Wikidot Community

Original post: 31 Dec 2007 - Oli
I find that there a three major steps in making a successful wiki:

1. Find a subject to create a wiki on - Most of the general purpose wikis have already been tried and have succeeded. We have Wikipedia (and now Citizendium) for encyclopediae (why do I study Latin ;-) ), Wiktionary for a multilingual dictionary and thesaurus and Wikia for most major topics. You need to find a unique idea. There might already be a small wiki or a website based on your topic, so you need to be able to find a way how your wiki can be an improvement over other sources on the internet. A wiki I run is a wiki on the video game "Shenmue". The game has faded into obscurity, and so there aren't many references available for the game, so Wikipedia can't create complete articles due to their "Verifibility is more important than the truth" policy. This means that my wiki could potentially become the best Shenmue-related source available.
2. Create an infrastructure for the site - There's no point having hundreds of users if the site becomes an unorganized mess. Try doing sthings like having an index page, so new users can click links to create pages. You could try running something like Wikipedia's Article Collaboration and Improvement Drive, where each week, you vote an article for the community to work on together. Try starting a few articles yourself, so new users can see the structure and layout of your articles. Remember to include lots of [[[links]]] so that other people can click on them and create the articles themselves.
3. Build a community - The final step is to get more users onto your site. This is harder than it sounds, because as your site is new, it won't appear very high in search results. And remember that the work "wiki" is likely to cause Wikipedia articles to appear above your site in search engine rankings. Try explaining what your site is about on forums that are related to your subject. Don't go around the internet posting links wherever your can. Go onto a relevant forum, and explain what your site is, how it works and where to join. On your site, you can allow users to invite other users. Encourage people to do this, and this will hopefully help your community enlarge. Your site may seem slow at first, but as more people join, others will start joining more quickly. Create a forum on your site, and include off-topic forums, so that people can come to just chat. This should help keep more people on the site, and strengthen the community aspect of the site.

(gosh, did i really just write this drivel :-) ?)

I'll quote you instead of saying it about myself :P .

Oliver

Original post:
http://community.wikidot.com/forum/t-33137/warnicka#post-85609

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