LabVIEW Wiki:Overview FAQ

Help:Contents

What is LabVIEW Wiki?

LabVIEW Wiki is an online open-content collaborative resource, that is, a voluntary association of individuals and groups working to develop a common resource of all LabVIEW knowledge. All content on the LabVIEW Wiki can be edited by anyone. LabVIEW Wiki is first and foremost dedicated to distributing knowledge, experience and insights into the world of LabVIEW programming.

Who owns LabVIEW Wiki?

The LabVIEW Wiki is currently privately owned and managed by Michael Aivaliotis. Michael also manages other websites such as the LAVA Forums, the LAVA Code Repository and others. Support for the site comes from personal funds and in the form of time spent on upgrades and maintenance. Some money comes from generous donations.

Who is responsible for the articles on LabVIEW Wiki?

You are! Actually, you can even edit this very FAQ, so long as the edits are helpful. This is a collaborative effort. Many people have contributed information to different parts of this project, and anyone can do so, including you. All you need is to know how to edit a page, and have some LabVIEW knowledge you want to share. We provide users with a certain amount of freedom.

You can learn who is responsible for the most recent versions of any given page by clicking on the "View history" link. Nevertheless, if you spot an error in the latest revision of an article, you are highly encouraged to be bold and correct it. This practice is one of the basic review mechanisms that maintains the reliability of the Wiki. We hope that LabVIEW Wiki will become one of the most extensive LabVIEW information resources on the Internet.

If you are uncertain or find the wording confusing, quote the material on the associated discussion thread on the LAVA Forums and leave a question for the next person. This helps eliminate errors, inaccuracies, or misleading wording more quickly and is highly appreciated by the community.

Why do I need to create an account?

You need an account if you are planning on doing any article editing. First off, you probably already have an account. If you've ever signed up on the LAVA Forums, then your LabVIEW Wiki username and password is the same as that used on LAVA. See here to get an account if you don't have one. If you are not planning on editing right now then you do not need an account.

Which wiki software does LabVIEW Wiki run on?

LabVIEW Wiki, uses MediaWiki to facilitate collaborative editing and storage of page histories. For more information on MediaWiki see the MediaWiki web site.

How can I contact someone at LabVIEW Wiki?

If you have a question that is not answered here, please send an email to: wiki[at]lavag.org (replace the [at] with: @)

How do you know if the information is correct?

As anyone can edit any article, it is of course possible for biased, out of date, or incorrect information to be posted. However, because there are so many other people reading the articles and monitoring contributions using the Recent Changes page, incorrect information is usually corrected quickly. Thus, the overall accuracy of the LabVIEW Wiki is improving all the time as it attracts more and more contributors. You are encouraged to help by correcting articles, validating content, and providing useful references.

How do you prevent people from ruining articles? (Defacement or vandalism)

All changes to a page are registered in a 'page history', so any defacement can be replaced by an older version of the page, and all recent changes to LabVIEW Wiki in general are automatically listed on a special page for that purpose. There are people who spend a little time each day watching the list of recent changes on LabVIEW Wiki. Any user interested in a particular page can add it to a personal 'watchlist' which shows when a page is updated, whether that update is a joke or a substantial contribution. Furthermore, any of the many readers who pass by can correct vandalism or any other erroneous information. So, the popular pages that people might be most likely to deface are also the ones which have the most editors watching and the most readers, all of whom can 'revert' vandalism. If there is a recurrent problem, an article can be protected from editing, or user accounts can be blocked from editing.

What if two people edit the same article at the same time?

See Help:Editing pages.

What can I do about libellous content or an invasion of privacy?

By design, LabVIEW Wiki is easy to edit so you can simply revert wrong or hurtful information yourself. However, because every revision is logged, special steps are required to remove this information from the historical record. Please email us (wiki[at]lavag.org) on removing historical revisions.