Why Hammond Wiki

I have created this Wiki as an experiment.

Alternatives

I have been a member of both the HamTech and the TheHammondForum e-mail lists for a while now. These lists make clear that not only is there a desire for information regarding HammondOrgans, but also that there are a number of people kind enough to take the time to share this information. I, personally, have learned quite a bit from both lists (and from the HammondFaq), and appreciate the effort that goes into their maintainance.

As a means of exchanging knowledge, these e-mails list suffer some drawbacks. The Wiki format seems like it might offer solutions to some of these problems. HammondWiki is offered here as a supplement to, rather than a replacement for these OtherResources.

Signal to Noise Ratio

The e-mail lists suffer from ?LowSignalToNoiseRatio. Most of the posts to both lists seem to be either parts of ?FlameWars, ?AttaBoys, jokes or other messages of primarily "social value". The Wiki format has a number of features which discourage this sort of interaction:

• Slow turn-around time. There's plenty of time to think and come up with a well though out response. IRC, newsgroups or e-mail are much more satisfying alternatives for chatting (or hollering) at people.
• Flames can just be deleted by anyone who is annoyed by them. Then (hopefully) they're just gone.

(Im)Permanance

As a means of exchanging knowledge, the Wiki format seems to offer a nice compromise between the transience of e-mail and the permanence of the EmailArchives.

Naturally, on the e-mail lists, certain questions recur every few months. Whenever someone asks one of these questions, they are met with several rounds of "read the EmailArchives!" or "read the HammondFaq!". Both the archives and the FAQ are great resources, but both have drawbacks.

The EmailArchives have no real organization --- the only real way to find useful information is to use the search facilities. On popular topics this often yeilds many, many messages, many of which are not at all useful, many of which are roughly repeats of each other, and some of which contradict the others. (One must always keep in mind that some of the e-mails were written by people who, at the time, at least, didn't know what they were talking about.)

The HammondFaq is wonderful, but also has its shortcomings. It doesn't seem to be updated very often. It's not easy to add a new section to it, or to request that a new section be added.

In contrast, Wiki lends itself to organization of ideas. A person can write a page on eg. ToneGeneratorRecapping. Others can add to the page. It is easy to correct either something that you yourself wrote, or something that someone else wrote. If it becomes hard to find certain information, one can always create a new index page.

If one wants information on a given subject one can create a new page for the topic containing nothing but a description of the problem. A link from the appropriate place (see eg. SuggestedTopics) should be made so that the page may be found. I expect that it will take some creativity and effort on the part of the askers to entice the askees to answer.