Ruth Crumey10 September 2009

Your Archives: collaboration and user engagement

Your Archives

• Why we created Your Archives

• Options

• Lessons learned

• The Future of Your Archives

Why we created Your Archives

• Readers keen to share their knowledge but how could we harness a willingness to engage while maintaining “standards”?

• Staff had created a knowledge base in various formats – could this be shared more widely?

Online options

• Websites

• Blogs and forums

• Wikis

MediaWiki

• Free to download

• Widely used

• Wiki mark-up

• OpenSource

What did we need from a wiki?

• Simple to search and edit• Indexed by popular search engines• Page protection• Collaborative• An audit trail• Basic technical requirements• Export and re-use capability

Policy

• Post-moderated• Terms & Conditions• Relevance• Appropriate content

• Moderators are not content editors• Language• Other concerns

• Links• Legal issues• Images and other formats

MediaWiki provides:

• Spam filter

• Registration

• Control levels

• Feedback

• Protection

• Your audience

Lessons learned

• A champion

• Technical support

• Risks

• Wikipedians

• Support your users

• Beta version

• Moderators

• Exit strategy

• Policy

• Post-moderated

Lessons learned: policy

• Spam

• Inappropriate

• Risks

• Trust and accuracy

• Editorial authority

• Terms and Conditions

The User Community

• Transcriptions• Indexing linked to Flickr images• Indexing the Digital Microfilm images• A series of articles on War Memorials and Cemeteries

illustrated with hundreds of the contributor’s photographs• Opening up the history of the Security Services• Two conservation projects• Wikipedian input

The Future of Your Archives

• Extending discussion in Your Archives – Next Steps• Help our users to develop

• Confidence• Quality• Technical skills

• Developing our skills• Technical• Other risks

“Wikipedia approaches its limits”

Deletionists argue for a tightly controlled and well-written encyclopedia that provides valuable information on topics of widespread interest. Why should editors waste time on articles about fly-by-night celebrities or wilfully obscure topics? Inclusionists, on the other hand, believe that the more articles the site has, the better: if they are poorly referenced or badly written, they can be improved – and any article is better than nothing. After all, they say, there is no limit to the size of the site, and no limit to the information that people may want.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/2009/aug/12/wikipedia-deletionist-inclusionist

The Guardian 12 August 2009