Collecting solutions/conclusions reached in forums to wiki; preventing answers burying

Great part of forum’s topics are related to schema, common practice, describe real world cases. I’d like to suggest that there should be a call that every such topic should result in additions to wiki.

Maybe a text somewhere in forum’s user interface (topic creation pop-up?).

  • This would remind that there is main designated place to check before going to forum,
  • save time on searching forum for similar questions,
  • reading that threads,
  • and save time for MusicBrainz team on answering similar questions.
    This would accumulate different nuances of the topic through time and allow to build upon existing knowledge.

Also searching for some answers I noticed that different people in the middle of interrelated threads was posting some precious observation, ideas. I would say such posts should be cited or linked to on wiki’s “discussion” pages, to collect them and to help making decisions later.

Let me fantasize a bit: a user would make unconfirmed (not shown by default) changes to wiki, new post-alike will appear in linked forum’s thread (like in github review process, e.g. https://github.com/metabrainz/picard/pull/1650 ), authoritative user in the thread would review and accept (or decline) changes to wiki.

One possible downside: when somebody asks a question, others try to answer it, expressing their current views and current situation. While the same question may have been posted and answered 5 years ago, situation may have changed and without re-approach meanings/guidelines would start lagging behind the real world.
And new people that came recently wouldn’t express some brilliant thoughts.
There’s nothing wrong with new threads, but a thread should not be treated as a place to store answer, only as place to discuss, answers should be placed into wiki by discussion participants.

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Aaand a thought.
Make guides universal. Formulate and structure (relevant part of) wiki in a such way that general rules (about sorting, separating entities, etc) would be applicable outside MusicBrainz project. So one could say “hey, you should use MusicBrainz naming standard building your system, go see it at https://musicbrainz.org/doc/…”.

Interesting, the idea that we should try to use forum conclusions to enrich the wiki docs.
We should all try to do so, indeed, as it’s already possible.

There is such a kind of system already available and in use, the transclusion, that takes a validated (by admin) version from the wiki to make it appear in the doc.

But this part we don’t have, indeed.
Anyway, having same Markdown syntax in the wiki too would ease the transposition from discussed guidelines from the form to the wiki.

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