Who is FAQ, and why is he destroying things?

[ban-all-sheds]

What's going on?

The Sticky in the Electrics UK Forum which used to be called "For Reference" ( //www.diynot.com/forums/viewtopic.php?t=7553 ) is now called ELECTRICS SAFETY.

http://web.archive.org/web/20080406162523/http://www.diynot.com/forums/viewtopic.php?t=7553

A large number of informative posts in that topic have simply been deleted.

FAQ's profile ( //www.diynot.com/network/FAQ ) has as the earliest entry "

Heating1 signed up 1 years ago", but Heating1 doesn't exist, and elsewhere Bahco claims to be responsible for the FAQ posts: //www.diynot.com/forums/viewtopic.php?t=224734

But none of them appear in his list of posts: //www.diynot.com/search/forum-author.php?search=Bahco

Who is Bahco? What post deletion powers does he have? Why does he have them?

Who is FAQ? What post deletion powers does he have? Why does he have them?

Why are the reference stickies out of control? What will be done to put a stop to the ongoing damage? When will the damage be repaired?

 

[Bahco]

The duplicates (which you stated were already in the Wiki )
are Here

If you have anything useful to contribute or suggest then write in to Admin who is aware of the situation.

You have been helpful in the past but I am not too happy with your tone in your PM . If you require any further discussions with me you will have to change your rather unfriendly attitude.

Have a good day.

 

[ban-all-sheds]

The duplicates (which you stated were already in the Wiki )

Are they?

Some are, some aren't.

Some are tucked away in such obscure places that nobody would find them if they didn't know they were there.

Where is this one in the Wiki: //www.diynot.com/forums/viewtopic.php?p=1602798#1602798 ?

Where is this one in the Wiki: //www.diynot.com/forums/viewtopic.php?p=1602784#1602784 ?

Please don't say it's here: //www.diynot.com/wiki/electrics:books. Firstly that's an excellent example of being tucked away in an obscure place, and secondly it's years out of date, it refers to previous editions of the Wiring Regulations and is full of broken links - the one that was in the sticky has been revised several times since the Wiki version was created.

are Here

But you've removed the sticky attribute - it's now near the end of Page 3 of the forum, so it's a bit disingenuous to claim that the posts aren't lost.

You have been helpful in the past but I am not too happy with your tone in your PM . If you require any further discussions with me you will have to change your rather unfriendly attitude.

And I'm not too happy with the damage you are doing.

Who gave you the power to do this sort of thing, and why? Was your remit to do it in any old incompetent way you thought good enough, or was it to make things better?

Are you saying that if I don't stop being angry with what you have done you will carry on doing it just to spite me? That unless I'm nice to you you won't stop messing things up?

 

[Bahco]

All the time and effort you have put into whinging about the Stickys etc could have been channelled into improving the Wiki!



Thanks for your thoughts even though they do not contribute any value to the site!

 

[ban-all-sheds]

To improve the Wiki properly, as you are finding out the hard way, is not a trivial job.

What we had, with the Wiki and the existing stickies was not perfect, and could have been improved.

What we now have is worse.

 

[Bahco]

To improve the Wiki properly, as you are finding out the hard way, is not a trivial job.

So thats why you have not attempted it!

What we had, with the Wiki and the existing stickies was not perfect, and could have been improved.

I'm all ears.

What we now have is worse.

How would you improve it?

So far all you have been is very negative and not made any useful suggestions.

No offence intended.

 

[Spark123]

Where in the wiki do you suggest to place the link to the books BAS?
The MCB one was there under fuses and MCBs, it appears to have been overwritten with a pic of a consumer unit and some components. I'll try and put that back in a min.
I'll have a go at updating the links for the books later

 

[ban-all-sheds]

To improve the Wiki properly, as you are finding out the hard way, is not a trivial job.

So thats why you have not attempted it!

Yes, TBH., it needs a root and branch overhaul, there is no sensible order to it.

I'm all ears.

Shame you weren't all ears earlier.

How would you improve it?

By trying to undo the damage you have done.

So far all you have been is very negative and not made any useful suggestions.

The useful suggestion I made, right at the start of this whole sorry saga was to stop creating new sticky posts by copying or duplicating information already there.

But you didn't see that as useful. It never occurred to me that you would then progress to deleting sticky posts that were already there without ensuring that they were in a sensible place in a logically organised Wiki.

The duplicates (which you stated were already in the Wiki )
are Here

Again that looks like an attempted cover-up. You didn't just remove the sticky flag so that that topic is now 4 pages down, you also at one point got rid of several posts within it - from the 10th one downwards the authors are all FAQ, and the timestamps are all 5th of May 20:34 to 20:41.

They have new post numbers, the books one used to be //www.diynot.com/forums/viewtopic.php?p=75416#75416 , now it is

//www.diynot.com/forums/viewtopic.php?p=1602784#1602784

And that's just one of 4 of mine.

Because the post numbers have changed none of the links to them that I have ever posted will work (and I have posted them on other sites, not just this one), and I've now got to change the list I keep on my PC of post numbers.

Also I'm no longer the author of them. I'm not getting all precious about my name not being there any more, but because I'm not the author I can no longer edit them. And over the years I have needed to edit them, particularly the books one, several times to keep them up to date.

Do you now see what I mean about damage, and do you now see why I'm angry?

 

[Spark123]

Yes, TBH., it needs a root and branch overhaul, there is no sensible order to it.

How do you suggest we go about it? I didn't think the indexing was too bad.

 

[ban-all-sheds]

Where in the wiki do you suggest to place the link to the books BAS?
The MCB one was there under fuses and MCBs, it appears to have been overwritten with a pic of a consumer unit and some components. I'll try and put that back in a min.
I'll have a go at updating the links for the books later

I'll see if I can come up with a rough plan - right now, as I see it, the Wiki is poorly structured.

By that I mean when you look at the hierarchy, from Electrics UK down, there's this at the first level:

Part P (England & Wales)
Building Warrants (Scotland)
Safety Information
What is Low Voltage?
Abbreviations and Definitions
Burglar Alarms
Cable Types
Earthing, Supply types and Bonding
Fire Alarms
Fuses and Miniature Circuit Breakers
Heating Controls
Inspection and Testing
Installation Techniques
Lighting & Lamps
Main Protective bonding (was Main Equipotential Bonding)
Outdoor electrics
RCDs
Socket Circuits
Special locations inc Bathrooms and supplementary equipotential bonding
Telephones
TV Aerials
17th
Other useful info
Hall of shame

and then each of those has a tree structure under it, and so on. But there's no logic to how it's laid out, no sensible grouping of topics, no consistency of the level of detail. e.g. shouldn't "What is Low Voltage" be under Abbreviations and Definitions, not on the same level as it?

Should burglar alarms and TV aerials be at the same level as Part P?

That's just a few - the further you look the more you find, and the result of that is that it's confusing for people to navigate to find what they want, and the search doesn't help as it does a free-text search within articles, it doesn't work like Wikipedia does, for instance, by looking at the subject titles.

Fixing/updating/creating individual articles is easy - bringing some order to it all is far from that.

And that's why it's been on my "must get round to" list for so long - every time I look at it I think "I haven't got time for that now.."

 

[Spark123]

It has got a little bit messy as it has been added to over time.
I'll have a play about sometime, you are correct in that low voltage could come under definitions.
Burglar alarms could probably have a top level heirarchy?
New category for RCDs and Fuses and Miniature Circuit breakers called circuit protection?
Telephones as top level
All bonding in the earthing/bonding section

There's plenty to go at - I really need to get a round tuit.

 

[ban-all-sheds]

I haven't seen mine for b****y years....

I ws thinking - maybe instead of looking at what materials we have, and how best to organise them, try to think what people visiting the Wiki might be looking for, and structure it that way, there's no reason why articles can't have multiple paths to them, so at the top level OTTOMH, no particular order:

Problems with lighting circuits

What the law says

Domestic/house circuits

What size cable do I need?

Want to learn more
.
.
?


I've got a complete dump of the now-defunct DIY Dick website ( http://web.archive.org/web/20040924171238/http://www.diydick.com/ ) could perhaps get inspiration from that, plus materials (all old colours though).

Could do worse than looking at the structure of the Haynes book too...