Back in May this year ozpete raised an issue in the forums regarding to on-going deals, as some deals/coupons don’t really expire and are still very useful after a year or two. However due to the design of OzBargain where new items push the older ones away from the front page, those older deals somehow “got lost” inside the archive of past deals. After all listing items in reverse chronological order is not always the best solution to organise information (in fact it’s probably one of the worst ways if you emphasis on “organising”). So at the end the conclusion was — OzBargain needs something to organise its increasing worth of information. Preferably a Wiki:

A wiki is a collection of web pages designed to enable anyone who accesses it to contribute or modify content, using a simplified markup language. Wikis are often used to create collaborative websites and to power community websites. The collaborative encyclopedia, Wikipedia, is one of the best-known wikis. Wikis are used in business to provide intranets and Knowledge Management systems.

Hmm. Knowledge management system that is edited collaboratively by all members — that sounds like something would be very useful to OzBargain. So 3 freaking months after that forum thread was posted, let me introduce to you:

OzBargain Wiki, the BargainPedia!

We’ve Got The Software…

Actually it took me only one week to integrate DokuWiki with Drupal that powers OzBargain (templates + a special authentication handler). DokuWiki is an open source light-weight PHP-based Wiki software that uses flat-files instead of database to store its pages, and I’ve used it for a few different projects previous. I was going to try integrating MediaWiki (the software that drives Wikipedia) but I found it’s too complicated and too heavy-weight for a small site like OzBargain.

Anyway. DokuWiki is pretty fast for a small site, has a good indexing for search, and its plugins are easy to write so I’ll be able to mash up the content from the deal listing, forums and the wiki together in the future. OzBargain Wiki was installed and integrated in early May and was just there, and no one has noticed…

But We Have No Content

The initial plan was — I will get the Wiki installed, and write a few essential pages because we release this to the wild. But the problem was, due to my own busyness I never managed to write those pages. So an almost-empty Wiki was just sitting there collecting dust (or wasting electrons) for the last 3 months…

So I figured, if I am going to wait until I have written all the pages, the Wiki will probably be released later than Duke Nukem Forever. As a believer of the open source philosophy, I think it might be wise to release early and release often even the beta feature of your website. So what the heck. Here is OzBargain Wiki. Play with it. Don’t spam it. Make it useful.

Initially this wiki is going to be a supplement to deals posted on OzBargain, but ultimately I am hoping to use this wiki to collect and organise information regarding to shopping and finding bargains in Australia.

Now, getting back to do more editing…