Call for Volunteers for The Manual

[Cees Klumper]

Yes, this is long overdue. Peter and I will get it going soon. Sorry to all those volunteers 'waiting in the wings' but we do have a Dutch saying "what's in the barrel doesn't go sour" :-|

Cees ("Case") Klumper in Amsterdam
'69 white 280 SL automatic

[Raymond]

Count us in.  My lady and I are willing to help any way we can.  She is an experienced proof reader (English) and I run a digital media production company that can help with video, DVD, or web-based design.  I will be replacing a lot of the dashboard components soon and can contribute photos for repair and replacemnt, on a weekend, in a running car.

Ray
'68 280SL 4-spd Coupe

[Cees Klumper]

Excellent Ray, I will add your name(s) to the list of some 25 volunteers.

Cees ("Case") Klumper in Amsterdam
'69 white 280 SL automatic

[Peter van Es]

Well, here we are again. I've finally done something to ensure that we get the manual going again. I've set-up a Wiki for our group.

What I need now is to verify if all of you who volunteered are still available and willing to work on the manual. If you are, please send me (admin@sl113.org) a mail with:
 

• your name (including your forum nick name)
• your e-mail address
• your area of specialty (on the car). If you do not have one you can still do useful things (see below).
• the skill or contribution you may bring to editing/producing a manual (writing, creating - cleaning diagrams, structuring, organising, collecting information)
• If you have Skype, or a MSN address, I'd like to know that too, so the group of volunteers can communicate with one another.
• your consent to share these details with other manual volunteers  

The platform we will be using is indeed a Wiki. The general procedure is to select content from this site using the Search function, and to pick it up using this trick, http://index.php?topic=7051, and to edit it into a Wiki.

To prepare you on how to edit Wiki's have a look here: http://www.wikidot.com/doc:wiki-syntax.

Initially we shall spend some time structuring and restructuring the document, and developing best practices on adding diagrams, pictures and so on.

Ultimately, once the manual starts becoming useful, we will be able to produce a paper snapshot from the content once every 6 months, and publish it so that you can order a proper book that you can take into the workshop or with you in the car. We intend to use http://www.lulu.com for that.

So please, take action and mail me your details...

Peter van Es


Check out http://bali.esweb.nl for photographs of classic car events and my 1970 280SL

[Benz Dr.]

It should be noted that the recent 190SL book was printed in China for a lot less than the first book. Even so it was still a considerable sum.

 It might be a good idea to have someone talk to Bruce Adams as he will have a great deal of insight into the history and costs involved with making this happen.

I'm sure I could look at ignition or some other part of the book.

Dan Caron's
 SL Barn
benzbarn@ebtech.net
 slbarn.mbz.org
  1 877 661 6061

[France]

Cees,

I hope once this is a finished product and before it is distributed, we copyright it to the Group.  You can bet that otherwise it will be highjacked and published for non-Group profit.



Trice
1968 280SL US, signal red/bl leather, auto, kinder seat
Sarasota FL; Alsace France; Switzerland
Think of your Pagoda as a woman with a past...

[Peter van Es]

Dear all,

I thought I had found a good hosted Wiki solution for our Pagoda Technical Manual. It appeared to provide lots of functionality, a clean design, and everything we needed to develop our manual with a small group of people.

However, when adding the fist two new members (and then trying it out myself, next to my admin account) the service appeared slow and unreliable. I even hit bugs. When I wrote to the organisation behind it, I found out they were overstretched. So all of a sudden committing all our data to that site seemed like a bad idea. For you old timers, a little like why we moved away from the original Yahoo groups: we would not be in control of our own destiny.

As a result I set up our own Wiki on our own website. That means we control and own the data, I make automatic backups every night, and we can always move to a different provider. However, in doing so I had to make a number of decisions.

First, the tool. I chose PmWiki (http://www.pmwiki.org/). Instructions on how to edit and change text are here: http://www.pmwiki.org/wiki/PmWiki/BasicEditing. Detailed documentation on everything is here: http://www.pmwiki.org/wiki/PmWiki/DocumentationIndex.

Secondly, how to access this all. Currently, only active Full Members of the Pagoda SL Group have WRITE access. Only they can  add, or modify pages. To get access you log-in with your e-mail address and the same password that you use to access our site http://www.sl113.org. Note that all full members have this write access today. All members can READ the Technical Manual.

This was a conscious decision. In future we may allow:
 

• all site members (both full and basic members) to have read access; Done already!
• add, modify and delete access only to selected full members;
• everyone read access (i.e. even non-members of the group).

However, until we have a reasonable set of pages and until we have worked out, and implemented a workable structure, access is limited. It becomes a board decision on what we are actually going to do with regards to access. When some of our members are beginning to develop the manual, I shall be adding new technical features and helping in structuring the data. So I will create a mailing list of interested members and we will communicate on how we can put the manual together.

One of the goals is to ultimately create a manual that can be published -- and updated on a regular basis (I intend to make a snapshot of everything on the site every 6 months, except when the volume of change does not warrant this frequency), without keeping us stocks. New basic members or new Pagoda SL owners can always purchase this (up to date) manual for a fee. Full members can buy it at cost. We intend to use the on-demand publishing service http://www.lulu.com for this.

To give you an idea, using Lulu.com and creating a A4 of Letter size book with 100 pages (with a plastiCoil binding for easy opening or a perfect bound volume) in black and white would have a member cost of €6 or $7. In colour it would cost €19 or $20. For twice the number of pages these fees would be slightly less than double. For non-members we would charge at least a markup of around one-years membership fee.

Ok, so what can you do today? If you are a full member, go here http://www.sl113.org/wiki/pmwiki.php and log in using your e-mail address and password. Then have a look at Edit Notes (http://www.sl113.org/wiki/pmwiki.php?n=Main.EditNotes) to see how that would work, and look at Engine Starting Aid (http://www.sl113.org/wiki/pmwiki.php?n=Main.Engine-starting-aid-tour) to see how things could look in the manual. If you like, you can start adding sections to the manual. Do not worry if they are not perfect, we can change lots of things later on.

Remember, I will be adding lots of functionality to the site, such as: WikiTrails, to enable us to make a single manual from all these pages, PDF print functionality, so that we can generate PDF’s from the content for printing on http://www.lulu.com, RSS feed generators so that you can keep track of which pages have been updated in the technical manual, and much more.

However, I’m already spending lots of time keeping the technology working. I need your help in providing the content.

I look forward to seeing you and seeing the technical manual change.

Peter

Check out http://bali.esweb.nl for photographs of classic car events and my 1970 280SL

[enochbell]

Peter,

Solid plan, thanks.

I, like I am sure many members of the board, feel that I sometimes can make a small contribution to the knowledge base and am occasionally able to lend some decent advice to another member.  But I don't feel that I will be able to make any significant contribution either as compiler or editor to this effort. I am, without false humility, WAY out of the league of the real experts on this board.  But I have been so much looking forward to effort, I know I will use it and really benefit from the work of others.

So, what can I do to help?  Are there costs involved in putting this together?  Are there production needs that I might help with, like color printing or the like?  Just want to make sure I can give back some small measure of what I get out of this.

Your thoughts would be appreciated,

Best,
g

'64 230sl, fully sorted out...ooops, spoke too soon

[Eryck]

I don't have much technical know-how to offer because I am still learning from you lot!  But let me know going forward if you need anything from this part of the world e.g. cheap printers in China etc.  I live in Hong Kong and will be happy to look out for things from "the world's factory" (no lead paint of course!)

1965 230 SL White Manual
Hong Kong

[Peter van Es]

Hi all,

more information...

 

• the manual is currently available to everyone for reading. So come and have a look: http://www.sl113.org/wiki/pmwiki.php. Editing requires Full Membership rights, and you log in using your e-mail address and password.
• Some News for editors is added here: http://www.sl113.org/wiki/pmwiki.php?n=Main.News. I'm adding features as we go along. Uploading has just been enabled. However, we may still have some teething problems.
• The next major step is to take the information here http://www.sl113.org/articles/default.asp and to move it into the correct section of the wiki, as a basis for editing. The Technical articles will then be removed from the site, and replaced by our Technical Manual

Please note the following, as to what the Technical Manual is, or is not (yet) and why we need your help.
 

quote:JonB commented:

I did take a look, great stuff. The thing we are going to have to work at is to figure out how to make this look like a manual. That is, in looking over the engine starting aid and seeing the posts, it is like another string on the forum. I realize we need to have correct information (critical item) but it also has to be concise and useable. On the Wiki type approach, can we have a “draft” set up and then the “final” (more or less) version? So then would we edit in the comments from Joe and the others?

This is exactly the key point of what we need to do in producing a manual. We need to take the knowledge in the forums, and structure it, piece by piece, to make it into a manual.

We'll make wrong turns, we will re-structure the document many times, and we will add or modify it as we learn more. We need to make it less of a list of posts, and more a body of knowledge. This is a major effort, which is why we need your help.

A Wiki is a great platform for doing this collaboratively. Multiple people can work together on the same piece of text, or on separate parts of the manual. We can change the structure and layout as we learn more. This manual will always be draft... and always up-to-date. Only when we take a “snapshot” for printing, then we have created a temporary final version.

So jump in, and help!

Peter



Check out http://bali.esweb.nl for photographs of classic car events and my 1970 280SL

[al_lieffring]

Peter

I have to admit that I am conflicted as to if I should offer to contribute to the Pagoda Manual or not.

The scholastic approach needed to create this book goes contrary to how I go about doing things. Turning in papers to have them graded is still something that I dread. After 12 years of daily failing classes in school I decided that my only choice was to work on cars, because I felt I wasn't smart enough to go to college.
So now I have this store house of infromation learned through many hundreds of hours of experience working on these particular cars, But I struggle to find a ways to explain soloutions to "college boys" with problems that just seem intuitive for me to solve.

If you can think of a way that I can help, please let me know, because that's what I do.

 


Al Lieffring
66 230Sl
Jones'n for a new gas tank

[Peter van Es]

To all, and especially Al:

quote:The scholastic approach needed to create this book goes contrary to how I go about doing things. Turning in papers to have them graded is still something that I dread.

This is where a Wiki is great. You can contribute, even if it is only little things. You do not need to set aside lots of time... if you've got 10-20 minutes, you can add something useful to the site. You certainly do not need to submit a complete and coherent dissertation. Any small snippet will do. Start with a small subject, and see it grow. It'probably hard to tell right now, until there is more content there, but a Wiki allows the manual to grow organically.

Don't worry about screwing things up. We can revert back to previous versions of posts.

Don't worry about spelling or grammar, if that's not your forte. We have lots of people who know less about these cars, but are prepared to help out with proof-reading or correction.

Don't worry about not writing an eloquent piece. Just putting in your thoughts, telegram style, is useful. Someone else can make nice sentences out of it.

Just worry about providing the right insight. That you can do. You have the experience.

Peter

Check out http://bali.esweb.nl for photographs of classic car events and my 1970 280SL

[Benz Dr.]

Good point Al. Writing technical information is a lot more difficult than most would imagine. You might know how to do a particular repair but it can be very hard to describe something as simple as changing a spark plug.
Don't shy away. It comes easily to some people but anyone can improve with practice. Besides, you might have some ideas that no one else has thought about and can save others a lot of grief.


Dan Caron's
 SL Barn
benzbarn@ebtech.net
 slbarn.mbz.org
  1 877 661 6061

[Cees Klumper]

Anybody considering adding to the Manual on the Wiki that Peter has created:

A few years ago, I downloaded all the information that was on the Yahoo! site and sorted it into a table of contents similar to what is on the Wiki. A small portion of it was uploaded to the Technical pages on our website, but most of it was not. It counts hundreds of pages of posts, sorted by topic, ready to be converted into Manual text and added to from the vast content that has been accumulating on the forums of this website here. Anyone interested in this material, just drop me an email and I will send you the (word) documents. It will make for very good 'raw material'. I kept the names of the original authors with the posts, if they were authorities on the Pagoda such as Joe Alexander, Dan Caron (Dr Benz) and other familiar names.

Cees ("Case") Klumper in Amsterdam
'69 white 280 SL automatic

[hands_aus]

Cees, Peter,
When I rebuilt my electric fuel pump it was with the generous guidance of George Des.

I had so many ideas in my mind that I typed up a 'How to' for my own future use. I included part numbers and photos.
Perhaps this is the sort of thing that may be relevant to our Wiki Manual?
I would be happy to send a copy to you for review. The file is 330Kb.

Bob Smith (Brisbane,Australia)
RHD,1967 early 250 SL, auto

[Peter van Es]

Bob,

that's exactly the sort of thing we need. Since you've already got the text and the pictures, you can add the contents to the manual yourself: http://www.sl113.org/wiki/pmwiki.php?n=Main.HomePage, and add a Fuel Pump section somewhere on the main page, or under the Engine page.

The idea of the Wiki, you see, is that everyone contributes... and that it does not fall on the shoulders of a single person.

If you feel a little sqeamish, you can mail me the word document (to admin@sl113.org) and I'll make sure it gets on there -- but I do not want to become the bottleneck.

Cees just mailed me his whole set of documents from the Yahoo group, and I'll add these over the next week or so... that will be unstructured content that someone else can then start organising.

Peter



Check out http://bali.esweb.nl for photographs of classic car events and my 1970 280SL

[hands_aus]

quote:Originally posted by vanesp

Bob,

that's exactly the sort of thing we need. Since you've already got the text and the pictures, you can add the contents to the manual yourself: http://www.sl113.org/wiki/pmwiki.php?n=Main.HomePage, and add a Fuel Pump section somewhere on the main page, or under the Engine page.

Hey Peter,
I uploaded the document but I couldn't find a way to upload the pictures.
Any advice welcome.
Thanks

Bob Smith (Brisbane,Australia)
RHD,1967 early 250 SL, auto

[Naj ✝︎]

quote:Hey Peter,
I uploaded the document but I couldn't find a way to upload the pictures.
Any advice welcome.
Thanks

Bob Smith (Brisbane,Australia)
RHD,1967 early 250 SL, auto

Bob,

My Understanding:

Add pictures here:

http://index.php?topic=7536

Then copy URL (short cut) to where you want picture to appear.

naj


68 280SL

[hands_aus]

quote:Originally posted by naj

quote:Hey Peter,
I uploaded the document but I couldn't find a way to upload the pictures.
Any advice welcome.
Thanks

Bob Smith (Brisbane,Australia)
RHD,1967 early 250 SL, auto

Bob,

My Understanding:

Add pictures here:

http://index.php?topic=7536

Then copy URL (short cut) to where you want picture to appear.

naj


68 280SL

Hey Naj,
thanks for the info.
I thought that worked for the forum, but i didn't try it for the Wiki Manual.
cheers mate

Bob Smith (Brisbane,Australia)
RHD,1967 early 250 SL, auto

[Peter van Es]

News for editors http://www.sl113.org/wiki/pmwiki.php?n=Main.News has just been updated.

Much new content has been added. More, from the old Yahoo group will be added over the next few days.

I'll post a message when the Tech Manual is ready for major editing effort.

Peter

Also known as 'admin@sl113.org' and organiser of the Technical Manual (http://www.sl113.org/wiki/pmwiki.php).

Check out http://bali.esweb.nl for photographs of classic car events and my 1970 280SL.

[France]

Hi Guys,

I'm one of what Peter calls the "nice sentence" people. I made a tiny edit just now, and it was super-easy!  I will be involved in Steps 2 and 3, as my knowledge wouldn't hold a candle to that of, e.g., Al and Joe.  The only important thing is to make your content as complete and clear as you can so that those less skilled can figure out how you accomplished your feat.



Trice
1968 280SL US, signal red/bl leather, auto, kinder seat
Sarasota FL; Alsace France; Switzerland
Think of your Pagoda as a woman with a past...

[Peter van Es]

Dear all,

 

• I've added about 90% of the Yahoo content. Because there's so much of it, and because so many messages address multiple topics, there is much superfluous material and not all of it is in the correct place. It was a major, major task that has taken much of my time over the last 3 weeks
• as a result the manual is now "accessible to the world" from our front page http://www.sl113.org under Technical Manual in the menu on the left. It has replaced - and surpassed the old content that used to be there
• Some volunteers have started serious work on some articles. For some examples check Distributor, or Data Cards. These are all works in progress and not yet completed. A few of you have already spent quite a lot of effort to make a good start

However, the amount of work involved with making it a manual is pretty major. Naj and I have started cleaning up one of the Yahoo sections, and we find it far from easy to do. So in other words, if we want to make any progress at all, we need your help now!

To help with the manual, first read these News for editors topics very, very carefully. Then choose a topic you'd like to work on and verify here, if someone else has claimed this topic already. If not, post here which section you start work on (so that we do not have multiple people updating the same stuff). I, and potentially others, will -- certainly in the beginning -- contact you frequently with help and advice and behind the scenes edits.

It is a major job, but in my view worth doing! So help if you can -- if only a few of us work on this, it will take years before we get anywhere. If many of us help and pitch in, we could have a good start -- and a printable document -- in 6 months.

Peter

Also known as 'admin@sl113.org' and organiser of the Technical Manual (http://www.sl113.org/wiki/pmwiki.php). Check out http://bali.esweb.nl for photographs of classic car events and my 1970 280SL.