Hi,
I'd like to share a concept of a new category of Wikidot sites and I would be happy to hear your opinion about it. It is called Community Sites and is specially targeted towards sites which:
- gather active communities,
- require growing resources (servers, disk space etc.),
- contain quality content,
- could use some help in getting even better and more popular.
In very short words, being a Community Site means extra promotion and any possible (within reasons) help from Wikidot to get bigger and better.
Community Sites concept also addresses the problem when a free (or even paid) site quickly becomes so large that it requires a higher paid plan. Which is not always acceptable for fan-driven communities. We have seen it too many times. In the past we have granted tons of extra features to sites that would not fit into the free (or even Pro Plus) plan just to allow them to grow. Now we would like to solve this issue with Community Sites.
Here is how we imagine Community Sites in greater detail:
- Being a Community Site is free.
- Only selected, quality wikis can become Community Sites.
- Community Sites are open (anyone can become a member) publicly accessible (not private).
- Extra features, equivalent to a Pro Plus plan, will be enabled.
- We can offer any reasonable help, including dedicated resources (disk space, servers etc.), support and possibly help designing and running sites too.
- Community Sites do not have Master Admins as a protection against e.g. removal and abandonment — we want them to rely more on the Community (and a group of Admins, if possible).
- Wikidot could promote Community Sites internally on other Wikidot pages or even through paid advertising campaigns outside of Wikidot (e.g. through AdWords).
- In return we would like to be able to run ads on selected popular Community Sites but, as stated above, we would like to re-invest in the sites in a number of ways.
We would really love to invest in good sites and help them grow. Or even help building great sites from scratch if a particular idea can convince us. We already have positive feedback from a few admins, which makes us believe the whole idea is worth the effort.
I would be really thankful for any suggestions and ideas. I hope this public discussion can help us create something really cool!
Cheers,
Michal
Michał Frąckowiak @ Wikidot Inc.
Visit my blog at michalf.me