I've been doing some thinking about how to proceed here and I think we should be following the Kiss Principle. So to help the wiki start up again the Main page and community page could be combined.
Purpose
If we have a purpose then it helps users know what we're doing here. So here are my thoughts
To document the social networks present in different wikis
To help create new Social Networks that span across wikis.
Hubs
Hubs are collections of related wikis, groups and templates. Since there are only a small number of them it is easier to create content for all of them. Each week there could be a hub of the week. This would mean that all hubs would get a fair amount of attention while the wiki is taking off. To Start a new group or wiki page it would have to be a hub page section until it has enough community support for it to be split off. If a few more hubs could be suggested that would be helpful. One that I could think of was Entertainment. This would combine music and movies.
any ideas and suggestions would be appreciated.
--Drawde83 00:39, 12 July 2008 (UTC)
Hi, Drawde83 thanks for starting this off. I've a number of ideas but not the time to set them out properly just now. I like the idea of being guided by the Kiss Principle, particularly regarding design. I think at some point we will have to address the design issue, but maybe it needn't be a priority. Although the current style is perfectly OK, I do think colours matter because of the psychology behind them. It's no big deal but the blue reminds me a bit of a line from a Beatles song, something like "hey jude, don't play it cool... making the world a little colder." Just think that we'd be better with something psychologically a bit brighter, warmer, more welcoming (?) Hubs I've discussed before with Danny, now staff I think, so it'd be good to invite him to any discussion concerning hubs. Just one idea in brief - some sort of social diary / calendar thingy - a must have for any serious social site (?), but not sure of the best form for it yet.
Just another idea in brief: some sort of 'I will if you will ' type page. eg in relation to inactive wikia, I'd be willing to help revive such and such wiki if at least one other person was, and we could work something out, (then wiki could be tagged with link back to wikisocial)
I'll explain the hubs a bit better. we could have a couple of pages that each cover a broad range of topics (e.g. technology, entertainment, environment)
We can create the pages as a set of reusable templates so that users can incorperate parts of them into their profiles. The topics would act as user categories. This would group more people together.
One of the things I'm trying to figure out is just what we do exactly?I think it's much easier for users to know how to work on other wikis.
Hubs sound like a good idea. Sort of expanding on the central wikia hubs? I'm guessing they could be a bit like Wikipedia WikiProjects, where users come over from their wikis and socialise and could advertise their wiki.
Structure This really needs to be in place before Wikisocial can get big, (and maybe spotlighted) Maybe some enticing graphics on the main page would be a good step?
well if you guys think Danny is someone that may be good to talk to then feel free to invite him. I don't think I know him though.
Although sometimes it may not seem like it, I don't really want to try and copy any other wiki. I don't think it's a suitable strategy as the bigger wiki always has the larger base to build from. I think it's better to work together or to do different things.
ok heres an idea (this would be a bit like collaboration of the month), how about we organise editing days. beforehand we would need to
agree on a wiki to help out
get permission to help
ask what things may be suitable for us to work on
I would expect that we would work together on some of the more mundane things e.g. double redirects, assigning short pages as stubs. Things that are more vital might need supervision from someone at the host wiki.
This would be a random act of kindness as we would not expect their people to join up here. (although we could suggest that would be a nice way to pay us back.)
Don't think anything like this needs permissions, more something like just letting them know beforehand?
Just ideas: focus something like this on just one day a month, memorable date eg 13th? Put up suggestions as far in advance as you like, see if anyone joins, if at least 2 people go ahead, call it something like 'Barnraising'?
I like that idea, so I guess the first thing to do would be to pick a wiki and get going. I would suggest a wiki related to Society Gardens as i start. What do you think?
Well I was thinking we should test the idea on this wiki first. That way we can work out any problems before doing it all for real. As for the date I was thinking we could do it on the first Saturday of each month. If we do it on a fixed date then the actual day will move around and other people might have conflicting commitments.
I've just created Forum:Barnraising day, For the first one if we do it on Wikisocial then we can get started on making this wiki a bit more functional. also it works as a bit of a trail run before trying it out on other wikis. so please let me know what you think.
just wondering If I should turn that intro into a template on central. just to make it easier putting it on host wikis?
Seems good idea to do here first, and like the idea of a poll for the theme. Are we still going with August 2nd? If so I hope to help a bit, but generally Saturdays not ideal day for me, though perhaps OK for most people
sorry for not sorting a date out earlier, looking at the poll I'm thinking thursday could be a good day to do the barnraising (Metal gear slows down over the weekend, I'm assuming thats a general trend)
Hi! Yes, a Thursday'd be good, though August going to be a bit holidayish for me, any chance we could do first thurs sept? More time to prepare /set up, give us a better try out?
