About me

I know quite a bit about computers in general, and about some areas in particular. Concerning this wiki here, I have built and rebuilt PCs from scratch.

The thoughts below apply to more general topics than just PCs. Some day I may move them to a more appropriate place.

What am I doing here?

I am looking for a medium to make and share notes about the computer systems that I use and possibly other topics. This Wiki is a good candidate for the "computer systems" part of this task.

--Infologist 01:18, 22 Dec 2005 (UTC)

In particular, I seek a medium in which to publish non-encyclopedic content. In other words, content that is not appropriate for Wikipedia because it conflicts with Wikipedia policies.

• Investigation results, for example of a failure analysis
• Work in progress in general
• How-tos, process descriptions
• Experiences with particular software, hardware, documentation or processes
• Speculation, in particular about possible causes of observations
• Wishlists (requirements collection)
• Other original research

There are many web pages about this topic, but I do not know of a publicly editable site about it (a proper wiki). So for the time being, I will try to use this wiki for the pupose stated above.

As an example, I'll start a new Windows XP Installation page.

To do on this page

• Differentiate the purpose of this Wiki to that of WikiPedia.
• Complete requirements analysis.

Requirements

When trying to find out whether the Computing Knowledgebase would fit my requirements, I discovered that its purpose (mission, goals) has not been clearly defined yet. See Talk:Main_Page. Good, this means that it might evolve to fit my needs. Iff my needs are compatible with the WikiCities policies. Which leads me to... what are my needs?

The medium should do the following things. Note that this list is currently under development.

Hard Requirements

• Multi-language. I write in both English and German. Wikia has support for multi-language wikis and interlanguage links, good. By Wikia convention, different language versions of the wikis are on separate hosts. As far as I am concerned, that's OK.
• Make notes about issues with my personal computer system. An example would be a blue screen that I encountered and how I got rid of it. Up to now, I have been adding this kind of notes to one 'Notes.txt' file on every system. An alternative medium must be almost as easy to use as a text file. A MediaWiki would barely satisfy this requirement.
• At minimum, an issue has a description. Normally, issues also have a category (example: "Unix: Shell"), a title (example: "Strange assignment syntax") and a state (examples: ' a resolution (example: "Use recovery console to copy backup version over damaged registry file").
• Safety. I would hate to lose those precious notes. This means both short-term and long-term preservation. Short-term means that saving must work fast enough to save every two minutes without becoming annoyed -- five points off MediaWiki here. Long-term means that there must be a way to export data (trivial with text files) and the file format must be human-readable and simple enough to quickly write a utility to import the contents into a successor system.

Nice to have

• Supports personal content. There should be a way to add new, unresolved, sketched issues. My notes currently often include what I did when to the system, especially when I was not sure what effect my actions would have.
• Publicly document resolutions, both to common and rare issues, for others to benefit from.
• A creation time

Wishlist

• Seamless integration with private (not publicly viewable) notes, not necessarily hosted in the same medium.
• Offline editing.

Currently Unsatisfied Requirements

• The save cycle takes too long. The save cycle consists of saving (clicking the submit button) and returning to editing (click on the edit link, wait until the edit page is ready).
• Exporting a page does not always work. For example, I just tried to export my newly edited user page, the result is an almost empty document.