Eighteen Tuesdays later… and we're still ranting. When I began using Wikidot three years ago for the CAPSoff website, I was user number 99. This month we hit 400,000 users. This is like finding a nice little valley, setting up a few tents and a campfire, and three years later, finding that the campsite has turned into a city.
So my rant today is more of a question: how do we make Wikidot.com work for 400,000, or 1M, or 2M, 4M, 8M users? I don't mean in terms of servers, software, bandwidth. Those are simple technical challenges. I mean in terms of social structures, community, and communications.
Wikidot.com is very much a social project as well as a technical or commercial one. Many Wikidot users work in the "cold zone", building their sites without much discussion with other people. But for those who step through the magic door, into the "hot zone" of the Wikidot project, the world changes. It is like seeing the Matrix, the reality inside reality. And the amazing thing is that we're all able to change this reality, just by clicking and typing, thinking, and acting.
The more of us there are in the hot zone, the more exciting, but also the more difficult it gets. We argue about whether to make one massive Community site, or many dedicated microsites. We start dozens, hundreds of experimental projects: is that success, or failure? We develop weird patterns like nested topic trees, but are this useful, or just arcane?
What do you think? Wikidot will reach millions of users. What kinds of structures do you think we need?
Rant: I wanted a blog post before the next rant
What do I think: streamlined documentation will help educate our [hundreds of] thousands of users to use Wikidot tools more effectively. Their demonstration of these tools will grab the attention of others and lead to a million users. I'm quite sure that a million users will be reached :-)
And last Tuesday's rant does not count? :-)
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I agree with James. The Doc and Demo project was supposed to do this - unfortunatly, they have not been completed YET.
Kenneth Tsang (@jxeeno)
Pfff on tuesday morning… not what I expected after the (to) long rant of last week on the wrong day… It felt like tuesday lasted for ever :-)
So my positive thing that I wish to add is … give them tools to see "the blond and the red head… or not so exciting three men at the end of the hallway". Meaning… you can step though the door in to "the hot zone" and see the matrix… but if you only see code … it's not that exciting, Yes they drop nicely those green characters…. So what …
We have many user of wich only some interact. Lets make for example better profile's so they can find matches… who has a site on gaming, who is also a developper in C#, who dislikes Britney. And also lets connect sites. If you discourage people in filling out the site-tag when they create a site… many will never come back and fill in the tags later… lets do something cool with the tags that are in there.
Maybe make profiles searchable…
Okay… that was positive enough… Now the ranting bit :-)
I tried forms… when will we be able to make a more easy interface for site contibuters that have no wikidot-syntax-experience. For now forms will be an input tool… how about getting info using forms… any sight on that?
A - S I M P L E - P L A N by ARTiZEN a startingpoint for simple wikidot solutions.
Frankly, as Wikidot gets larger, I think it will do so mainly with "read-mostly" users. They will be drawn to specific sites, and will mostly likely actually edit pages once in a blue moon. Personally, that's even me with respect to any site I don't own. And that's me over at Wikipedia. I've probably edited no more than a dozen times for some minor change.
I don't think you'll get much or any interest in this class of users in community. You'll probably be hard-pressed to even get them to register since many will have no need and/or their site does not allow/encourage editing.
And that may be where the technical has to cross the social. I guess I look at Wikipedia, and how they've had to struggle with open editing and vandalism/edit wars. I think there needs to be more tools around being able to "manage" a site's own community, particularly since sites here don't often have the manpower to keep an eye on things from minute-to-minute, and with that the case, most probably restrict editing rights to a trusted circle. It would be interesting to know the demographics of sites here: how many are "mostly open" and how many are "mostly closed"?
Tools that I would look at are ways to moderate edits, as well as being able to develop changes in private (even among a group a group) before deploying. In other words, use principles of source code management (e.g. Subversion, Git, Mercurial) to wiki editing.
And the final part of the social aspects is what I've mentioned before (and there's a page on weneed somewhere), where I can use a single user login, but present an identity of my choosing to a site. In these days of people needing to separate their private/professional lives to avoid the "Facebook" effect, it's a real pain to have to try to do this with separate logins (and very error-prone and irreversible if you screw up). Since my Wikidot usage began with one of my hobbies, that's all I use it for. I've thought of using it for blogging, or more professional use, but the identity issue throws cold water on these ideas.
Well, I typed a long essay about how to cater to all wikidot users. iPod refreshed. Essay gone.
Rant: we need autosave as a URL, with a content attribute. Eg:
Http://site-name.wikidot.com/site:catalog/save/true/content/Many%20sites%20are%20scary/
You could use this for many things, too.
In case anyone missed my misplaced magniloquent tirades this week (eyes wide, arms flailing, mouth foaming, purple in the face), they're here:
I really do like the collaborative spirit (and the amazing progress!) of so many wiki-pioneers. But personally I think we'd benefit from strengthening the Wikidot's database (ListPage), search, and site navigation functionalities, so that our work and ideas are more easily lumped in fewer sites and more easily located.
Fantastic rant Scott. I think you have made some very important observations. The chat room is yet another new community set up by Wikidot pioneers. The answer might be to replace the contents of some of the older (or newer) places with redirects or cross-site includes.
I was thinking about this a while ago, and my solution was an auto-generated "Wikidot Encyclopedia"
The encyclopedia would contain an entry about every page name used on at least one Wikidot site.
Each page would contain;
It is a bit hard to visualise so I have created a mock up here.
Why I think this is a good idea.
I've had a bit of a bash at creating a manual version of the above at http://www.index.wikidot.com, but I think an automatically compiled version would work much better.
I know this would be yet another new place that people might move to, but I think it would also link everything together.
Wayne Eddy
Melbourne, Australia
LGAM Knowledge Base
Contact via Google+
Sounds like a good idea, Wayne, especially if the lists are auto-generated, as you say. Characterizing it as an "encyclopedia" implies active management — researching, writing, attributing, editing, archiving, updating. Looking at Wikidot sites in the aggregate, I can't see that level of consistent, applied categorizing (i.e. splitting).
Wouldn't it be cool if users could enter their own query, and generate that sort of structured list — sounds a lot like SEARCH, but with a different kind of result. Or even better — what if you could simply plug in your site name, and have the engine analyze it to identify other sites that cover similar material?
What we're really getting at is quality content analysis — the kind of thing a human librarian is good at. SEARCH is good at this too, but less so. What's more, the relationship is fuzzy between page titles and their contents, and there's a wealth of overlapping content, made possible by Wikidot's culture of openness. So as I think about this, it starts to get more complicated.
But if it's possible to get the mock-up to work — independent of regular human updates — why not lodge it in the Community site instead of on a separate site?
I love your Wild West analogies.
The pattern seems to be, a bunch of us go off and experiment, and we come back, later, with things that work, and we then use them for more mainstream sites.
But disparaging the projects site… that really hurt. Especially when you compared it to Google Wave. There are insults, and then there are unforgivable insults. I'm sorry, Scott, but I'm banning you from the projects site.
Just kidding. And "magniloquent"? That took five attempts to spell, and a googling to understand.
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Uh oh, now I've done it. I figured my recent posting binge was bound to land me on someone's sh-list, probably yours.
I haven't yet been "invited" to Google Wave, so I really don't know what I'm talking about there (par for the course, really). But all the other stuff I said — I'm stickin' to it.
Experimenting in quiet spaces makes sense to me — it happens all the time in personal sites. But once it's time to collaborate with owners of other wikis, I think it would be better to put that thinking where the rest of us are likely to listen in, and maybe to pitch in.
With regard to the projects site, it's kinda silly for me to make this point. That train has left the station already. I'm mostly just identifying the issue, and doing what I can to prevent further abandonment in the name of New & Better.
Okay the train left the station at an enormous speed… but now-a-days not much is beeing added. If you run you can stil catch us… I would love to see your input there.
A - S I M P L E - P L A N by ARTiZEN a startingpoint for simple wikidot solutions.
hmmm…. this sounds familiar.
I'm an urban planner. You probably know, planning in the United States has gone through some fundamental pendular swings over the decades. For some, the best growth is in new, uncomplicated spaces. The result is the suburbs — they're quieter and well… more sterile.
For others, the best growth is incremental, in place. It's a big challenge to grow that way, particularly because it happens within the framework of the existing space and the existing community. That complexity causes some urban planners to think about simply bulldozing the old neighborhood, to make way for the new. That's usually a mistake too.
I keep throwing new metaphors at this idea. But basically, it makes sense that the projects site would start out strong, then settle down in a more "suburban" lifestyle. If it were lodged in the gritty, "urban" Community, then the picture might be a lot different.
We need a "map" ( in german: "plan" sounds different).
i think - the new sites are good places for the development of new ideas and technic. Why not use it parallel to the old ones?
But what we need is a "map" to find all important ( level 1 , level2 a.s.o) sites on a short overview.
Therefore Pieter started the dashboard (project) site.
And I try to fulfill all my ideas here in some "_startpages" in my categroy "helmuti-pdorf:"
http://dashboard.wikidot.com/helmuti-pdorf:_start3 is a try of a different table layout ( 6 x 6)
or
http://dashboard.wikidot.com/helmuti-pdorf:_start in a simple table layout per "level"
Both are not yet finished , because I was stopped by the development of more sites faster than could register it…
but the idea is a 2-dimensional placing of Sites (thumbnails) either
May I invite all to create their own ideas how such a "map" should be?
Service is my success. My webtips:www.blender.org (Open source), Wikidot-Handbook.
Sie können fragen und mitwirken in der deutschsprachigen » User-Gemeinschaft für WikidotNutzer oder
im deutschen » Wikidot Handbuch ?
Ever play SimCity 4000? Or is that too much mixing business and pleasure? =)
I think it's funny how some jobs get entertainized, even when the job itself can be an extraordinary pain. Soldiers, to cite one of the more common game types for example. In addition to harrowing reality that they risk life and limb, the tediousness of their day to day work never quite makes it into the games (though I think the Onion once created a realistic Call of Duty concept. Lot of KP1, not a lot of shooting).
The US Army has released a game called "American Army" (or AA for short), which allows you to go through training and "experience" the army life, apparently. I haven't played it much myself, but that might be a game worth checking out if you're interested David.
~ Leiger - Wikidot Community Admin - Volunteer
Wikidot: Official Documentation | Wikidot Discord server | NEW: Wikiroo, backup tool (in development)
A few of my sites are getting a ridiculous amount of zero second visits from Ashland, Woodbridge & Framingham, that are distorting my site satistics.
Is there a robot that Wikidot is registering as a regular visitor based in the vicinity?
Are there lots of crazy people in New Jersey & Massachusetts, that have nothing better to do than visit obscure websites for less than a second multiple times a day?
Anybody else with the same problem?
Wayne Eddy
Melbourne, Australia
LGAM Knowledge Base
Contact via Google+
Wayne. Yes. That is a Wikidot Robot…… I think it's the Amazon EC2 that Wikidot is using. I don't know what is for…..
Kenneth Tsang (@jxeeno)
I had this months ago but it passed by.
___TTT___/ http://www.trumpetexercises.net
(_|||_) \ - Janne
Personally, I haven't really taken much notice of the patterns that you and others have created. After reading a few I noticed that they just seem like short descriptions about a specific way of designing a wiki/site/wikisite. Not much use to me from what I can tell, and can't really see the usefulness they have to anyone else… to be honest.
Can you explain to me why someone would visit the patterns site, and how they would use the information stored there?
For example, with cloning, it seems that a lot of beginning users won't end up building their sites from scratch any more. In a way that's a pity… building something from the ground-upwards is the single best way to learn the syntax, IMO1. The point being, if people are using custom-made templates for their new sites, where does the design stage come in where people will be actively thinking about these "patterns" and selecting one to use?
~ Leiger - Wikidot Community Admin - Volunteer
Wikidot: Official Documentation | Wikidot Discord server | NEW: Wikiroo, backup tool (in development)
Not considering the patterns, what is the aim (goal) of wikidot? Many sites with many views with easy to create sites and happy users OR a creative garden for creative developers who wish to experiment with wiki syntaxt and CSS and automation of content…?
I can see where you are comming from because IMO (:-)) you are one of the second kind. And learning by doing will not be the case for the first kind of users… But again IMO… some of them will cross the big wikidot-syntax river and end up next to you… And we will be there to get them on to dry land and help them to make their own place on this side.
So duplicating sites is a very good tool to get people to set up a site here… and once they are hooked… we need to get them interested in more. And if they want more we can say… we were also in that stage and we made many mistakes, so we want you to skip that so have a read at our patterns and see what we learned so that you can grow faster then us, and join us after a while so we can make this bigger and better with many happy users.
A - S I M P L E - P L A N by ARTiZEN a startingpoint for simple wikidot solutions.
These are recipes. Of course you can cook by opening the fridge and throwing random stuff into pots, but that already requires experience. Beginning cooks need to learn by following best practice, not by inventing stuff (unless they are geniuses, which is rare).
Until I started writing the patterns, no-one had actually documented how, for example, to separate slow-moving content from discussion, or the value in the page+comments model, or the reason for trying the topic tree forum approach.
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