Wikis Getting to the Nitty Gritty Meredith Farkas September 25, 2006 ALA Headquarters

What you should learn  How to edit and format a wiki  How to deal with spam and vandalism  Wiki management strategies

Adding content to MediaWiki  Step 1: Create an account  Step 2: Check out the Wikipedia’s editing guideWikipedia’s editing guide  Start adding content!

Create your own profile  Name  Position  Website/ address  Picture  A little about yourself  Add your profile to the list of members

Getting rid of spam and vandalism  Vandalize your page.  Get rid of the spam Rollback History Manual deletion  Get to know (and love) RSS feeds

How to deal with posts you don’t like  Guidelines Limit to on-topic posts Take a note from the Wikipedia’s policies and guidelinesWikipedia’s policies and guidelines  Get a committed group of volunteers (library school students are ALWAYS eager) to patrol the wiki so that it doesn’t look like the ALA is limiting dialogue  If you need to delete something - use discussion area to explain why things were deleted.

Making the wiki compelling  Seeding the wiki  Social elements  Unique content (not on any other ALA site)  Not restrictive. Make people feel like the wiki belongs to them.

Getting people to add to the wiki  Get divisions to market and to commit to contributing to the wiki  Get presenters to put content about presentation (slides, etc.) on wiki  Work with library groups (student, etc.) in D.C. metro area to get their membership involved in adding info about D.C.  Put an article about wikis in American Libraries to teach people about wikis and to market the wiki

Questions? Comments? Meredith Farkas mgfarkas at gmail dot com AIM: librarianmer