Creating a wiki project

When creating your own wiki project, it is important to understand what the main goal of its creation is, how it will develop further and what principles will be laid in its foundation. Currently, there are a large number of wiki projects that were created, and then abandoned or gradually lost any activity - this was due to the fact that the creators of such projects themselves often did not know why they were creating it and what they planned to achieve - and only created in order to have a completely controlled project, which didn’t lead to anything good.

The success of the created wiki project depends mainly on the following components:

Hosting

Here, the creator of the project has a choice - use either a wiki hosting that provides the client with an already installed and configured engine with some extensions or install the site on its own server.

You can use free wiki hosting in cases where the site author does not have sufficient knowledge in server management and engine configuration. On the other hand, such a hosting has a number of drawbacks - usually it is only a third-level domain, lack of direct access to the database and server configuration, lack of some important extensions and untimely update of the wiki software. Also, such wikis are often vulnerable to attacks made with the aim of disrupting normal activities in the project. The most famous wiki hosting is Wikia.

If a large project is planned, or rare and non-standard extensions or a configuration of rights are needed, it is better to use your own server. In this case, it is worth taking into account that with the growth of the project it will require more and more server resources, and, accordingly, there will be more financial costs, so you will need to monitor the server status, timely correct all errors that occur (if the project is often unavailable , this will greatly reduce its popularity).

Theme

When choosing a project topic, you must first see if there are already projects on a similar or similar topic. You can only start a project if you have sufficient resources to compete with existing projects - you need more people who are ready to spend time on the project, as well as original ideas - if the site will simply copy an existing one in the previously created wiki project, it is most likely just a clone. Original proposals will attract new participants to the project, including those who might not like existing sites on this topic.

Content

It is also important that the sufficient amount of the normal size of articles is as soon as possible in the wiki project - it’s not worth immediately announcing its creation everywhere after installing the engine, since it is highly likely that no one will be interested in an empty project. The right step will be to work closed for some time, and make the project accessible to everyone only after the project is filled with a certain number of pages, the technical part is established, and discussion platforms are set up.

Throughout the existence of the project, it is important to maintain activity at the proper level, attract new participants to the project and write new articles so that readers do not lose interest. It is important not to try to immediately create (with the help of automatic programs) a lot of semi-empty articles (“ shortcomings»), And writing articles of normal quality - a large number of low-content articles only leads to littering the wiki project and reducing its quality.

The authors

A wiki project is valuable for its team of authors, which allows a wiki project to self-develop with minimal intervention from the founders. In order to recruit and replenish the team of authors of a wiki project, a separate, already promoted forum, site or organization of like-minded people is useful. Around this external resource, people interested in the subject of the project can be grouped. On an auxiliary external resource, one should periodically urge to go to supplement articles and advertise project materials. At the same time, the wiki project and external resource will feed each other in both directions over time.

An obvious plus of the availability of such a resource is that you can appoint already known and verified users as administrators or give them other additional rights, which will ensure its better protection and maintenance.

Control

A wiki project needs a well-organized management system. It’s important not to set too strict rules, and not to let the project slip into anarchy. It is advisable to use the powers of the founders only in extreme cases, since a wiki project with a sufficient number of participants is a self-regulatory community. It is important to show that the founders also contribute to the common cause, regularly monitor the project and make regular edits to the articles.

As the project grows, the role of its founders gradually changes, because first of all they are official representatives of the project and for the promotion of the project they need to visit other sites, edit them, answer the participants' questions. For this, it will be useful to have a project blog where you can ask your question to the site administration.

All of the above applies primarily to projects in which wide participation is planned - another solution will be to create a monoproject, in which the availability of exclusively original materials and research is especially important.

This post was written by me in collaboration with John_Locke , who still doesn’t have enough karma to publish topics.