User talk:WikiMaster

Welcome to the Portland civic wiki. This is the unofficial wiki of the people in the People's Republic of Portland. This wiki is by the people and for the people so the fruits of their labor may be shared as the natural laws of the universe hath intended. Welcome. Poke around, edit, try some stuff out, and have fun. Welcome. Thanks.

Association of City Wikis

Hi, I run another city wiki (in a similarly developing stage as yours), I've been thinking that we should form an association/union of sorts between various city wikis. Key aims would be:

• mutual promotion
• development of city wiki specific wiki technology (template, plug-ins etc.)
• knowledge sharing (technical, community building etc.)

The main part of this would be a public mailing list, but I would hope that it could form regional groups too.

Obviously membership would be open to individuals and entry requirements would be low for wikis (but they would have to be freely licensed). No one pays a cent, all web stuff provided at my cost. I am in the UK, so there's absolutely no competition with your wiki here.

As I'm sure you have experienced, making a wiki like this successful is a large task so I figure we could do with all of the help we can get.

If you're interested, and I really hope you are, please drop me an e-mail (as an administrator, I'm sure you can get it), if you can't, write on my user page, but I'd much rather you e-mailed me. I'd rather discuss this by e-mail and have a more defined idea before discussing it much in a public forum.

P.S. You're running a good looking wiki here :) -- M123 (talk) 12:44, 11 September 2010 (PDT)

RE: Association of City Wikis

Hey M123! Thanks for reaching out to PortlandWiki, and for your kind words.

We certainly welcome your ideas here! Believe it or not, they align with some of the possibilities / initiatives discussed amongst PortlandWiki's core maintainers (basically the folks you see identified as PortlandWiki's bureaucrats/admins).

You're absolutely right that volunteer-run projects like city wikis would benefit by some kind of solidarity and resource sharing. Should we start a discussion group, or set up a dedicated wiki? If a dedicated wiki is the consensus, perhaps we can use one of the domains PortlandWiki has on standby (CITYWIKIS.ORG).

By the way, I'm responding to you here because PortlandWiki chooses not to organize any hierarchy of "decision makers" beyond a sort of evolving consensus of participants plus "whoever shows up to work" model. We also try and align our efforts towards a kind of guiding vision that's still mainly a work in progress.

But if you think participation by a core planning group might be more appropriate first step, with a public unveiling later on, perhaps you have some ideas on how to proceed that you can share with us.

In the meantime, I'll bring all this up at tomorrow's weekly PortlandWiki Monday Meeting. Look forward to a continuing conversation! Kind regards, - WikiMaster (talk) 18:13, 12 September 2010 (PDT)

PS: Where can we see your City Wiki?