F1 Technical Wiki?

[machin]

This forum is a massive source of information, with lots of hours put in by a load of knowledgeable people... but that information can get "lost" or is difficult to find... wouldn't it be great if it could all be assembled into an F1 Technical Wiki?!

[N12ck]

+1

Yeah genius so we can add information on certain aerodynamic devices or mechanical devices or cars.

I applaud you!

[raymondu999]

Sounds interesting. I just had an image of the page on tyre wear, where every 5 minutes somebody replaces what's on the page with the opposite

[machin]

I had the same thoughts about Renault's exhaust! But Wikipaedia works OK....

[wesley123]

I like the idea, but then you come to the problem; Who is going to write all this? I like the idea, but writing it takes alot of time and knowledge, you cannot put a random guy on it writing the text.

[SiLo]

It would take some time, but I think it would be totally worth it in the long run.

[machin]

Who is going to write all this? I like the idea, but writing it takes alot of time and knowledge, you cannot put a random guy on it writing the text.

Its a Wiki... WE all write it..... that's how Wikipaedia works..... This would be the opportunity for all of us to create an easily useable source of technical information for F1/racing cars which would be available for all time... who fancies being part of that?

[machin]

I think we could quite quickly create a big resource... just think, if everyone here found and posted just one paragraph which they are particularly proud of, think how much that would add up to in a very short amount of time!

[raymondu999]

Can we include a poll in this? I'm all for this. However I can imagine ambiguous areas such as tyre wear will be frequently changed

[machin]

Wikipedia itself has the ability to add "Citation Needed" or "Dubious" after a comment, so you can quite easily highlight areas of questionable content to other readers without getting into a "re-write war"......

[Giblet]

One problem with Wikis is they are notoriously easy to lift off a site.

[machin]

What do u mean by 'lift off a site'?

[bot6]

Essentially, people can steal them, modify them and re-publish them I think.

Still think it's a good idea though. Actually, the current infrastructure of the site might be a good platform for this. Forum members could volunteer to make a kind of synopsis of the information in a thread that they think is worthy of turning into an article, and post the result in a dedicated place in the forum. Then other forum members could give a feedback, and the author could edit his article accordingly. Then after a week or so, the admins validate (or not) the article and publish it on the mainsite. Maybe not quite as free going as Wikipedia, but it would enable the different forum members to be recognized for their work, and would give them an entry into technical journalism maybe? And it would give more content to the mainsite!

[Giblet]

Yes that is exactly what I meant. If you go to a wiki for a game for example, you will find 20 sites with the exact same wiki on it, just lifted.

At first I thought you were talking about taking all the existing articles/car database here and converting them over to a wiki which I think might be a bad idea, but as a new separate feature of the site I think it's a very good idea.

[bot6]

A "member writer" column or something like that on the mainsite might look pretty good.