Many of the posters here will have come originally from the R3 boards. Some will still go there from time to time. This board was set up because the BBC made changes to their own boards which are clearly not universally liked by those who use the boards. IMHO it seems that the BBC does not view the boards as a useful service (or at least some of their spokespersons have expressed such an opinion), but rather as a way in which they could receive some feedback - and in a very narrow way.

Message boards are a good way of getting a community together, but I wonder also whether other tools could also be useful. Wikis could be a useful way of the community here compiling an information base of possibly useful information to encapsulate some of the knowledge which from time to time appears in message threads. Does anyone here have an interest in such a project?

For example, we could compile a data base of recordings/performances which we like, or we could have a section on audio. We could also provide guides to future events. There are pros and cons of wikis versus MBs - and some participants may not wish to use both. However it might be possible to build up a more definitive, and also searchable, knowledge base by this approach, and it could be relatively easy to do if a suitable wiki server is found. Personally I like the Wikimedia wiki engine, but storage to host the data would be needed. There are quite a few other wiki spaces available now - though they might not be appropriate for the use I'm proposing. For examples - Dekiwiki, wikispace, pbwiki etc. Most of us don't have time to explore all of these.

For members to share musicological knowledge and/or views, I would recommend variously:
Musipedia
and the slightly more specialized
International Music Score Library Project
Both of which have their own associated fora (is fora correct? not forums? does that make me forameniferous?)

John

Have you ever created or edited (e.g corrected) an entry in Wikipedia? Once the concept of changing text has been picked up, then there are a few other issues. The community behind is important, and also the software. Wikimedia is the wiki engine used in Wikipedia - it's rather good, but needs to be hosted on a server. Some small scale wikis can be hosted on specialist sites, or wiki farms, such as:

• DekiWiki (www.opengarden.org/dekiwiki) - from Mindtouch (www.mindtouch.com/)
       
  • examples are at wik.is (http://wik.is/)

   

• Wikia (www.wikia.com/)
• Wikipedia has a page on wiki farms (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comparison_of_wiki_farms)
• wetpaint hosts wikis (www.wetpaint.com)
• wiki.com (www.wiki.com) offers small wikis for a few users free of charge, but charges for larger ones
• seedwiki (www.seedwiki.com/)

I can probably point you at a few good examples given an hour or two's searching. There are some issues about whether you simply want content, or also templates, the use of formatting such as CSS and dynamic HTML, and other features such as comments (similar to blogs) in a wiki.

I think the most important things are ability to track changes and a search facility, which Wikimedia has, plus of course a motivated community which has some ideas of where it wants to go.

I am not remotely technical, but recently I have been taking a look at h2g2 which seems to be a sort of BBC  wikipedia. I just wonder whether there might be a suitable space there.... but am probably quite wrong!

I have done some provisional work on this, and there is a page with some example wikis at http://dave2002.wikispaces.com/example+wikis

Also note that if you want a portable personal wiki, these are also mentioned on that page (at the bottom), or you can go directly to http://dave2002.wikispaces.com/Personal+wikis+and+notepads

This is still work in progress and experimental though, but some of the links may give a flavour of what's possible.

For example, here we could have topics grouped around:

• Artists
• Composers
• Pieces
• Recordings
• Performances
• Events

etc.

It'll only be worth starting though if there's enough interest in creating such a document.

There is now some interest in this from the wikia community. See the page at http://requests.wikia.com/wiki/R3ok-wiki

If anyone wishes to post a positive reply to the Musicality people, please go ahead. It seems to be a way forward, and could move us on quicker than waiting for a reply from the admin people to approve an r3ok-wiki.

I've added a new section for Reviews, and put up a somewhat sketchy review of the Manchester Cello Festival concert on Saturday. Anyone else want to join in?

Hi Dave, I've had a look (and made a tiny edit) - let me know when more appears!