Help:Making a successful community

Congratulations, you’ve started a wiki! Now what? That’s a question many people have. Making your wiki successful and building a community can be a challenge, but it’s not as hard as it looks.

The first section of this page covers helpful ideas for building your wiki. This includes the content and the design, as well as how to promote your wiki and make it a fun and engaging place to be. The second section discusses how to build your community, which will be the users who help you continue to build the wiki.

Focus on building content

 * Create the first ten pages: You don't need to have a complete article right away, just start with a few sentences. It helps to start with pages about the most important aspects of your topic.
 * Link to other pages: Add links to your newly created pages on the main page. You may want to make other main page changes.
 * Upload images: Add pictures and images to provide extra description and content to your first pages.

Update the design and format

 * Build the design and upload a wordmark: the Theme Designer affords you an easy way of creating a unique design for your wiki, complete the ability to upload a wordmark to symbolize your wiki.
 * Create Sections on your wiki: Dividing up the wiki into sections, such as News, Did you Know?, New Pages, or Wanted pages, can help guide users to places that may be or that need contributions.
 * Create categories: Adding categories is important way to help people find what they are looking for.

Make your wiki a fun place to visit and participate

 * Make it easy for people to contribute: Create lists of ways to help, upcoming events, wanted pages and make clear what is and isn't welcome as content on the wiki. Don’t make too many policies, and be sure the rules you do have are easy to understand.
 * Welcome new users. Just leave on their talkpage.
 * Make sure people get the help they need.: Offer to help when you can, and if you can't, send them to the Wikia forums or staff.

Publicize your wiki

 * Tell your friends!: Reach out to groups interested in your topic (but learn the community guidelines before you post so you don't end up spamming).
 * Promote inside of Wikia: Once you have 200 pages, apply for a spotlight to get promoted on Wikia.
 * Make your wiki searchable: Follow our Advice on raising your wiki's Google ranking.

Keep track of your progress
It can be hard to keep track of what stage you're at in your wiki's development. With the Wiki Progress Bar, you have a tool that leads you through the first days and weeks of creating a wiki. There are specific calls to action that give you the steps you need to get your wiki off the ground. Once all 30 tasks are completed, the percentage indicator moves to 100%&mdash;and you have a great base with which to grow your wiki and make it thrive!

Small wikis are different
Shoot for the stars, but don’t aim too high in the beginning. Wikipedia is humongous and Wikia wikis like Wookieepedia or the Muppet Wiki are really big, but they didn’t start out that way&mdash;and not every wiki will or should be that way. Some wikis and subjects are smaller than others.

That means that a small wiki has different priorities and a different structure, and it needs different rules. "They do it this way on Wikipedia" is not a good way to run a small wiki. Find what works for you, your wiki, and your community, and then run with that. You don’t need to stick to what may seem like a preordained model.

The individual is important
The biggest difference between a small wiki and a huge wiki is that a small group needs to value each individual much more highly.

An individual contributor doesn't mean that much on Wikipedia. The top ten Wikipedia contributors could all take a month-long vacation at the same time, and it wouldn't make any difference to the project as a whole. If one person drops out of the project -- even a long-time, knowledgeable, valued contributor -- there are still hundreds, even thousands, who could take that person's place.

On a small wiki, each individual is very important. The top contributors on a small wiki are probably the administrators. They're the people who understand the structure. They're the institutional memory. They're the people who mentor new contributors, and help to referee disputes. If you lose an active contributor on a small wiki, there isn't necessarily anybody there to take that person's place. If you lose two or three of the most active contributors, then your wiki is in big trouble.

The flip side of that coin is that an individual can also do a lot of damage to a small wiki. One vandal, or one babbling kid, can't do much to harm Wikipedia -- the database is too big, and there are plenty of folks who enjoy finding and reverting nonsense. On a small wiki, there aren't as many people around to clean up the mess. If there’s no one around to clean it up, the wiki could lose contributors.

Therefore, you need to pay attention to each individual on a small wiki. Each contributor needs encouragement, mentoring, and appreciation. You also need to set boundaries that make the productive contributors feel safe and happy.

People don't like anonymity
It's amazing that people still believe in the old cliché that "on the Internet, people prefer to be anonymous." That may be so if someone is misbehaving, but aside from that, it just isn't true.

Compare these two hypotheses about what people like:


 * "People like to be anonymous, and seek out places to hide. It's satisfying and fun when they can contribute to society without anyone knowing who they are."

or:


 * "People like social experiences, and to seek out ways to interact with other people. They like going to places where they feel well-known, and welcomed. They enjoy being around other people, and when they're completely alone, they feel lonely and abandoned. They like being recognized and appreciated for their work."

If you look around at the way the world is structured, it's pretty clear that people crave social experiences. People work, play, and relax in places where other people are around. Sure, everyone needs some alone time, and some people need more than others, but that's not how we live our lives.

Look at a college campus on a sunny day. You see kids studying&mdash;a solitary, intellectual activity that requires concentration and silence&mdash;but they're doing it outside, on the lawn. They like studying there because they like having activity going on around them&mdash;other people studying, or chatting, or playing frisbee. It's worth the extra noise and distraction&mdash;in fact, people like being distracted by a low level of human activity around them. People enjoy being around other people.

But there are those who still argue that "on the Internet, people prefer to be anonymous." As if there's a difference between how we behave on the Internet and how we behave when we walk around in society. That's equivalent to saying that we become different people when we're on the telephone.

There is no "Internet." It's just a communication medium. You're still a person, with human needs and human feelings, and people don't like being alone.

A wiki is a volunteer project
There's one easy way to predict whether a wiki is going to thrive, or stagnate and die: look at the Wiki Activity or Recent Changes page, and check out how active the Talk pages are. If most of the users have a red "Talk" link&mdash;meaning nobody's ever bothered to talk to them&mdash;then that wiki is in trouble.

A wiki is a volunteer project, and the admins should act as if they're the volunteer coordinators at a non-profit agency.

If you walk into a non-profit agency to volunteer, there's somebody there to say hello. They get you oriented, and they check in with you about how things are going. If it's a successful, active program, then other volunteers are there too; they talk to you, and help you out. There's always a sense that your participation is important, and appreciated. If you're not getting paid for being there, then they need to give you something, and usually what you get is pride, satisfaction and appreciation.

A wiki where nobody posts on your talk page is like a volunteer program where you show up and walk into a big, empty room. There are a few people working in other rooms, but nobody talks to you, or tells you what to do. You're expected to just pick up some work and start doing it, and when you leave, nobody says thanks. It's not surprising when people show up at those wikis, try a few edits, and then don't ever come back.

People who like working alone have their own personal websites and blogs. People come to wikis because it's a communal project, with lots of people collaborating toward a common goal. They want to feel welcomed and appreciated.

The admin of a small wiki has three essential tasks&mdash;to welcome new people, to mentor the new contributors, and to be absolutely certain that they know how to participate productively and encourage communication on talk pages. Everything else is secondary.

User names build trust
Having a stable identity makes communication possible. Contributors with user names build a record of contributions and a reputation. If the community as a whole knows that a particular contributor is trustworthy, then that can influence how conflicts get resolved. You need a stable identity to earn people's trust.

Allowing people to sign in with a random string of numbers breaks down the community's sense of trust and common goals. You can't build a strong team of trustworthy colleagues that also includes shadowy, faceless strangers.

Setting reasonable boundaries for anonymous contributors proves to your active members that they matter, that this is a group worth protecting and taking care of. Groups like it when the leaders act in the group's interest. It makes them feel needed and secure. That's basic group process technique -- it doesn't matter whether the group is on the Internet or in your living room; that's how you build a group.

Love your contributors
This is all basically saying the same thing: Love your contributors. They're working for free. Some of them are spending hours of their personal time every week. The only reward they get is the satisfaction of adding to the project, and the pleasure of working with a group.

That's magic, it's pure magic. It's one of the best things about human nature. We like to work together, just for the pleasure of building something. That's why so many people believe in wikis, because wikis are a pure expression of our generosity, our passion, and our strange, quirky enthusiasms.

That's why you have to take care of your contributors&mdash;talk to them, welcome them, take their interests to heart. Learn their names. When something is bugging them or frustrating them, take care of it. Pay attention to them, and make sure they feel appreciated.

These are extraordinary people, doing extraordinary things. Love them.