Building a Wiki Presence

This wiki is somewhat complicated, because it is intended to meet and integrate a variety of needs. It is also evolving, based on the motives of wiki users. Here are some strategies and principals for organizing your contributions to this wiki.

Keep it short. This is an information trading post. You don't need to reproduce your full media-ready talking points. Just state who, what, where when, why and how, and point to more information. The more concisely we share our evidence and information, the more efficiently we can create interaction. Let's minimize the work others have to do to engage our information resources!

Start with a workgroup page and build from there. If you are a small workgroup with a simple focused body of work, you might be able to describe what you do on a single workgroup page. Text should explain who you are, your authorities or relationships, what you do, how long you've been around, and should include links to your private web resources. Link to any wiki pages you are working on. That may be enough. Only start creating Effort pages when you anticipate sharing images, documents, video, or lessons learned. Once you start creating effort pages, you will likely want to create a logo template and learn about The Credit Box.

Selectively upload documents. If you have an archive with very stable links than you don't need to upload those documents here. Just use external linking, and point to the document on your own website. The wiki does however provide an opportunity to archive materials that may otherwise be lost over time.

Pick a few places or topics to call home. If you just create a workgroup or effort page, you have introduced yourself but are not yet having a conversation. Workgroup and effort pages are typically managed by workgroups. Topic, site and place pages are where you are more likely to work with others to assemble shared evidence. If there is no topic page for the issues you are working on, create that page, and point to your efforts and documents. Watch that page to see if others add information. Ultimately a mature wiki evolves to where there are many custodians who spend a little effort keeping topics well organized, in alignment with their areas of interest or expertise.

In summary, a workgroup oriented user's involvement with the wiki might look like the diagram to the left. You may have a workgroup page that links to a couple project pages. Each project page may provide some images, and a few documents. These Effort and Document pages may be linked as sources of information in relevant Topics and Sites. You might contribute a few additional documents or a useful resource not specifically related to one of your efforts. By contrast, a topic-oriented user might be focused more on topics and documents with fewer contributions to sites or topics. A "friends of.." organization might develop a local network of places and sites, and develop documents related to those places. Your challenge is to develop a clear role in how you contribute to the information universe.