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My goal is to set up categories and topics, all related to the piano.
Hoping we can get knowledgeable forums members (and non-members) to enter facts and information.

Would like to build it into a piano specific resource, similar to the wikipedia.

There have been thousands and thousands of really good posts on our forums over the years, but unfortunately the information often gets buried (unless someone remembers to elect it for the FAQ areas).

The Wiki would give us a place to organize and store piano information.

hi, frank, i took a look, and i obviously can't figure it out either. i wanted to edit your grotrian pages because steinweg is misspelled. there is no umlaut (right term?) over the second e in steinweg. it is just a regular e.

this looks very cool, btw, and seems to have tons of potential. i look forward to participating in the content when i have more time. great idea!

Can someone please educate me? What is the point of posting something in a wiki, if any jerk can come along and modify it to something entirely different? My understanding of wiki is that someone could take the time and trouble to post a thoughtful, well researched piece, only to have someone with an ax to grind totally ruin it. Am I missing something? Is there a wiki honor system? does it rely on the law of averages that there are more truthful people than jerks in the universe?

Most people by nature are well intentioned, as evidenced by the fact that we have nearly 16,000 members and only a very few jerks.

One of the advantages of a Wiki is that it retains all versions of a thread. If some knucklehead comes in and ruins a perfectly good post, we can roll it back to the version before (and ban the culprit).

- Frank B.

I edited the umlaut out of the Grotrian-Steinweg heading.

I also added the rest of Fine's "tier one" pianos, and several of the tier two ones too.

And, I alphabetized the list, putting lastname first, comma, firstname.

There're so many knowledgeable people in this forum. Can someone at least define general terms such as pitch raise, voicing, regulating, sostenuto, A440, etc. on the wiki site? :rolleyes:

Interesting idea, I can probably help out.

One thing that should be done is to get rid of the extra URL stuff so the pages are either "wikipiano.com/article_name" or "wikipiano.com/wiki/article_name" instead of "wikipiano.com/mediawiki/index.php/article_name". This can be done with just a couple small changes, and is probably worth doing before you get any external links.

Also, the piano brands index page should probably be named as a category instead of an article.

As far as seeding the content goes: An outline of all the "expected" categories should be made. Then use this outline to make a table of contents page (either on the main page or linked to from the main page). Then categories and articles can be added from the context of the table of content... Seems like the most effective way of getting content added while keeping everything organized.

Thanks ForTehWin, good suggestions.

I have to look into the directory structure.
A friend installed the application for me, not sure how he set it up.

Problem is, I haven't had time to learn how to use it correctly.
I have plenty of ideas for categories/topics.
And yes, I'd prefer to have a table of contents right on the index page.

Best,

- Frank B.

For the structure, first you'd have to rename the "mediawiki" folder to just "wiki" or move all the files from the "mediawiki" folder to the root directory (I'm pretty sure there are no places you have to change the directory info, but not 100%).

Then you'd add this to your .htaccess:
and change $wgArticlePath in your localsetting.php to:

There are other ways to do it if that doesn't work. They can be found at:

http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Using_a_very_short_URL

As far as the topics/ToC goes, why not post the topics here (or someplace else) so we can work together in organizing them into a good ToC?

Thanks ForTehWin,

I've asked my friend (who is hosting the WikiPiano for us) to see what he can do.
I might need to put you two together, if that's ok with you.

- Frank B.

Some suggested topics for our new WikiPiano

Piano Parts
Piano Music
Brands
Technical Help
Repairs
Accessories
Purchasing a Piano
Piano Dictionary
Pianist
History
Player Pianos
Composers

Hi,
if you want, you can place links from the builders to the photos on our photoarchive-site:

historic pianos-photoarchive

Am I the only one who's uncomfortable with putting the Fine ratings in the piano descriptions?

Even Larry Fine wishes he'd never done the "Tier" thing. I don't really see why we would immortalize it when there's controversy over whether the tier rating system is that meaningful.

I think we're giving the tier ratings a lot more credibility than they necessarily deserve.

Totally agree.

If we want to make it a "Larry Fine site", then it would be ok. But I think he might want to have input on that, no?!

A piano site with more general info (and links to builders) would be more useful. But it should include a mention about The Piano Book somewhere. The interested reader can follow that link if they are so inclined.

I can hardly wait till Piano Superstore starts working on the wiki...

How can we submit topics that we'd like to have addressed on the Wiki site? I'm trying to get specs for several models/brands of new pianos. And I have some specs (for pianos whose manufacturer's responded to me) which I would post if I could find the appropriate forum. It seems as though what I'm trying to do may be a whole different category from what is in the works here. Walt

tenuki, go to your room!

Hey Frank,

Sorry about the delay, I got caught up in some projects and forgot I was going to help you out with this.

I'm going to add the rough list of contents you made to the main page under "Contents". It will probably need to be edited and reorganized in the future, but we can hopefully get some editing started.

Great, thanks much.
As you can see, I haven't had the time (or the talent) to get it going.

Best,

Frank B.