Cohousing-L Mailing List: Re: Wikis and Cohousing Website Members Area, etc. (was, ironically: Very Quick Question)

[John Faust (wjfaust]

 "It does take substantial interest and commitment to do such a thing and it
helps if you have some writing experience." -- Rob

This is true and, like cohousing, it only really makes sense if it is
genuinely a collaborative effort. Each of us has but a part of the picture
and the burden is much lighter if shared.

Perhaps my previous post implied that building a knowledge base required a
commitment from Cohousing US staff either to oversee, mediate or participate
in building the knowledge base. If so, that was not my intention. I think,
like Wikipedia, such a knowledge base would evolve on its own assuming a
critical mass of interested members. The following abstract from a technical
article studying cooperation on Wikipedia captures the nature of Wikipedia
(italics mine).

Since its inception six years ago, the online encyclopedia *Wikipedia* has
accumulated 6.40 million articles and 250 million edits, contributed in a
predominantly *undirected and haphazard fashion by 5.77 million unvetted
volunteers*. Despite the apparent lack of order, the 50 million edits by 4.8
million contributors to the 1.5 million articles in the English–language *
Wikipedia* follow strong certain overall regularities. We show that the
accretion of edits to an article is described by a simple stochastic
mechanism, resulting in a heavy tail of highly visible articles with a large
number of edits. We also demonstrate a crucial correlation between article
quality and number of edits, which validates *Wikipedia* as a successful
collaborative effort.

There is no need for a cadre of staff wiki experts. Wikipedia simply
provides the infrastructure (servers and a wiki), sets the rules of
engagement (play nice or we won't let you log in to the editor) and says
"have at it". For the most part, the pieces are already in place on the
Cohousing US website. The larger issue is: Is there a critical mass of
interested members? I don't know.

Last February, I added the Active
Issues<http://wiki.cohousing.org/Active_Issues>link to the home
page of the Cohousing US wiki <http://wiki.cohousing.org/Main_Page>. I'm not
sure anyone has ever noticed. On the active issues page, I created a list of
the listserv discussion threads that seemed to have attracted a good deal of
attention at that time. I added content to only one of the
issues--Community-Developer
Relationships <http://wiki.cohousing.org/Community-Developer_Relationships>.
I think I then sent that to that listserv thread to invite others (more
experienced than I) to add/correct/reorganize the content. I assumed naively
that those who had contributed substantively to that discussion would want
to make sure I got it right--unlikely in an initial draft. For whatever
reason, there was no response. Since it takes more than one to create a
knowledge base, I abandoned the effort.

If there are others on the listserv who see value in answering the question:
What did we just learn from that discussion? I will be happy to create some
initial drafts on request. An alternative is to write a summary yourself in
a familiar editor, send it to me and I will place it on the wiki. My hope is
that, as others gain experience with the wiki and that editor, they would
begin to do it themselves.

For those who have trouble with the editor or are mystified by wikis in
general, I will be happy to try and help. If you can write emails, you
aren't that far from creating wiki pages.

It probably goes without saying that those who are just looking for
information, don't have to know anything about the editor.

John Faust

P.S. No disparagement of the current offerings of Cohousing US was intended
either. I have been using those products for some time now and find the
listserv invaluable. However, that doesn't mean Cohousing US can't become
even more valuable.