User:Clamengh/from wikia 1

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1. Will my Wiki Work?
2. Attracting Contributors
3. Building a Community
4. Improving your Wiki

Suffering from editing fatigue? The originator of this article asked himself the question: Will Wikis Work?

Cuntegnüü

[redatá] Wikipedia

Wikipedia is successful. There are problems with vandalism, edits that lower article quality, arguments and revert wars, but there are few people that deny it is an outstanding success. Will this model of user-driven wikis work for the Wikia project?

The assumption is that it will, based mainly on the success of Wikipedia. The assumption that they will work is also held by Bessemer Venture Partners, who have funded Wikia $4 Million.

[redatá] Critical Number of Contributors

This appears to be the most important issue. With enough contributors, the projects seem to work. Consider Memory Alpha and the Star Wars Wiki.

There may be a critical number of contributors, enough to keep a Wiki going without those people contributing becoming tired or bored of the project due to too much of the task of running the Wiki falling to them.

The three factors that determine contributors to a Wiki project are Confidence, Interest and Awareness.

[redatá] Confident Internet Users

Image:Skilled Internet Users.PNG
A hypothetical pool of Confident Internet Users who might contribute to a Wiki in which they are interested.

By 'Confident Internet User' what is meant is the type of person that is willing and able to contribute to a Wiki project. The actual level of skill of these people will of course vary enormously. The idea is to distinguish Contributors from Users.

The distinction is that the great majority of people that use wiki resources such as wikipedia in fact do not edit the wiki because they do not feel competent to do so in terms of knowledge of wiki editing or subject matter, or else have no desire to contribute.

Hence the 'Confident Internet Users' is the pool of willing and able potential contributors.

[redatá] Interested Users

However, even this pool of contributors will only contribute to projects in which they are interested. Consider the following diagram as an explanation for why Wikipedia is so successful:

[redatá] Wikipedia Model

Image:Wikipedia model.PNG
Because Wikipedia is an encyclopaedia, there should be a subject within it to interest every single member of the pool of Confident Internet Users. Hence, all of them, at some point, could potentially contribute.

Editors are voluntary. They will be very unlikely to contribute to something that doesn't interest them.

[redatá] Wikia Model

Image:Wikia Model.PNG
Wikia on the other hand is about specialized interests. People who are interested in a subject may USE the Wiki, but only the overlap between those Interested and Confident Internet Users will contribute.

The pools of interest are not necessarily to scale. One could imagine that there are more people interested in Starwars than there are Confident Internet Users for example. Only those people that belong to BOTH groups (the overlap) will contribute to the Star Wars Wiki however.

One would expect a large amount of overlap for popular subjects (such as Star Wars, Star Trek etc...) and associated subjects that Confident Internet Users might be interested in, such as IT.

More specialist subjects will have less overlap and hence less contributors

[redatá] Awareness of Users/Contributors

Consider the following diagram:

Image:Wikia Model Awareness.PNG
The Green portion can be considered the proportion of the overlap (potential contributors) that are actually Aware of the project. These people should be very likely to actually contribute, so long as the project looks interesting, and inviting enough to join.

In the above diagram, the point is illustrated that whilst people may already be Confident, and Interested in Star Wars, they may not be Aware of the Star Wars Wiki.

In the Wikipedia model, the prevalence of Wikipedia in internet users awareness is such that it is hard to imagine Confident internet users not being aware of it. If we were to diagramize this it would appear that almost all of the Overlap would be shaded green.

[redatá] Increasing these factors

[redatá] Increasing Confidence

Getting Wikia staff members to write a really easy and user friendly introduction to Wiki Editing (for example: Psychology Wiki Beginners Guide) may help to increase the level of Confidence of people who would otherwise not contribute.

This will increase the size of the pool of Confident Internet Users and so will increase overlap in that particular subject of Interest, but also by extension into other subjects of Interest.

The key to building confidence and skills is training. This is best achieved in a cultural education programs like university courses. Certainly for academically related wikis we should be working with the existing academic structures so that any self respecting academic would be expected to know how to use the software, just as they have come to use the old Internet and .pdf. The effects of such training will need to be built into the model.Lifeartist 09:57, 1 August 2006 (UTC)

[redatá] Increasing Interest

It is possible that a new Star Wars film, being released in the Cinema will increase interest, but there is little that Wikia can do to increase the interest of potential users/contributors. Of course the users and contributors will increase their interest organically through using the Wiki, but again this is not something that Wikia can affect greatly.

[redatá] Increasing Awareness

Marketing, marketing and more marketing. The trick is to market to though both Interested and Confident with priority and secondly to market to those with Interest only, hoping that they will eventually contribute. Marketing to these people will increase awareness and should directly increase the number of contributors.

Once the critical number of contributors is reached, there is no longer the immediate need to market to the Confident any more, and so the marketing efforts should move onto the Interested, so that advertising revenue can be increased, and so that those interested people can benefit from use of the Wiki.

[redatá] Awareness increases organically

It should also be noted that increased awareness happens organically as a wiki becomes more comprehensive and informative. Interesting, useful wiki pages will show up in search results -- especially when the information on those pages can't be found anywhere else on the internet. To pick a page at random, if you search for "Moranda Savich" on Google, Wikipedia is the first result. Similarly, if you search for "Lefty the Salesman", Muppet Wiki comes up first. People who are interested in those topics will find the wikis, without any extra marketing push.

Another natural way that awareness spreads is by word-of-mouth -- or word-of-blog, or word-of-message-board. If the information on a wiki is interesting and unique, then readers will tell other like-minded people about it. An effective way to get the message out about your wiki is just to keep working on it, and making the articles better.

[redatá] Critical Number: How many is Enough?

In order for a Wiki to survive and flourish, a critical number of contributors may be necessary, in order to keep the Wiki running. Too few contributors trying to do too much will eventually grow tired of the project and will eventually quit the project. See Closed Wikia and Adopt this wiki for more details.

The trick is not to start Wikis that will be too obscure to gain enough overlap, and also to market the Wiki's such that all of the people within the overlap are actually aware of the project.

Hence, the survival and success of any Wiki project can therefore be described as this:


If:

  • Confident, Interested & Aware > Critical No. of Contributors SUCCESS

But:

  • Confident, Interested & Aware < Critical No. of Contributors FAILURE

Hence we need to concentrate our marketing raising awareness in the Confident and Interested group to begin with.

[redatá] Equation to work out probable contributors:

We can estimate our potential contributors from the following equation:

  • No. of Interested x Aware proportion x Confident & Passionate proportion
  • = Potential Contributors

For example, if we have say, 750,000 (English speaking) Psychology graduates & undergraduates world wide and 10% of them are aware of the project and 1% of them are confident and passionate enough to contribute

We can expect 750,000 x 0.1(10%) x 0.01(1%) = 750 contributors.

750 is enough to keep a community alive. The fact that we do not yet have this many contributors suggests that we have not been able to make 10% of the community aware yet.

The 1% estimated value for Confidence and Passion is based on data from Wikipedia and other Web 2.0 communities, such as YouTube and Yahoo groups. (See external links below)

[redatá] Criticisms: To Incorporate into this model:

[redatá] Passion

(Note: This section needs to be properly incorporated into the main body of this article)

It has been pointed out that another important factor is Passion for the subject. A user may be Aware, Interested and Confident, but instead may end up just using the Wiki rather than contributing to it if they lack Passion for the subject.

Conversely, a person who is Interested and Passionate about a subject, upon becoming aware of the Wiki, may be motivated to learn how to contribute/use wiki editing, in order to improve the project.

This makes the marketing model change:

  • 1) Raise Awareness
  • 2) Inspire people to care about your Wiki (increasing Passion)
  • 3) Write good Beginners Guides to increase ease of contribution (increasing Confidence)


[redatá] Don't Compete with Wikipedia

It has also been suggested that competing with Wikipedia is an exercise in pointlessness. A Wiki project must be distinctly different from a Wikipedia project in order for potential contributors to feel that their efforts are worthwhile on that project, rather than contributing to main wikipedia articles on the same subject.

Factors that can distinguish a separate Wiki-based project from Wikipedia related articles include:

  • Detail: Wikipedia is an encyclopedia, Wikia can go into more depth/detail.
  • NPOV: Fan based Wikia do not necessarily have to be Neutral Point of View. It is possible to be particularly biased, cover both sides of an argument (sympathetic point of view) or have separate articles for conflicting viewpoints.
  • Original Research: People can contribute with their own experiences on a subject.
  • Community Building: A small, niche wiki attracts a group of like-minded contributors, who get to know each other and enjoy working together. People enjoy working with like-minded people on a project that means something to them. You can easily feel swamped on Wikipedia by the thousands of contributors and topics. A small wiki can feel like home.
  • Specialist contributors: Contributions could be from more restricted sources, although whether this is a good idea or not has not been tested.
  • Commercial bend: Wikipedia discourages companies from using their system as advertising. Wikia sites don't have that restriction. For example, Wine and Beer makers are welcome and encouraged to aid in the development of the Wine and Beer Wikia sites, providing information on methods, regions and specific businesses that are involved in the industry.
  • (Please Add to this list)

[redatá] See Also

  • Wikia creation policy
  • Wikia Frequently Asked Questions
  • Closed Wikia
  • Adopt this wiki


[redatá] External Links

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