What happened to WikiFruit?

[SplorKeLZ]

i have been curious about this for some time, it feels like a ghost that haunts the forum, what happened? it seems like an amazing resource with amazing potential, If I knew more about tech-y stuff I would help myself (might have to learn lol). it seems that no one had the time to finish/keep the project running, but my curiosity remains.

[murahilin]

I didn’t have enough time to dedicate to figuring it out. I also lost interest.

[Rob From Sydney]

I didn’t have enough time to dedicate to figuring it out. I also lost interest.

Thats a shame.
I wonder, is there anyway volunteers could help run it, if it's not to code-y? If I could, I'd help a bit.

[SplorKeLZ]

Thats a shame.
I wonder, is there anyway volunteers could help run it, if it's not to code-y? If I could, I'd help a bit.

I was thinking the same thing, i would totally help but i have no experience 

[murahilin]

I am not sure if it's even important to keep wikifruit going since wikipedia already probably has all the fruit on it.

Can any of you think of a reason to continue wikifruit? What could be added that isn't on wikipedia?

[brian]

Wikipedia only seems to have any significant information on common fruits. 

Has anyone tried updating wikipedia lately?  I haven't tried in a decade or more.  I wonder if anonymous updates for common or obscure fruit are actually kept or auto-reverted.  One of the wikipedia requirements is citing reputable published data sources, but most of the obscure stuff we talk about is effectively heresay.  I don't think they will let you reference forum posts to prove something.   For obscure things there seems to be little enforcement of standards, so it might be possible to add useful information even if it doesn't meet the guidelines and have it stick.

Still, if you can write information on wikipedia.org that meets their reqs, that is probably best way to help everyone.

[murahilin]

Wikipedia only seems to have any significant information on common fruits. 

Has anyone tried updating wikipedia lately?  I haven't tried in a decade or more.  I wonder if anonymous updates for common or obscure fruit are actually kept or auto-reverted.  One of the wikipedia requirements is citing reputable published data sources, but most of the obscure stuff we talk about is effectively heresay.  I don't think they will let you reference forum posts to prove something.   For obscure things there seems to be little enforcement of standards, so it might be possible to add useful information even if it doesn't meet the guidelines and have it stick.

Still, if you can write information on wikipedia.org that meets their reqs, that is probably best way to help everyone.

Brian, that's a good idea I didn't think of. It would allow forum posts to be linked with more info about fruit.

I think I will start back working on seeing how we can get wikifruit up and running.

I also wonder how difficult it would be to include hosting for all the images. I hate having pics not accessible after a few years. If we could have them all on wikifruit that would be great.

[brian]

Is WikiFruit running on a dedicated wiki-hosting service or is it installed on a server you manage directly?  Same question for the TFF forum itself, I guess.

I'll be happy to help in any way if I can.  My career is in IT, mostly linux server stuff, cloud, automation.

[Rob From Sydney]

Wikipedia doesn't have too much information on the rarer varieties of fruit a good deal of us forum members love collecting.
And when there is information on the rarer trees, there usually isn't much.
Here is the page on the Machete Ice Cream Bean.

Inga spectabilis is a species of plant in the family Fabaceae.

It is native to Central America and the Andean states to Bolivia.[1] The blade-like morphology of the fruiting pod has earned it the common name machete ice-cream-bean (Guamo Macheto, Guaba Machete).[2]

There's not much there, and what is there someone actually interested (like me) in Inga Spectabilis already knows.
If Wikifruit got back online, not only could any volunteers give information on the fruit in question, we can also include information how to grow the specific plant. Now that's something wikipedia doesn't have!
People like myself could write about our experiences growing certain fruits. What does the tree in question like? What doesn't it like? How cold tolerant is it? What is the best way to graft in and onto which rootstock? How tall does it grow in cultivation? What is it's shade tolerance? Is it fast growing? What months does it fruit in? How can it pe pruned? etc, etc...

I reckon that's another great reason to get Wikifruit up and running again.

[BloomAndSprout]

Is WikiFruit running on a dedicated wiki-hosting service or is it installed on a server you manage directly?  Same question for the TFF forum itself, I guess.

I'll be happy to help in any way if I can.  My career is in IT, mostly linux server stuff, cloud, automation.

What kind of traffic would wikifruit get? Shared hosting is probably better since I would expect this to be a low traffic website.

I can't code but I have the tech skills to put the wiki software on a website and everything, however at this moment I can't really afford to do it.l especially without knowing if there would be enough interest. It's not very hard to set the software up. 

[SplorKeLZ]

Wikipedia only seems to have any significant information on common fruits. 

Has anyone tried updating wikipedia lately?  I haven't tried in a decade or more.  I wonder if anonymous updates for common or obscure fruit are actually kept or auto-reverted.  One of the wikipedia requirements is citing reputable published data sources, but most of the obscure stuff we talk about is effectively heresay.  I don't think they will let you reference forum posts to prove something.   For obscure things there seems to be little enforcement of standards, so it might be possible to add useful information even if it doesn't meet the guidelines and have it stick.

Still, if you can write information on wikipedia.org that meets their reqs, that is probably best way to help everyone.

I've noticed the same thing, there just isn't a large reservoir of information available at the moment, the closest thing is UsefullTropicalPlants but they have VERY limited information.
 i think that the website would gain traction, especially if it could be used as a field guide

[Rob From Sydney]

Just thinking of it, both UsefulTropicalPlants and Wikipedia are both written in a 'monotone' form. Although you can learn a bot from both sites, they are just 'blobs of information', and they aren't very entertaining.

[brian]

I think a collection of photos and personal anecdotes for each fruit would be very valuable, and this is something that doesn't exist anywhere else. 

It would be almost equivalent to searching the forum posts for a plant, but more curated.  You could even write a script and use AI assistant to do an initial population based on forum history and public data and then let people take over to improve it and fix any AI hallucinations.

For example if you have a section on cold hardiness, can you have a stream of something like: 
- no damage at 35F for 4hrs [link to post]
- light damage at 30F [link to post]
- killed to stump at 25F, stump regrew  [link to post]

... in addition to more mainstream sources such as books and industry publications

Just thinking of it, both UsefulTropicalPlants and Wikipedia are both written in a 'monotone' form. Although you can learn a bot from both sites, they are just 'blobs of information', and they aren't very entertaining.

I read the book Amazon River Fruits (see https://tropicalfruitforum.com/index.php?topic=43261.0)  and what I liked most about it is that it includes descriptions of how people interact with the trees and fruits, how they are gathered, market availability, how they are eaten, etc. with photos of happy kids and growers who consume them. 

[Julian R]

Wikipedia only seems to have any significant information on common fruits. 

Has anyone tried updating wikipedia lately?  I haven't tried in a decade or more.  I wonder if anonymous updates for common or obscure fruit are actually kept or auto-reverted.  One of the wikipedia requirements is citing reputable published data sources, but most of the obscure stuff we talk about is effectively heresay.  I don't think they will let you reference forum posts to prove something.   For obscure things there seems to be little enforcement of standards, so it might be possible to add useful information even if it doesn't meet the guidelines and have it stick.

Still, if you can write information on wikipedia.org that meets their reqs, that is probably best way to help everyone.

Brian, that's a good idea I didn't think of. It would allow forum posts to be linked with more info about fruit.

I think I will start back working on seeing how we can get wikifruit up and running.

I also wonder how difficult it would be to include hosting for all the images. I hate having pics not accessible after a few years. If we could have them all on wikifruit that would be great.

I don't think it would be too expensive or difficult to do image hosting on AWS S3. The actual SQL DB behind the scenes should be pretty straight forward as well. Hardest part would be administrating, curating and keeping things updated/secure and of course any of the money involved to operate the application. Might be able to get pretty far with AWS free tier stuff.

I think a collection of photos and personal anecdotes for each fruit would be very valuable, and this is something that doesn't exist anywhere else. 

It would be almost equivalent to searching the forum posts for a plant, but more curated.  You could even write a script and use AI assistant to do an initial population based on forum history and public data and then let people take over to improve it and fix any AI hallucinations.

For example if you have a section on cold hardiness, can you have a stream of something like: 
- no damage at 35F for 4hrs [link to post]
- light damage at 30F [link to post]
- killed to stump at 25F, stump regrew  [link to post]

... in addition to more mainstream sources such as books and industry publications

Just thinking of it, both UsefulTropicalPlants and Wikipedia are both written in a 'monotone' form. Although you can learn a bot from both sites, they are just 'blobs of information', and they aren't very entertaining.

I read the book Amazon River Fruits (see https://tropicalfruitforum.com/index.php?topic=43261.0)  and what I liked most about it is that it includes descriptions of how people interact with the trees and fruits, how they are gathered, market availability, how they are eaten, etc. with photos of happy kids and growers who consume them. 

I've been toying with the idea of building exactly this but decided to shelve it for now as I've already got 10 projects started and only 1 nearing completion .  I'm fully willing to volunteer some time getting something spun up though.