jscott

Percy,

You ask a very good question:

“The key question I think is do you want the wiki to be more medically related or experiences related? and what will be the difference or relationship between this discussion board and the wiki if any?”

Frankly, I am not sure the answer. It could be both, or it could be one or the other. As I hear experiences from other CC warriors, and as I do my own research, I just have a strong need to record that information somewhere so it hopefully can be helpful to others.

During those times when I feel like I need to work on it, the wiki gives me a way to (at least feel like) I am making a contribution.

How it ultimately evolves, is anybody’s guess. I am open to any and all suggestions though

Jason

PS — Just as an example, I updated the clinical trials page to include the information Marion posted on financial assistance from lazarex. I also added the “cryoablation” link you posted to the “other procedures” page. It only took a couple of minutes, and maybe it will be found by someone down the line.

Thanks for the comments and suggestions.

Marion:
Editing the wiki is pretty similar to making a post on these forums.

When on an existing wiki page:

You can either choose to edit the whole page by pressing the blue “edit” button at the top of the page, or you can edit a specific section by clicking on the small “edit” link by that section.

When editing a page, a message box will appear that contains the current content of the page or section. Make your changes in this box. I like Wikia because they use an editor that makes editing similar to using MS Word.

Once done adding your edit, you can either “preview” your changes or “publish” your changes. NOTE: nothing changes until and unless you publish your edits.

Creating a new wiki page:

When you are on a new wiki page (say by clicking a “red link”) you are asked if you want to start with a blank page or use a template. I usually start with a blank page. It is probably easiest to first go to an existing page and copy the content (press edit, select all, copy with crl-c). Now you can go to your new page and paste (ctrl-v) the old page content and use that as a template.

It might sound complex, but it is really very easy. Again, no worries if you make a mistake. Rolling back changes or updating pages is easy for me to do.

Willow:
The main advantage I see is that the wiki is organized into more specific categories, and the wiki pages themselves are further organized into research vs experience areas. For example, figuring out where in the “chemotherapy” forum one would go to find out how gemox is affecting patients could be daunting. With the wiki, you select the “chemotherapy” page which then provides a link to a specific “gemox” page.

Randi:
You make a great point. I was a little bit hesitant to try and add research and science to the wiki mainly because I don’t feel expert enough. I also am concerned that the forum members may not feel comfortable contributing to that type of wiki. Organizing patient experiences seems both very helpful to future patients, but also something everyone can contribute to if they want.

I take the point though that experiences could become unwieldy, and patients may be more interested in information that is backed up by experiences.

Perhaps I should organize each treatment page into three sections:

Section 1 — Treatment summary (with external links to summary information) and available Research (with links as well)

Section 2 — Experience summary. This is where I or whoever is working on the particular page tries to summarize all of the available experiences into helpful information.

Section 3 — Patient experience details. This is more of the patient experience free-form that I have illustrated so far.

What do you think of that type of organization?

Gavin:
Have you really seen wikia links?? You are the google whisperer! I had thought it was under the radar

Jason