A major problem is that the wiki isn’t very usable (not just to edit, but to USE). It’s hard to find what you are looking for (especially if you don’t know the exact phrase you need), and to navigate in general. Big problem: The search bar is hidden. You have to scroll down the sidebar to see it. The search bar should be either top right or front and center.
If it’s not usable, then no one is going to use it. If no one uses it, then no one wants to work on it. Why work on something that no one’s going to read?
Some ideas:
Make a detailed list of things that need worked on. Post a link to this list somewhere VERY VISIBLE on the front page. Right now there are three links of articles that need help, but I went to one, and didn’t really know what would’ve been needed to better-ify it.
(My favorite idea) Make a monthly wiki thread on Discussion where you can ask for what specifically you want done. People can talk about it. Ask questions if they want. Get karma for it. It feels more visible, versus just going in and editing wiki stuff on your own, sans discussion. The wiki isn’t active enough that the discussion pages for each article can support ongoing conversation, IMO. I clicked on two pages, and neither had anything at all in their discussion pages.
Set it up as a project on the volunteer network.
Run a one-month-ish competition for who has done the most (useful) work on the wiki. There are prizes that are cheap for you guys to give away, but worthwhile to others. (i.e. Sing Summit tix. Name a HPMOR character. One on one Skype conversation. etc) The most difficult part would be having someone judge the editors (which would be easier if you allowed multiple ties). The good part of this is it might jump start people into getting habituated to doing wiki work.
From the comments here, it seems like people aren’t even in agreement about what the wiki is FOR. It probably needs a mission statement or something.
Post regular (weekly?) links to wiki articles on the LW discussion page. This will lead to: a) Getting people ONTO the wiki in general. (People will want to edit it more, if other people are on it more.) b) Discussion and improvement on that particular page.
tl;dr- It needs to be easier to use the wiki as a user. The wiki needs more traffic, to make editing it more worthwhile. It needs to be easier to find out what needs to be edited, hopefully with specifics of what needs work in the article. It needs to be clearer what the final product should be like.
Nitpick on Point 2: On Wikipedia, the Talk (Discussion) pages are used for discussing changes to the content, not the content itself. It seems to be the sameway here.
I think I just wasn’t clear enough, because that is actually what I meant for point 2: We have a monthly Discussion post on LW where people talk about editing the wiki. (i.e. -Should there be a section on the history of this concept here? What work needs to be done to page A? etc)
However this is different than Point 6 which IS more like what you think point 2 was like (we make a weekly discussion post on a specific article, as something to read and discuss.)
Ah, yeah. I misunderstood “ongoing conversation”. I don’t like having wiki-editing discussion split off the wiki at all, but otherwise I like the idea. If there was a monthly Discussion post with a “featured article”—not in the Wikipedia featured-on-the-front-page sense, but a single article to collaborate on, that would likely help focus the community effort.
I don’t like having wiki-editing discussion split off the wiki at all, but otherwise I like the idea.
Thank you! I would agree with you IF there were already ongoing conversations on the wiki articles, but this doesn’t seem to be the case. Even the main page only has three discussion comments on it. I don’t feel like I could ask a question or write a comment on the (empty) wiki discussion page for an article and have it read by more than one or two people (the wiki mods who read everything). OTOH, if I posted a question on a wiki thread in LW Discussion, I feel like a significant amount of people would read it, and I would get feedback.
Would it solve your concern if, at the end of the month, when the next wiki thread is open, all the conversations are copy and pasted to the relevant wiki discussion page? That way, if someone in the future comes with the same question, they can check the wiki article’s discussion page to see what has been said already.
(Note: I realize that this conversation is hampered by the fact that there is the LW Discussion forum, and the wiki articles’ discussion pages, and that you have to constantly be clarifying which one you meant, which gets a little wordy. Sorry :P )
I guess I should say why I’m concerned with the idea… Precedents should be set sooner rather than later. If the wiki does eventually get more traffic, it’s much easier to follow comments when they’re organized by topic than by time period, if at all. Maybe some sort of bootstrap method would work, though.
The former Wikipedia editor in me doesn’t like the copy-paste solution, as it bypasses the wiki edit tracking system and the comment thread system here. (If you thought retributive downvoting was bad, this can potentially be much worse if someone has a grudge and is clever about it.)
All this talk is making me want to create a wiki account; I will do so tonight when I get home.
A major problem is that the wiki isn’t very usable (not just to edit, but to USE). It’s hard to find what you are looking for (especially if you don’t know the exact phrase you need), and to navigate in general. Big problem: The search bar is hidden. You have to scroll down the sidebar to see it. The search bar should be either top right or front and center.
If it’s not usable, then no one is going to use it. If no one uses it, then no one wants to work on it. Why work on something that no one’s going to read?
Some ideas:
Make a detailed list of things that need worked on. Post a link to this list somewhere VERY VISIBLE on the front page. Right now there are three links of articles that need help, but I went to one, and didn’t really know what would’ve been needed to better-ify it.
(My favorite idea) Make a monthly wiki thread on Discussion where you can ask for what specifically you want done. People can talk about it. Ask questions if they want. Get karma for it. It feels more visible, versus just going in and editing wiki stuff on your own, sans discussion. The wiki isn’t active enough that the discussion pages for each article can support ongoing conversation, IMO. I clicked on two pages, and neither had anything at all in their discussion pages.
Set it up as a project on the volunteer network.
Run a one-month-ish competition for who has done the most (useful) work on the wiki. There are prizes that are cheap for you guys to give away, but worthwhile to others. (i.e. Sing Summit tix. Name a HPMOR character. One on one Skype conversation. etc) The most difficult part would be having someone judge the editors (which would be easier if you allowed multiple ties). The good part of this is it might jump start people into getting habituated to doing wiki work.
From the comments here, it seems like people aren’t even in agreement about what the wiki is FOR. It probably needs a mission statement or something.
Post regular (weekly?) links to wiki articles on the LW discussion page. This will lead to: a) Getting people ONTO the wiki in general. (People will want to edit it more, if other people are on it more.) b) Discussion and improvement on that particular page.
tl;dr- It needs to be easier to use the wiki as a user. The wiki needs more traffic, to make editing it more worthwhile. It needs to be easier to find out what needs to be edited, hopefully with specifics of what needs work in the article. It needs to be clearer what the final product should be like.
Nitpick on Point 2: On Wikipedia, the Talk (Discussion) pages are used for discussing changes to the content, not the content itself. It seems to be the same way here.
I think I just wasn’t clear enough, because that is actually what I meant for point 2: We have a monthly Discussion post on LW where people talk about editing the wiki. (i.e. -Should there be a section on the history of this concept here? What work needs to be done to page A? etc)
However this is different than Point 6 which IS more like what you think point 2 was like (we make a weekly discussion post on a specific article, as something to read and discuss.)
Ah, yeah. I misunderstood “ongoing conversation”. I don’t like having wiki-editing discussion split off the wiki at all, but otherwise I like the idea. If there was a monthly Discussion post with a “featured article”—not in the Wikipedia featured-on-the-front-page sense, but a single article to collaborate on, that would likely help focus the community effort.
Thank you! I would agree with you IF there were already ongoing conversations on the wiki articles, but this doesn’t seem to be the case. Even the main page only has three discussion comments on it. I don’t feel like I could ask a question or write a comment on the (empty) wiki discussion page for an article and have it read by more than one or two people (the wiki mods who read everything). OTOH, if I posted a question on a wiki thread in LW Discussion, I feel like a significant amount of people would read it, and I would get feedback.
Would it solve your concern if, at the end of the month, when the next wiki thread is open, all the conversations are copy and pasted to the relevant wiki discussion page? That way, if someone in the future comes with the same question, they can check the wiki article’s discussion page to see what has been said already.
(Note: I realize that this conversation is hampered by the fact that there is the LW Discussion forum, and the wiki articles’ discussion pages, and that you have to constantly be clarifying which one you meant, which gets a little wordy. Sorry :P )
I guess I should say why I’m concerned with the idea… Precedents should be set sooner rather than later. If the wiki does eventually get more traffic, it’s much easier to follow comments when they’re organized by topic than by time period, if at all. Maybe some sort of bootstrap method would work, though.
The former Wikipedia editor in me doesn’t like the copy-paste solution, as it bypasses the wiki edit tracking system and the comment thread system here. (If you thought retributive downvoting was bad, this can potentially be much worse if someone has a grudge and is clever about it.)
All this talk is making me want to create a wiki account; I will do so tonight when I get home.
Edit: fixed link markup