PortlandWiki:Barnraising

This page is a brainstorming page for a possible upcoming "barnraising" event in early 2011. The purpose of this event is to draw upon our existing group of wiki enthusiasts to become or return as contributors to PortlandWiki. A possible second purpose is aimed at improving PortlandWiki for presentation to the Meier Memorial Trust for hosting Wiki Wednesday meetings in the future.

considerations for venue

• AboutUs
  • may encourage participation from original crew
  • may be difficult to ensure accessibility due to doors locking at 5:30?
  • would need approval from Ray King
• Backspace
• Meier Memorial Trust?

what to do during initial barnraising meeting

• have fun
• have drinks/snacks
• give brief overview of PortlandWiki and/or its history and/or how it is different now than after launch in Sep 2009
• identify what needs to be done
• secure activity commitments from attendees
• if time, have collaborative editing session

ways to prolong and promote activity after initial commitment

• nagging
• frequent follow-up meetings of an appealing nature
• rewards (mentioned below)

(good) reasons to edit

• enjoyment of discussion and debate
• the fun of creation/improvement
• tangible rewards
  • peer-given badges, awards, barnstars
  • reward board (monetary, tit-for-tat, badges)
• civic/altruistic/educational (the satisfaction of creating something useful)
• egoistic
  • knowing your works are viewed by others, perhaps a large community
  • respect of one's peers
• getting one's name out, furthering one's career
• personal education (researching and formulating one's ideas in words)

ways to edit (or, what we need)

These include long-term as well as short-term goals.

• creating new articles and improving existing ones
  • goal: 10 impressive articles, worth showing anyone!
  • goal: 500 very basic articles (descriptive sentence or two, a url or two, perhaps a few standardized section headers [history, etc] a few categories)
• adding categories to articles
• creating [[wikilinks]] from one article to another
• great freely licensed images, video, audio
• content that is useful or interesting that exists nowhere else
  • example: How to contest a parking ticket
  • example: Google map of Portland neighborhoods (with borders defined)
  • example: Google map of all articles' physical locations automatically created by street data in their articles
  • example: Portland history articles
  • example: ? (you add here)
• giving awards, compliments to other editors that are doing good work
• organizing exciting/fun events/meetups
• improving technical infrastructure, graphics (interface, awards, illustrations, etc)