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Names and branding.
- Names are important- keep it simple
- if people can’t figure out what your site is about from the name, find a better one.
- try not to use anyone else’s name
Site logo
- you need a logo, too, make it simple but meaningful
- consider a logo contest soon after you get started
- test it with the ten foot challenge - can you read it at ten feet
- make sure you have the rights necessary to use it.
Seed posting
- you have the vision, but
- a vision is just a promise with out substance
- you have to write a lot of articles yourself
- some may write with you, nobody will do it for you
- you have to be at least interested in the topic
- if you’re not, find someone else to start the wiki!
- you must believe that you’re the right person to do it
- but also that others are essential for success
Mission statement
- a site without focus has no purpose
- therefore it will not succeed
- hundreds of dead wikis demonstrate this
- you mush have goals to work towards
- they can be optimistic, but should be achievable
- complete listing of all features, needs and add-ons
- most comprehensive site for random information
- define your audience and contribute to the pool
- don’t be too exclusive
Initial policies
- keep it short and sweet
- decide what your license is, if there’s a choice
- consider the desired tone and assumptions
- use langauge appropriate to the audience
- remember that policies tend to be a bit formal
- if you don’t have a certain policy, don’t write it
- wait until people finish arguing about it
- once you reach a consensus. Write some more
Attracting and keeping contributors
- welcomes are not minor edits
- relevant to contributions (avoid templates)
- link to help pages and place to ask questions
- ensure the first thing people see is welcoming
- media wikis annotise can be very useful
A notice can be very useful
- welcome to WikiFUr?, check out our feature article, the comic of the week, and did you know section
- organize your home page for new user
Contributor help and support
- create you own help and style pages
- cover the essential topic in a friendly style
- for detailed help, direct users to wikipedia
- remember to warn them that not all policies apply
- make a great community portal to direct editors
- provide public and private places for assistance (public live journal, forums, mailing lists) (private, user talk, email, im, phone) (different people prefer different methods.
Customization
- customise your wiki to your community
- it doesn’t have to by very much just a unique flavour
- images can be very easy to change
- appropriate in age design helps as well
- if an artist or designer can help you, let them
- consider the effect on usability
- about 10 percent of users are still stuck at 8-00c600
- Beware, some don’t like dark colours
Customization
Promotion: An necessary task
- your wiki need other contributors
- they will not appear my magic
- someone needs to lead them here
- as the leader, people expect you to write the most
Avenues for promotion
Types of promotion
- contributor oriented, inspire other contributors
- Mission statment
- Visitor orientated
- why should I bother looking at your site?
- Emphasize breadth of topics
- Tell them a story, include interesting links to follow
- make sure you sending them somewhere good
- you can combine both types of promotion
Example
- WikiFur? flyers
- Tag both visitors and potential contributors
- outlines of goals of site
- cite previous success
Search engine advertising
- Is it worth it
- it depends
- how much can you afford
- how much do keywords cost
- can you get a community deal?
- not the ideal way to attract contributors, though it helps
- Searching bring contrbutors
Site Monitoring
- you want to know how your doing right?
- the best way to judge success is to measure it
- number of active users, articles, edits, links, images
- visitors and page views, site referrals, search ranking
- general reputation of site, mention in publications
- use this information to plan improvements
- popular article’s, site navigation
- it’s also great for promotional material.
Monitoring tools
- internal statistics
- access log analysers
- analog
- awstats
- webalizer
- wiki specific statitstics
Others ways to measure
- check what your referrals are saying about you
- we found groups planning attacks
- google search on your wiki name and url
- you should also try searching on realted topics
- site/ topic sepcific search enginge, see et/al;
- just ask people, you maybe surprised
- take every source with a pinch of salt
- and remember size, popularity isn’t everything.
Vandalism and spam
- most wiki have some, this varies widely
- defamation , blanking obscene text/picture
- why do peoole vandalize
- personal gruges, trying to hide past actions
- controversial topics
- because they enjoy attnetion
- can be devastaing when the site is sponsored
- but a crisis can turn into an opportunity
What to do?
Lock done the wiki or meet them head on? (we chose the latter)
- added welcome message to point to our recent changes
- promoted good users who were tryin to help
- it worked, vandalism was brough under control (many current administrators became involved at ths point)
- one month later, 1000 article page
- 50 regular contributors
Wiki spam happens (as the founder you are the default administrator),
Policy consideration
- think of wikipedia, but others may be more for you
WikiIndex thought, add your wiki button on side bar
On community wikis contributors can be topics Issues to consider - puff pieces and personal attacks
- dealing with removal of information
- lots of problems but lots of referrals too.
Importance of community
- vital to the success of any group endeavor
- individuals matter
- wikipedia has 25000 regular users, you have 5 to 50
- one good contribuor can make or break the site
- encourage users to be part of the group
- live journal , forums
Example GalCiv? !! Wiki What went wrong?
- created as a knowledge base for game after release
- promoted for a short time on main website
- a fortnight of work but founder then abandonded
- new users welcome , shown help, but little else
- rustled
- just 1-2 edits a day from 500 visitors.
- few long term contributors, most have departed
- lack of community involvement, all you have is a static database.
WikiFur? cards
Lastly: Don’t take things too seriousl!
- It is meant to be fun after all!