Hi Dan! My answers are below ----- Yury Katkov, WikiVote
On Tue, Apr 23, 2013 at 7:50 AM, Dan Fisher <[email protected]> wrote: > I have had a wiki for many years now. I'm not able to say the URL > for confidentiality reasons (thanks to search engines). > I can count on one hand, the numbers of editors who have done any > significant work. They have collectively done really good work and > actually, only one editor has helped the site a lot. I feel there should be > many more editors. I feel I'm to blame for this. Lack of leadership? Not > sure what it is. I feel its a wiki so it should not require me to be there > all the time. It is a mistake. Creating a wiki is like running a business: you have to spend a lot of time and effort before the wiki become self-supportive system. In Wikivote we even have special staff called facilitators that encourage people and analyze what can be done better for them. > I like to be rational and give people the freedom to do what > they like. The subject matter is controversial and our standards are high > and work is difficult to do. Like a good article on Wikipedia, it requires > research, fact checking and analysis. Some editors tried to join but they > could understand how we do things. A certain mindset and commitment is > required. But then that is the case for every wiki. > > I don't know what to do, and how to track this down and how to grow the > community. The future of the website worries me greatly so I'm coming here > for advice. We need more editors and admins involved so it can > be guaranteed to keep existing, grow and flourish Can I do something to > attract editors and make things more welcoming? Is the wiki interface > difficult for new comers? For example a Wysiwyg editor may help. That's > just one thing though and it may not be a problem. > This IS a problem. MediaWiki syntax is objectively ugly and is the main technical obstacle. We try to eliminate the problem with WYGIWYG editors and semantic forms. The second obstacle is very heavy user interface. We've hidden 60% of the buttons that MediaWiki has. > > I see some other similar wikis with a lot more editing activity and I > wonder what I could do. I cant reveal my identity (that would help in > making editors more comfortable and perhaps form a personal bond with me > but I cant do it). Maybe some kind of analysis is required to see what is > keeping people from coming in. > Of course it also depends of the topic of your wiki. If it's the wiki about some popular Anime cartoon the target audience will be bigger and people will be very engaged. You can try some methods of Search engine optimization to attract new readers to your wiki. Maybe you find this link interesting: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Editor_engagement > > If there's anything any of you did that improved editing activity, I would > really like to hear it. I'm open to any kind of advice, suggestions or > ideas, big or small. > 1) Editor encouragement. Talk to them, greet them, tell them that they're cool guys. Run contests, marathons. Look at Wikipedia experience. 2) Extensions that make the system's feedback to the user visual: Echo extension is a great example 3) simplify the software. Hide all the buttons you don't need, install Semantic Forms 4) advertise you wiki > > Dan > _______________________________________________ > MediaWiki-l mailing list > [email protected] > https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/mediawiki-l > _______________________________________________ MediaWiki-l mailing list [email protected] https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/mediawiki-l
