In order to popular this wiki, it is going to involve a lot of ‘hands on’ work in getting people such as dancers, choreographers, arts administrators and the like to actually come.

There is also a perception that the information in the wiki is somehow less valuable than the information that is created by the Library itself.

On the podcast, our dance curator pretty much makes the point that Laura does – wikis are scary. It is very daunting for people working in particular fields of endeavour like dance where it is actually quite a big process to go through to register, learn to use the software, understand creative commons and the like.

I started a wiki for my work [uh oh--here I go, muddying the personal/professional waters ], largely because I had some information I wanted to share, and I wanted to be able to dump it somewhere and also wanted others to be able to add to it so as to harvest the power of the hive and all that. So far, I think one person has corrected a spelling error.

I’ve tried pretty hard to get people to see that blogs/wikis/RSS/etc. can be very useful to them, but it’s a struggle. The most common complaint is “I don’t have time for that!” When someone actually tries out a Bloglines account and sees that it’s a really efficient way to catch up on the NY Times book review during slow periods at the circulation desk, they usually come over to the pro-blog/wiki/RSS side. But a lot of people aren’t willing (yet) to try.

As for wiki participation in general–I think part of it is that wikis are scary. I even found them scary when I first started to add things. Wiki syntax is often a bit different from the syntax you use elsewhere, and so if you’ve spent time learning to type

Now, I little on topic. We had a presentation at Miss Lib Assoc (10/06) covering blogs/wikis/rss/pod casting. The presenter did not blog, contribute to wikis, or pod cast. Can you guess how informative the presentation was? A demo would not have helped! ;D

Kelli Wooshue and I did a presentation on Web 2.0 tools that I think worked. Basically we gave a very brief presentation providing little more than a basic definition of Web 2.0, a comparison of “old” versus “new” and an acknowledgement that people were talking about “Library 2.0.”

Then we gave the participants laptops and a sheet of paper with basic [and explicit!] instructions on how to (eg) enter something on a wiki and see the rollback. Then they had a discussion about how the technology might be used in their context.

If I understand David right, I think the issue is less about how to participate on a wiki effectively and more about how to do it at all. I haven’t been to your presentations, but I have been to ones that told me all of the wonderful things that Web 2.0 services can do, but didn’t really give a demo.

For me, a lack of a demo isn’t much, because I like to play. But for most of my colleagues (and, I extrapolate, most librarians in general) just seeing wiki-ness being done lifts up the comfort level and piques interest. In fact, perhaps Web 2.0 presenters would be better off just forgoing the powerpoint altogether!

* Show the structure of the wiki in the front page (table of articles, or at least of main categories).
* Don’t make articles neither too short neither too long (split them when they have grown)
* Maybe begin each article with a phrase explaning its goal.
* To promote the wiki, show people articles where the utility of the wiki-technology is obvious and immediate : list of ressources ; collaborative reviews.

We can’t know yet if wikis will become as popular as blogs. People will start using the wikis if what they can gain from it (to find useful informations ; to share a spirit of collaboration) is more that what it takes from them (having to understand how it works ; accepting to lose the ownership of their writing).

Sorry if my english is unclear !