Suggestion Scuba Diving Wiki

[ChillyWaters]

I would like to put out a question to Scubaboard and its members on the adoption of a wiki for scuba diving (on Scubaboard). While the forum is great for discussions, it does nothing for holding relatively static content, such as:
1. Dive site listings -- including descriptions of sites, maps, currents, etc.
2. Information on all aspects of diving -- which essentially equates to a user modifiable FAQ for each of the major forums here.
3. ??

For those who don't know what a wiki is, it's essentially a webpage where users can modify and add its content. E.g. see en.wikipedia.org -- the Internet's encyclopedia.

Specifically, I would love to have and contribute to a wiki for diving sites in my area. It's pointless to keep posting questions on where to dive when this information could simply be contained in a wiki.

For scubaboard, the wiki should simply equate to more revenue, as they get more user-created pages that would allow easy surfing, and thus the delivery of more advertisements, and the opening up to a bigger audience.

Thoughts?

For an example of what I'm talking about, see:
http://www.wikiscuba.com/wiki/index.php/Main_Page
(However, it doesn't really have a community, and has a slow server).

- ChillyWaters

 

[cold_water]

"That's the worst idea I've ever heard in my life, Tom."
"Yes, this is horrible, this idea."

While I love office space, allow me to disagree. I'm probably biased because I'm trying to get a scuba diving wiki off the ground, but still allow me to express my feeling that I think it has potential. I don't think you'll get definitive answers on certain "hot" topics that spawn threads after threads on here, but I think we can all recognize that a paragraph like

"Not all divers agree that diving with a snorkel attached is necessary. Many see it as an unnecessary piece of equipment likely to get tangled in lines while others consider the snorkel to be a fallback plan for surface swimming if needed. Often suggested is to consider the particular situation of the dive when deciding to carry a snorkel or not, whether it is likely to be used, ..."

is a reasonnable start of a summary of what the "concensus" is on forums like this one. Such information would actually have been more useful than the "You should have your snorkel on the left side of your head when you dive, period" mantra I got in my OW class.

Plus, detaching a scuba diving wiki from wikipedia, I think, has advantages. One point of criticism of wikipedia is the constant bickering about what type of information is to be included, whether the information is too precise, and in-depth information being removed by non-experts on the basis that it's too detailed. In that sense, a separate wiki, in my opinion, encourages people who actually do scuba dive to maintain detailed pages on a specialized wiki with frequent links with wikipedia. It does have the drawback that the pool of people who are both scuba divers and not put off by the wiki syntax becomes possibly rather limited. We're trying to find a solution on our project and hope to start attracting more people by making it easier to contribute new dive sites and general articls without having to get a primer on the wiki syntax.

So in summary, I think there's a place for a scuba diving wiki.

Just my 2 cents.