Useful tips for new Wikis

I've read some really useful tips this morning on a forum recommended in a comment on one of my posts made by my colleague Sian yesterday. The forum's called Will Wikis Work? It's intended for users of Wikia Wikis but it still applies to others as well. So a big thank you to Sian for pointing me in that direction.

To summarise some of the points I found particularly useful:
1. 'The three factors that determine contributors to a Wiki project are Confidence, Interest and Awareness'. It's common sense really but they point out that confident users are those who are willing and able to contribute to a Wiki. In Wikipedia, which is so broad in scope, all of these confident users are likely to have some subject of interest that they can contribute to. In smaller, subject specialist Wikis like ours, however, the likelihood of finding people who are both confident, but also interested (or knowledgeable) in our subject is harder. Add to this the fact that many people who fall into these two categories may not yet know about our Wiki, and you start to understand the full scale of the work that we need to do to get people on there. As I say, it's not rocket science, but I thought the way that they explained and argued it was very clear and accessible.
2. They point out that the key to increasing the number of people who are interested, but also confident, is to train them. I've been thinking that I need to write a kind of user guide but this has confirmed me in that decision. They recommend 'a really easy user friendly introduction to Wiki editing.'
3. In terms of marketing, they recommend first marketing to those who are both interested and confident. Once the critical number of contributors is reached, you can then move on to really pushing the Wiki to people who are just interested but not yet confident.
4. I liked their equation to work out the likely number of contributors:

No. of interested x aware proportion x confident and passionate proportion = Potential contributors

The confident and passionate proportion can be assumed to be about 1% based on Wikipedia and other web 2.0 communities.

The number of people interested in postal history/philately is surprisingly large, but at the moment the number of them who are aware of our Wiki is very small. So that's where the work lies!

5. Again, it's common sense really, but they stress the importance of not trying to compete with Wikipedia, simply because it's pointless. They're always going to be bigger! To avoid this competition you can allow people to go into more depth and detail than a Wikipedia entry, which is encyclopedic, can allow. People don't need to have a neutral point of view. And people can contribute their own experience on a subject.


They then move on to how to attract contributions.
Useful tips here include:
1. 'you must identify places where the sort of people your project wishes to attract are common and talk about it there'...'you should consider the audience and the sort of visitors you want to encourage when composing it.'
2. Good tips on how to make people feel comfortable, welcome and motivated: stress that the wiki 'is a common effort', 'be welcoming to visitors and encourage them', 'keep posting regular updates describing the general progress and specific advancements', 'try contracting people that might be interested in contributing to your wiki in ,.... forums, blog, other websites'. I'm going to have a trawl in a minute to see if there are any postal history type blogs out there! There's certainly some interested groups on Flickr. They also advocate 'emphasising community involvement'
3. They suggest that personal invitations are much better than a general email/advert - so that's encouraging - I've been doing that a bit this week, hopefully it will pay off!
4. They preach caution when trying to promote your Wiki on Wikipedia or any Wikimedia projects as the administrators will quickly clamp down.

There's some interesting stuff on building trust with your community in the 'Building a community' section. We don't have 'talk' pages on the BPMA Wiki but I might set up a mailing list and start trying to chat to people by email. It won't necessarily build a community that are talking to each other but at least they'll be talking to me.

There's a slightly gloomy, but probably quite realistic stuff about the length of time it will take to build a community who actively contribute in the Improving your Wikia bit:

They warn that you may need to spend 'three, four or more months adding content all by yourself'. That you (I/BPMA) will have to create 'at least 95% if not 98% of all content.' and that 'That requires about 1-2 years of 1-2 hours of daily work.' 'Do not kid yourself. Only a dozen people will actively contribute to the wiki in the beginnings.' - so, anyone else want to do the rest of my work for the next two years? I've got to spend at least 2 hours everyday creating Wiki content! :-)

Ideas for getting people to use the BPMA Wiki

I want to start a page which I can gradually add to, and which others can make suggestions on, about ideas for increasing the amount of content on the BPMA Wiki. All suggestions are welcome.

Many of these ideas were prompted by an article I read called Wikis in Education: Is Public Better? by Sarah Guth. It made me look at the way I've been approaching trying to get content onto the BPMA Wiki from a different perspective. So far I think I've been concentrating on the principal of user-generated content and so have been offering opportunities for individual users to share their knowledge. This is still valid I think, but it is also worth exploiting the potential for collaboration that Wikis can provide. I want to explore the possibilities of co-authoring of pages.

The article also made me think that we need to offer opportunities that help people learn and improve themselves, as well as helping us out by posting on our Wiki! I had hoped that the opportunity to show off your own knowledge might be adequate but I wonder now whether this isn't enough. How can we offer opportunities that will leave people feeling enriched by their BPMA Wiki experience?

Here are some of the ideas I'm currently thinking about, some of them need some shaping and honing!

• Someone, either a BPMA staff member, or a contact we have, writes a factual piece related to a postal topic. We then actively approach a particular group of people that we know to have knowledge on this subject, and encourage them to work together to improve the piece. We could even make sure there were a few intentional errors, either spelling/grammar or factual errors that needed correcting that might help them gain confidence.
• I've been toying for a while with ideas involving getting a group of people into a room with a load of computers and helping them to write Wikis pages on the spot. This would hopefully spark the impetus needed to get some content on there in an environment where we were on hand to help and advise if the task seemed daunting.
• Following on from the idea of having a captive group of people contributing to the Wiki, we could perhaps start the session with three groups and give each group a topic to write about. We could then rotate the groups so that the other two groups could edit what a first group had written. The result would be three jointly authored Wiki pages which would then be available for others to add to.
• I'm wondering whether there is potential to work with other postal or communication museums and archives to co-author a number of pieces using the Wiki first as a collaborative tool between 'museum/archive authorities' but also leaving the pages open for other to add to/edit.
• We could offer a service to budding stamp collectors who could upload images of stamps they wanted to know more about and ask questions about them which others could answer. This may at first mean a certain amount of BPMA staff/volunteer time, but we may be able to enlist the help of other philatelic organisations that we are in contact with to help us. This could link in with one of the aims of our London 2010: Festival of stamps initiative - to revivify interest in the hobby of stamp collecting. We could market it through philatelic societies around the country and maybe also through the Stamps in Schools initiative that BPMA sponsor.
  
• Either BPMA or someone at the event could write an account of a BPMA event, and then flyer everyone who attends the event asking them to add to/edit what has been written. This would involve choosing the event quite carefully to make sure it was something worth writing about.
• I have thought about offering prizes of some kind for the best entry in a group of entries produced by a project. The difficulty with that, unless it is people we can actually watch creating the pages, is that, without a login, we won't be able to prove which person has created what page.
• I'm also pondering the possibilities of trying to build a community of remote Wiki users initially through our E-Newsletter facility. I could then perhaps create a mailing list simply for interested wiki users and contact them whenever new material that I thought might interest them was added to the Wiki, reminding them that they could contribute.
• Royal Mail employees at Mount Pleasant sorting office in London (where the BPMA is based) could potentially provide a wealth of information about what it is like to work for the postal service. The computer suites available in the Mount, and the Work Time Learning sessions that all members of staff attend could also provide a good opportunity to test out some of the above ideas for using a captive group of people to spark some Wiki content.

I don't think there's any way that I'm going to be able to try all, or even many of these ideas during the time of my dissertation. Hopefully I'll be able to manage a couple though.

Any thought/suggestions/comments would be gratefully received!

Marieke Guy's 'Wiki or Won't He?' article

Guy's, 'Wiki or Won't He? A Tale of Public Sector Wikis' responds to Steven Andrew Mathieson's Guardian unlimited article from February2006 on public sector wikis. Guy's article will be particularly useful for literature review because it shows that the technical aspects of setting up a wiki have been adequately covered, certainly more adequately than I could cover them.

It also makes some interesting points on what Guy feels is stopping a widespread use of Wiki technology in the public sector.

Among the barriers that Guy identifies is the potential reluctance that some organisations may feel when faced with the freedom that Wikis provide. This may have implications for authority, opinion and accountability and liability.

Guy also discusses the practical issue of the time taken to moderate content. I think this is a very real consideration. As the Web Officer, I get notified by email as soon as anyone makes a change to a BPMA Wiki page. I can immediately use a "/diff page" to see what it is they have added, and if necessary, I can revert the change. So far this has proved quite manageable but it may prove more difficult to manage if/when more people start to contribute to the Wiki.

Guy, like others that I've already read, cites the famous John Seigenthaler's entry on Wikipedia which, for a while in 2005, falsely linked Seigenthaler to the Kennedy assassination, as an example of the potential for abuse of Wikis.

Getting people to use a Wiki
Like Tonkin, Guy discussed the 'biggest barrier of all' - 'getting people to use a wiki'. He explains 'We are so used to the idea of Web sites as entities that are controlled by their creators that challenging this control is unnatural.

I was particularly interested in his application of the 1% rule which suggests that 'For every 100 people online, one will create content, 10 will 'interact' with it ... and the other 89 will just view it.'

Guy also includes some useful discussions of how others are using Wikis, including in learning and in libraries which may well be applicable and interesting for my project.

Tonkin's 'Making the Case for a Wiki'

One of the first pieces that I have read for my dissertation is: Tonkin's 'Making the Case for a Wiki'.

The section I found most interesting was that titled 'Issues in Deployment'. Of particular interest:

'Even in the event of a wiki being made available, there is no guarantee that the opportunity will be seen as useful.' Tonkin feels that the difficulties include 'communication difficulties, lack of common ground, status issues in human relationships.'

Interestingly she links the likelihood of posting on a wiki to both gender and aggression: 'it is justifiable to theorise that wiki use -- and indeed motivation to contribute -- is likely to vary by gender, status and relationship to the apparent community.' and 'one might imagine that correcting a wiki page is an act that comes easier to certain individuals than to others, and one in which aggression plays a significant role.'

My first gut reaction was that it seemed unlikely that this link to gender be true. In my experience men might be slightly more likely to spend time on the internet, and therefore might be more likely to come across a Wiki. I don't think they would necessarily, however, be more likely to contribute than women. I'm also slightly uncomfortable with the word 'aggression'. I think those that contribute to a Wiki are likely to be confident, forthright and perhaps opinionated, but not necessarily aggressive. It will be interested to watch the contributions to the BPMA Wiki for signs of aggressive behaviour! I'd also be interested to hear others' thoughts on Tonkin's comments.

Tonkin also stresses the immense importance of getting to know your audience - 'if you cannot imagine your target group conversing comfortably together under normal circumstances, the chances are fairly slim that they will imagine they can either ... much less online.'

I think under certain circumstances BPMA audiences would be quite capable of conversing on various subjects. The challenge for us is more likely to be, I think, encouraging our core audience, many of whom are over 60, to embrace this new technology.