Forum:Social networking for 'serious subject' wikia

There used to be a page somewhere about what's coming up or what people connected with wikia are working on, but can't remember how to find it, so don't know if within wikia anything planned to meet what I see as an unmet need or opportunity.

In the past attempts at this via Society Gardens. Beyond wikia sites such as ning seem to have become well used, and some wikia may have experimented with facebook pages, etc?

One of the concerns for serious subject wikia is that by being lumped in with all the popular culture stuff, and to a certain extent feeling submerged by it (front page of wikia long ago seemed to loose any interest in any serious subject wikia) is having to work against inappropriate ads. If ning can offer an option to pay to have these removed don't see why wikia can't move to something like that for the more serious wikia that seem to have a hell of a job attracting new members since the more aggressive advertising came in.

I wondered about starting a ning social networking site for all contributors to the more serious subject wikia, as per Society Gardens, but there may be better alternatives such as grou.ps, mixxt, etc ?

So if one of these were to be started would you if you're a contributor to a serious subject wikia be interested in contributing to a social network and community of this kind? Expressions of interest below? Philralph @ sca21 08:47, 12 May 2009 (UTC)


 * Do you mean a "site" or a new division of an existing site? And what's ning? How about more use of Squidoo and Twitter and Facebook, or the Society Gardens mailing list? (By the way, I get few inappropriate ads now that I've turned off the option to see what unregistered users are seeing).

— Robin Patterson (Talk) 02:35, 14 May 2009 (UTC)

Hi Robin, I mean what for us feels like and looks like a 'site'. I used Ning in connection with a conference I was invovlved with and through that felt I was beginning to 'get it' - understanding why others I knew had been enthusiastic about it. Social networking of this kind seems to help people get to know each other, and perhaps begin to trust each other, a little better - which then might lead on to actual collaboration, which of course wikis are great for. I know the kinds of things they do are possible through wikis but people seem to have taken (In far greater numbers) to things like ning in a way in which they haven't as yet with wikis. So they're a bit like stuff we tried to do on wikisocial but presumably in ways which people find a lot more user friendly.

As I undersand it 'sites' such as these enable something similar to a mailing list but also much more. eg mailing specific groups from within a site - so in our context options of mailing all in a 'Society Gardens' (or whatever better name we could come up with) or a group within this (Such as those with an interest in Genealogy, sustainability, etc)

More use of Squidoo and Twitter, (etc), yes fine. Something like this could help us learn more and easier from each other (I've only really come across Squidoo from taking a peek at some of stuff you've done}. Facebook also if that's what people find useful. Personally I've not as yet really taken to Facebook, and the feel I get from alternatives (as proposed here) is of something far less big monolithic, and perhaps 'clunky'(?) and so perhaps much more community / group friendly?

Talking about this stuff can only go so far, actually using is of couse better to get the feel of them. In a rare burst of enthusiasm I recently set up a ning site for my local community - although not much succes with it so far. (which probably says a lot more about where i live than the technolgy!) This in part following the model of something similar but in a city setting - HarringayOnline, which is great but unfortunately seems to operate as a bit of a walled garden - so you can't easily see stuff beyond the main page). The conference thing I was involved in is UKGovWeb, and I've recenlty been a little bit active in something called Project Dirt, as well as discussion on WiserEarth re transition towns through which I learned of grou.ps, mixxt Philralph @ sca21  08:23, 14 May 2009 (UTC)

PS (As you I - personally - don't get the ads, but still think that for serious wiki, like sca, they're an embarassment which makes it a hell of a job for us to attract new contributors. I also heard back from a (Wikia) community team member re this - the proposal above, and my interpretation of the reply was that it seemed positive)