Part of the pedagogical philosophy at Ultraversity is against the idea of teachers
as “experts”, which is probably just as well. So when we do need an
expert, we have to go out and find our own. I managed to engage in email conversation
with a Professor in Sydney for one assignment, and in another I made use of
the services of a local entrepreneur. For the current module it seems to be
my family who are coming up with the goods. One of the recompenses for being
a single parent is that you try to teach your children everything you know and
then in no time at all they are teaching it all back to you again! I would have
really struggled with the wiki hosting and installation without the experience
and technical support from Frankie, but then he is a Linguistics student so
obviously he would know more than a professional helpdesk forum.

Then last night, I had the attention of Evan during an insightful online chat, and it turns out
that he has recently accumulated some experience and wisdom about the social
side of wiki community building, which nicely complements the technical knowledge
of the other one. What Evan is saying, in a nutshell, is the antithesis to the
old “build it and they will come” argument, slightly changed to “organise
it, and they will join in”. I had failed to spot that tendency from myself
in the current circumstances, despite having been on the receiving end of the
idea that you can build a community by first imposing a tightly bound and pre-conceived
structure all over it and then letting in the crowds and expecting them to populate
it. So definitely a critical incident for me there, and one which you, dear
reader, may now benefit from.

Take a look at this ant house for example:

The ants have made their own passageways, rooms and connections through the blue jelly.

Now imagine if you suddenly took the Jelly away and replaced it with a set of opaque steel tubes, organised in a way which you have already decided will make the most logical anthouse.

How do you think the ants will feel about that?

Anyway, here’s the formatted transcript from the highly useful discourse I had with my 19 year old son yesterday. It contains a fair amount of detailed exploration of syntax, but worth persevering for the generalised theory of participation and structure development.

Evan speaks in blue, Andy in dark brown. (My retro-highlighting in bold)

Been up to much so far this weekend?
Not really, slowly developing the wiki
You need a new logo for ukcider
Oh dear, do I?
But I want continuity from the old website for now, until I have a wiki community

Yea old graphic isn’t good enough. Font is horrible,
lines aren’t smooth
Ah, you mean a new graphic to the old design -
good idea
Something smarter looking thats all

What do you think is the key to getting people to
contribute?
Ttricky question
Sense of ownership perhaps, or a good initial
structure to add to. They need to be able to see the vision
Get people to create a homepage for themselves
on the wiki
Ah, identity. So people who don’t have a website
of their own can have a presence
Then encourage the practice of putting your name
before any comments you add
Have a look at http://senseis.xmp.net/?UltimateGoServer%2FProtocols
, and you can see the differential between information and comments
Ok that page wasn’t the best example
Since we already have a well established mailing
list, I was thinking of the wiki as a place for information, but it could develop
the other way as well
Well I think you’re going to have a hard time if
you discourage discussion on the wiki
Mediawiki seems to have seperate pages for discussion

So does senseis
I just want to get a few people started on it,
that’s all so I’ll be posting messages to the list saying “hey look, we’ve
got a wiki” and “how about putting all the local information on it”

Yes, but if the wiki isn’t alive people will stop
caring for it, which is why you need to have people discussing entrys on it
though that can be done on the mailing list, but I doubt that will work very
well
Is that right? So it needs a big impetus to get
it going then, not a slow build up
well I wouldn’t say that’s the point really
I reckon two communities will develop. Some will
stay only on the list and new ones will join the wiki
It needs to be able to keep going even when it’s
quiet
what’s the problem with quiet times, if a few
people are subscribed to RSS
There is no problem
ok
that’s why I don’t think you should get into the
mentality of worrying if it suddenly gets quiet
people need to feel attached to the pages, that’s the key
I’m only really worried about getting something
started in time for my degree module, the real growth will be over years to
come
Well often you need to get things going yourself
to start, then when you see others helping, start slowing down
but you know all this
Yes, so I carry on making seed pages in the hope
that someone will join me, and making suggestions on the list
No, don’t make seed pages
oh
seed pages are bad
seed structure then?
wikipedia came to the same conclussion
empty links?
empty links occasionaly
I don’t know much about how wikis develop at all

but most of the time, just leave it blank
I’ve tried two by myself so far, the first one
failed because the server was often inaccessible, the second one didn’t get
enough support
he he, I remember our first attempts
Well I’ve got a month to try and gather some evidence
to show what happens when you introduce a wiki to a COP
I guess I’ll have a lot of explaining to do to the ukcider members, plus there
are all sorts of political shenanigans going on between Another Organisation
and some of our members
Shouldn’t be to hard. I have a lot of confidence
in wikis at the moment
does mediawiki put a line under every heading?
seems to
seems to, and allows partial page editing
yea, same on senseis
I haven’t checked out the syntax properly yet

that feature comes in very useful
means you can have bigger pages
yea, big pages are good
syntax is a bit different from that at senseis it seems
ah, only major headings are sectioned
now it looks much neater
you can use bold for subheadings
no, just use === subheading === or even ==== super
subheading ====
thanks
that way you can still edit them but you don’t
get thousands of lines going across the page
what tag was it before?
just ==
Ah. I think I selected it from the wysiwyg tool
button
ah it has wysiwyg
not really, but a few formatting buttons at the
top of the editing window
seems you can’t use [/discussion] to link to the
discussion
saves looking up syntax when learning in a hurry
there’s a discussion tab
I know
but it’s veryuseful to add at the bottem of a page “see /discussion”
there probably is a way, just don’t know the syntax
I’m trying to work out how to link to a user page

[[Andy_Roberts]] doesn’t work
ah
that’s because the page is called user:andyroberts
silly name for a page
why didn’t you just name it andy roberts then
no idea. might have been frank
you can rename links though [user: andy roberts|andy
roberts]
agh! you named a page introductiontowiki not introduction to wiki
putting words together is a bad idea
I like CamelCase
no, it’s a silly way thought up by silly programmers
who are used to it
but you can move the page if it bothers you
worth getting things right at the outset
yea definitely
hmm I see user: creates a special page
maybe it’s best to use it then, just means you have to rename the links using
[link|description]
then it doesn’t get listed in “all pages”.
There must be a shortcut
if you use user: then it gets listed in a users
directory
yep . probably worth doing then. All I need now
are some users
I’ve put a more prominent link on the old site
ah, discussion isn’t a subpage, that’s why it wasn’t
working
it’s Talk:main_Page
yea, how would you link to that. [[talk:]] doesn’t
work
[[Talk:Main_Page]]
ah, ok, no shortcut then. Mediawiki is a fair bit
more complicated than PHP wiki
yes a bit, but longer lasting I hope, and generating
more interest at the moment, so maybe people will arrive in time who are more
likely to have used the same
yea maybe. I changed http://ukcider.co.uk/wiki/index.php/Talk:Regional_Producers
to how I would have it
but then I probably wouldn’t have created a blank stub page in the first
place
hmm, I thought it simpler to have the initial
suggestion on the page, then overwrite it with the real thing
yea probably is, but it’s even better to have
the discussion on a existing page, otherwise people are constantly clicking
on stubs
I see yes, think about the readers not just the
developers
but it’suseful to link to the discussion pages
at the bottem of the page, to tell people something is going on in the discussion
ah
you could post advice to me on my 43things pages
subscribe to the RSS then add comments
senseis has a page called “wiki etiquete”
which would be auseful page to discuss it
I mean you should create a similar page
they also have one called wiki conventions
they kind of overlap
I don’t like the only link to the users guide on your wiki, is at the bottem
of the main page
unless I’m missing something
there’s a “help” link in the main navigation

the help page isn’t veryuseful at current though

but ok, I missed that
The main thing with wikis is to only create new pages when you have content
to fill the page
like all the info on pubs http://ukcider.co.uk/wiki/index.php/Cider_Pub_Guide
could all be on one page at current
it’s intended to be printable as a page for each
region
could be a large part of the wiki eventually
I see
yes, but at the moment it’s small
it’s all small, it’s only a week old !
if it’s all small then it should only be a few
pages
is that the only way to grow it?
It makes things optimal in terms of browsing, so
is important
It’s the only way it should be
at the moment it suffers from a kind of over organisation
I think it’s suffering from lack of content and
participation myself, but then it is only a week old
so you don’t rate my plan to create organisation first, then solicit content

It’s like a biologist who is sorting his collection,
having a draw for each genus, despite his collection only being about 100 objects
no, that’s a bad habit in my eyes
applies to life in general too
I’d be grateful if you’d comment that here:

sure,
I take your general point.
maybe in the morning though
but how do you kick start something that doesn’t
exist yet?
just announce it and hope someone is interested,
have enough content at the beginning to show that atleast you are going to participate
in it
but creating a structure is just presumptious, doesn’t really show any real
intent to do things, doesn’t give the project any real momentum, small concentrated
contennt is better
I didn’t really want to duplicate everything from
the old site but maybe I should do that instead
then I’d have content, and it would be editable
start off making a few pages, maybe using information
from the old site, but make them good
quality
yes quality over quantity
well thanks for your advice. I’ll copy and paste
it somewhere
also, people like organising, and the people
who do the organising are more inclined to feel closer to the project and contribute
more in general, so by organising all the structure yourself, people won’t feel
so inclined to help out
I think that last point of mine is particilarly important now I remembered it!
I kind of sensed that, but you have explained
it better
good, then get rid of all the stubs!
I don’t want to spend too much time shrinking
the structure do I
well it’s hard to change the past, but if probably
is worth it
you’re not that far off the correct balance though
I’ll make some changes
is it possible for users to delete pages
doubt it , but you can just leave them orphaned

he he http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Perfect_stub_article
suggests putting misspelled words in stubbs to get people to edit the page
well, you could deliberatley put in false information
as well but…
they must have the most experience
http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Kill_the_Stub_Pages
interesting
“No page is better than a stub page”
too right!
sounds a bit evangelical to me
it sounds spot on to me
what about a link to “no page” is that
ok?
or should it be no link as well
well yes, no link
that’s what it means
ah. so not even the suggestion of the possibility
of a page then
most of the time, no
creating templates for new pages are ok
I did that on senseis libary
but that’s quite different to the concept of a stub
also having no content makes the link indicate that there is no content
but generally no link is better again
“On the other hand, stubs represent content that someone was willing to
donate, and why should we discourage people from contributing what they can?”
This is wrong, stubs represent content that people aren’t willing to donate
any time soon!
that’s the irony of it
I suppose they represent the hope that somebody
else will do it
yea, that isn’t a good thought to send out!
hope is a negative idea
hope is the antithesis of being productive
so the way to attract contributions, is to only
add good content yourself
Lead by example, not by organising
yes, discuss future direction, but don’t just create
stubs just hoping
yes, lead by example