Thread:BertH/@comment-5175866-20141119215029/@comment-5275700-20141120183129

Great questions! This is, of course, the main issue that communities face as founders and smaller groups of contributiors try to get more people on board. I know from past conversations and observations that you're trying lots of different strategies, and you should keep that up.

Think about the types of things you see people sharing on social media. Polls, quizzes, contests, "Top 20" type lists. Creating inertactive content like that can keep people enaged, especially if they come to expect something new every week ("Vote in this week's poll", etc).

To encourage contributions, sometimes it's best to let people know about specific, easy things you need help with. By "specific" I mean actually give them a clear task, and by "easy" I mean something that doesn't require knowledge of the wikia's category structure or policies. What could that be? My suggestion is something related to images. Something like "This week we're trying to find images for the article about Abraham's wife Sarah" or "Let's make a gallery of pictures of the three wise men" (timely for the holiday season). Then as part of that you can give quick instuructions on how to upload an image. Our data has shown that an editor's very first contribution is often uploading an image, so it's a good way to get hooked!