Hi. I’m looking to build a wiki that users can control, and I’d like to use Discourse to do that. The best way I can see to do it is just to allow users to create a “wiki page” by creating a new wiki-fied discourse post, and that single post will serve as the full wiki page. *Is that in fact the best way to do it? For example, is it ok to have a single post that is edited by many users, left open for editing for weeks at a time, and also grows really large (like this kind of size)? A single post seems pretty different than a full wikipedia-like page, so I want to be sure it can work and be stable. *I see that you can add a table of contents. Are there other plugins I should use? For example, I think discourse could work for wiki-style url linking, but I’m not sure yet. BTW, here are some other posts I’ve looked at: I see here that it’s possible to wiki-fy a post. I also see the extended discussion here about creating a wiki–that conversation is several years old and seems to focus on a few different things, so I’m posting here for this more focused question.

[image] JQ331: it can get very long There is a 32000 character limit to the length of a post. Also if you are using DiscoTOC with the page and it is long, expect the table of contents to take a few seconds to render.

Thanks, that’s the exact kind of detail that’s very helpful to hear. I wasn’t aware of those limitations, and they are pretty serious for my use case. Are there other technical issues I’ll face trying to allow users to make their posts long wiki-pages?

[image] JQ331: Are there other technical issues I’ll face trying to allow users to make their posts long wiki-pages? While not a technical issue, if you start to come up with features you would like to have added for wiki post you will run into the Discourse use cases, e.g. Wiki improvement – Split content into multiple sections?

Thanks. Yes, that is probably the underlying concern. Discourse has so much going for it–the clean interface, so much great functionality, easy implementation, etc. But ultimately it is for forums, not wiki articles. So even if there are workarounds to get close to wiki-like functionality, there’s a concern that trying to use Discourse for a meaningful and growing wiki will be constantly trying to fit things into discourse that it’s not currently built for. I’ll think about it, and I would personally be very excited if discourse did have full wiki functionality, but I lean toward trying to find a full wiki solution for building a wiki.

If you watch the video presentations given by Jeff you will see that he is one who will listen and is open to change but you have to make a very effective case. That is a route you may not have considered.

[image] EricGT: There is a 32000 character limit to the length of a post That’s the default value, but you can easily change it via site settings if you need to. [image] EricGT: Also if you are using DiscoTOC with the page and it is long, expect the table of contents to take a few seconds to render. “a few seconds” is way too long and that should never happen. Generating the table of contents with that component should happen instantaneously. If it does take that long, then there’s something wrong and I can fix it if you share more details about when it happens.

Seems like there are some different views here. So it would be helpful to hear from the team on this: Do you expect it will work fine to use Discourse to set up a wiki site? The method being to allow users to set up “wiki pages”–in the form of users creating wiki-fied posts. (The reason to try this approach instead of using a full-on wiki tool like mediawiki would be that discourse is easy to use in general, looks great, etc.)

[image] JQ331: Are there other technical issues I’ll face trying to allow users to make their posts long wiki-pages? Have you read 32,000 characters? I don’t consider that a “limitation” per se. Wikipedia:Article size This page contains an overview of the key issues concerning article size. There are three related measures of an article's size: The article size impacts usability in multiple ways: When an article is too large, consider breaking it into smaller articles, spinning part of it out into a new article, or merging part of it into another existing article. When an article is too small, consider merging with one or more other existing articles. Such editorial decisions require consensus. Guidelines ... A page of about 30 kB to 50 kB of readable prose, which roughly corresponds to 4,000 to 10,000 words, takes between 30 and 40 minutes to read at average speed I think you have plenty of room to grow and engage. :rainbow:

I think it depends how big these “wikis” get. If they are lightweight simple affairs liberally mixed with some discussion, then probably OK. If they are massive one million word novellas in an effort to rebuild wikipedia from scratch, then probably not.

Ha. We’ll put the potential problem of “massive one million word novellas” into the bucket of “we’ll deal with that one when get there” type of problems… So not massive posts, but probably posts of “moderate” wikipedia length, perhaps like this one. From the basics that I can see–the ability to allow users to create wiki-style posts, the TOC plugin, and the basic ability to link to urls in normal posting–it seems like it could work. Being new to Discourse it’s tough to know if there could be unforeseen issues that come up with building a wiki site --not a full wikipedia, but still a wikipedia-like site focused on a specific set of topics–with Discourse, so that it would be better to just start off with wiki-focused software like mediawiki. I understand that ultimately the real test will be once I dive in, but this feedback is very helpful to identify where to start diving.

Using Posts as a Wiki?

Product Support

codinghorror (Jeff Atwood) May 19, 2020, 12:22am 26

Not true; click edit pencil at upper right then edit button on the revision dialog.

Topic		Replies	Views
Is anyone working on a Discourse Wiki? Feature	41	17318	May 15, 2020
Wiki improvement – Split content into multiple sections? Feature	35	4357	May 18, 2020
Wiki topic mini spec Feature rfc , spec	30	13118	June 25, 2014
Should an edit to any wiki post bump the entire topic? Feature	51	5448	March 13, 2020
Using Discourse as a internal Knowledge Base / Intranet Feature	33	20457	December 23, 2022

Using Posts as a Wiki?

Related topics