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Auth Wiki

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Re: Auth Wiki

#3
Is the name for this kind SEO practice, where a company creates a new domain for a strictly "informational" page like this?

Re: Auth Wiki

#4
For me the key element of a wiki is that anyone can modify it and the changes show up instantly without pre-emptive gatekeeping. In this case it looks like contributing requires getting a PR approved by the maintainer on GitHub.

If GitHub were just the UI for submitting changes I think that could actually be quite effective as a lightweight wiki solution, so long as people's changes are deployed right away and don't require a maintainer to merge them. But it's likely very difficult to do that in a secure way with a standard static site generator.

Re: Auth Wiki

#5
post #3

Is the name for this kind SEO practice, where a company creates a new domain for a strictly "informational" page like this?

It's a backlink game.

Create a new site that is of some public good like this site. This site will probably gain domain and page authority much quicker than their main site and will attract more visitors and the key is that their page is linked through this auth.wiki site so their page (logto) will get the SEO benefit as well.

But personally I don't think this is an SEO play, more like a brand awareness thing. Some engineer at logto probably got pissed off with the state of auth documentation, went to his boss and proposed creating a simple static site with the "business case" being brand awareness and SEO.

Re: Auth Wiki

#6
post #4

For me the key element of a wiki is that anyone can modify it and the changes show up instantly without pre-emptive gatekeeping. In this case it looks like contributing requires getting a PR approved by the maintainer on GitHub. If GitHub were just the UI for submitting changes I think that could actually be quite effective as a lightweight wiki solution, so long as people's changes are deployed right away and don't…

For many years now, spammers have made the “anyone can edit” approach completely unworkable for all but the most popular wiki sites.

Re: Auth Wiki

#7
post #4

For me the key element of a wiki is that anyone can modify it and the changes show up instantly without pre-emptive gatekeeping. In this case it looks like contributing requires getting a PR approved by the maintainer on GitHub. If GitHub were just the UI for submitting changes I think that could actually be quite effective as a lightweight wiki solution, so long as people's changes are deployed right away and don't…

Having no kind of gatekeeping or moderation whatsoever before changes are published seems like a fantasy of another age. Nowadays, the wiki would be co-opted by some type of spam or malicious activity basically instantly.

Re: Auth Wiki

#8
post #6
post #4

For me the key element of a wiki is that anyone can modify it and the changes show up instantly without pre-emptive gatekeeping. In this case it looks like contributing requires getting a PR approved by the maintainer on GitHub. If GitHub were just the UI for submitting changes I think that could actually be quite effective as a lightweight wiki solution, so long as people's changes are deployed right away and don't…

For many years now, spammers have made the “anyone can edit” approach completely unworkable for all but the most popular wiki sites.

That is as may be (though I'm not sure it's quite as dire as all that), but I'd argue that if it isn't true that anyone can edit and see their changes instantly then it isn't really a wiki.

That doesn't mean wikis can't have bans, require captchas, or lock pages that are frequently abused to tenured registered users, but the tooling needs to support instant updates and freedom to edit needs to be the default. Otherwise you're looking at a static site or a CMS, not a wiki.

Re: Auth Wiki

#9
post #7
post #4

For me the key element of a wiki is that anyone can modify it and the changes show up instantly without pre-emptive gatekeeping. In this case it looks like contributing requires getting a PR approved by the maintainer on GitHub. If GitHub were just the UI for submitting changes I think that could actually be quite effective as a lightweight wiki solution, so long as people's changes are deployed right away and don't…

Having no kind of gatekeeping or moderation whatsoever before changes are published seems like a fantasy of another age. Nowadays, the wiki would be co-opted by some type of spam or malicious activity basically instantly.

I didn't suggest no gatekeeping or moderation whatsoever. I explicitly qualified 'gatekeeping' with the word 'pre-emptive'.

A wiki allows anyone to edit by default and their changes are deployed without verification by another user. Moderation takes the form of locking specific pages on a case-by-case basis to users with tenure (who can still edit instantly) and rolling back misguided changes.

There's nothing wrong with having a site that isn't a wiki, but this is just a static site maintained by one person, so calling it a wiki is odd.

Re: Auth Wiki

#10
post #3

Is the name for this kind SEO practice, where a company creates a new domain for a strictly "informational" page like this?

It's a backlink game. Create a new site that is of some public good like this site. This site will probably gain domain and page authority much quicker than their main site and will attract more visitors and the key is that their page is linked through this auth.wiki site so their page (logto) will get the SEO benefit as well. But personally I don't think this is an SEO play, more like a brand awareness thing. Some e…

Auth0 has some of the best documentation on this same content, but it's in their main product docs. So this I'm sure is partly a response to that.
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