone wants to edit pages, for whatever reason, email editpass AT thisdomain and I'll send you one - you'll have access to edit all pages. Hopefully this is a decent compromise for the few people who actively maintain pages (such as SpamFryer) and will help ensure the pages stay free of spam.

The future

Unless things change, the wiki can stay in this state for the foreseeable future - hosting is generously provided by Wayne at Amiga.org and it's not using up much bandwidth as it is!

If there is demand in the community for a wiki-type service then I'd be happy to put in the work to bring things up-to-date, however from the (lack of) response I've had to posts on a couple of forums this doesn't seem likely. I've pasted in a post I made on A.org for how I think the site could be made useful. If you genuinely think that this might be a good resource for the community, email me at webmaster AT thisdomain and we can talk.

Problem: There are loads of small Amiga-related sites out there with really cool information - e.g. tutorials on specific hardware upgrades, support sites for old 68k software that's still usable, historical information etc. But over time, a lot of these websites become unmaintained and at risk of being removed by the host; link rot sets in. Also, there are probably loads of members of the community who have knowledge they'd like to share but don't want to bother learning HTML and getting a server.

Potential solution: Rebrand AmigaWiki.com (or set up a new site entirely like amigasites.com) that lets any Amigan create their own microsite. It'll include some sort of basic CMS (or wiki-style markup) so there's no technical knowledge required, and users can customise the look of their site using CSS etc. Sites will all have simple domains of the form [amigawikiorwhatever.com]/[sitename] which we guarantee will stay static. It would be made clear that, in the event of the site closing down, a full backup would be made available to anyone else interested in running the service. We'd be able to offer services particularly relevant for Amigans, such as the ability to automatically download the contents of the microsite as an AmigaGuide file (this is really easy to do providing we limit sites to wiki-style markup). The main page of the site would also act as a directory for all the microsites, which otherwise might just get lost on the web. It'd also be possible for microsite owners to open up any pages as a wiki for anyone to edit.

Interestingly enough, the more active pages on the existing Amiga Wiki tend not to be the encyclopaedic articles (which are obsoleted by Wikipedia these days) but pages that would work well on the site I've described - for example:

OS4 68k compatibility list - back in the very early days of OS4, and before anyone had created a dedicated compatibility list, this was an easy way for people to see and update the list of working applications without going through thousands of forum posts The Amiganisation of FOSS - original article by someone on ways in which AmigaOS-type features could be carried over to Linux and friends SpamFryer - the author of this package updates this page with new rules between releases

I'd guess that some people would want greater freedom than a basic CMS can provide. So they'd be able to get a standard account like Wayne mentioned, along with a subset of the features provided to CMS users - e.g. the guaranteed persistent domain and promotion on the front page of the site.

Any thoughts?