When it comes to building a collaborative wiki, there are certain elements that significantly increase your chances for getting others to contribute to your wiki. Here are the PBwiki best practices for getting participants to be fully engaged in your wiki.

Avoid Blank-Page Syndrome: Pre-fill your wiki with content.
Most people get scared by blank pages. We call this “blank-page syndrome,” which causes users to flee and never return. There’s a way around this: Just add some content to your wiki before inviting users. Consider adding an “About Me” page, a “What’s this wiki about?” page, and a few more welcoming pages. Not only will this help new users get situated, it will help you get experience editing your new wiki. We find the learning curve of successful wiki editors to be about 12-15 minutes.

Make the front page a landing page for navigation.
Your front page should have a short explanation of the purpose of the wiki and links to appropriate pages, not one long scrolling page. This helps in two ways: First, users tend to get overwhelmed when they first come to a wiki, so this approach lightens up the content on the page and directs them to the next step. Second, if you get large amounts of users on one page, they won’t be able to edit it at once. With multiple pages, the chances of two people trying to edit a page at the same time is lower. So keep a short front page with links to other pages.

Give users something concrete to do.
One user, “Michelle,” had trouble getting co-workers to participate in her wiki for over a year. Then she changed her approach: She asked users to change one line of the Frontpage. Participation skyrocketed and continues to be strong a year later. Consider creating a soft request, like asking users to add their name or to fix a single spelling error on the wiki page. They’ll be much more likely to try editing if they have a small nugget to accomplish first.

Making logging in as easy as possible.
The problem is not access controls – it’s creating something compelling enough to get people to contribute to your community in the first place. Make your wiki easy to access and worry about access controls after getting a few regular participants. (If you absolutely need ironclad business security, we do offer the PBwiki Small Business Edition.)

Get everyone to participate.
When you start a new wiki, you’ll find that some people will cling to old methods of communication. For example, some of our users report that their co-workers continued emailing them or asking others to “please put this on the wiki.” When people email you, point them to the wiki. The beauty of PBwiki is that the most current information is always on the wiki, so direct them to your PBwiki URL and encourage them to add it themselves. After 2-3 reminders — and seeing their co-workers actively using it — they’ll be much more likely to contribute to your wiki.

Remind your users that it’s ok to play.
Your wiki users will be nervous the first time they come to PBwiki, wondering if they’re going to mess something up or cause an irreversible change. Assure them that it’s ok to edit pages — PBwiki automatically tracks changes and allows you to reverse changes, so they should feel free to edit an existing page or create a new page. In fact, one of your goals might be for each user to create their own page!

Make PBwiki part of your day.
One of our most successful wiki editors added “It’s on the wiki! http://wikiname.pbwiki.com” to his email signature, instant-message window, and on his website. When users messaged him, it was the first thing they saw. Consider putting your daily schedule or important notices on your wiki. When others see it used regularly, they’ll buy in, too.

Plugins allow you to add interactive widgets to your wiki like collaborative calendars, chat rooms, YouTube videos, photo shows, and more (full list here).

• To add a plugin, click “Edit” on any page in your wiki.
• Then click “Insert plugin” (the button with the funny-looking green icon).
• Then move your mouse over the different categories to add a plugin.

Bonus how-to videos: Insert voice chat, event planning, and general plugins (skip to 1:15).

Whether its a small team meeting or a huge 1,000 person conference, it’s important to have a specific roadmap to guide your discussion. Having an agenda lets participants know where they’re headed, and keeps everyone on track.

PBwiki is an awesome way to engage all of your attendees and shape the message that both you AND your participants want to discuss.

Here’s how:
1) Create a provisional agenda on a wiki page - posting the the call-in number and meeting time
2) Invite your participants to post their meeting materials and edit agenda items
3) Keep an eye on the edits and make changes when necessary

The Leadership Learning Community is a great example of how a national meeting was developed using PBwiki. Check out there results here.

As you can see the wiki agenda quickly becomes a dynamic, self organizing space where attendees can introduce discussion topics, decide how much time each topic receives and easily edit information as the meeting approaches.

During the meeting the online agenda can serve as a note-taking template, and when the meeting is completed, the notes are instantly available online. Everyone can review the agenda / meeting notes and provide feedback.

Why this saves time:

1) Don’t waste time emailing meeting minutes to people, or answering repetitive questions about discussion points, or dial-in numbers.

2) No need to collect meeting material - they’re on the wiki!

3) Wikis increase buy-in and participation in the meeting by involving the entire team in the planning stages.

When I was a student, I was a copious note taker. Where are those notes now? After moving from dorm to apartment to graduate school to San Francisco, those notes are nowhere to be found. Two hours of searching my parent’s attic I located my college photos, my old rice cooker, and several textbooks books. No notes.

Dustin at www.lifehack.org has a great idea - use your wiki for class notes. Here’s how:

Instead of taking notes in class like this:

Transcribe your notes into your wiki (or, for those cutting edge individuals, take notes directly in your wiki).

Why this is an awesome idea that saves you time:

1) Fully legible - not only can you actually read your notes, but formatting with bullet points, bold lettering and headings helps to organize ideas.

2) Share - Easily share you notes with other classmates. Why bother heading to library to photocopy your notes or risk losing them when you lend them to someone? Simply direct people to your wiki page.

3) Link - Add links to relevant articles and websites to create a comprehensive study guide. Don’t try to compile information right before the exam, that’s when you should be chugging coffee and cramming.

3) Search - Locate all your information with the click of a search button. Can your Mead notepad do that? Not yet!

Check out the many other cool reasons you should use a wiki to take your notes on www.Lifehack.org

I agree with you! It’s a huge pain to keep track of shared office documents. I am forced to figure out - does this document reflect the most recent changes? Was this version approved by the board? Has the team signed off on this document? Grr!

A wiki is a great way to cut down on that frustration. Here’s how I used my wiki to collaborate on my recent proposal for a city grant:

I started by posting the most recent revision of my grant on the wiki. To do this I just cut and pasted my original word document.

I invited others to collaborate on my project. It took my team a few weeks to get used to the idea that the document was always updated and always on the wiki. After a few weeks of responding to request for the documents with, “Check the Wiki!� everyone caught on.

It’s easy to keep track of revisions. By checking the document history, I can see who made changes and when they were made.

Rather than editing the document and emailing it to the team, I simply edit our shared wiki. Everyone receives notification that the wiki was updated and knows where to find the most recent copy. In the end my document was revised by three different departments, and I wasn’t wasting my time trying to keep track of every iteration. Fantastic!

How this saved me time:

1) I no longer have to search through email to find the most recent document, or figure out what I named the most recent copy on my desktop – my most up to date work is always on the wiki.

2) Finding old copies of the same document is simple, they’re always saved in the revision history. Again no more searching through past email or copies saved on my desktop.

3) Instead of receiving tons emails with revised documents, I’m notified when a change takes place. It’s easy to track what was changed and who made the changes (Less email noise!)

Yesterday, we posted feedback from educators called 10 reasons educators love us. Today, we’re posting feedback from superstar educator Kathleen Ferenz’s seminar on PBwiki. She asked the educators in her seminar…

“How would you use PBwiki?”

“I can see this as really useful for having students create and share book reviews.”

“Would want to redistribute this presentation to our region and the counties we service.”

“After fiddling around with wikis for awhile, I plan on implementing them into the curriculum.”

“I could use this at work as well as at home.”

“Helping teachers create them for their students, Book Reviews”

There’s more!

“Daily in the library media center and in inservices.”

“I am definitely going back to start my library wiki tonight. IT’ll be ready to roll out when school starts next Monday.”

“After school programs, during library time.”

“Will set up a Wiki with the classes which I give orientation to, a poetry Wiki and a picture book Wiki.”

“I will definitely use it in all my computerized schools. I look forward to beginning by having 3rd graders share book reports on their pbwiki”

…and still more ways educators would use PBwiki:

“After more thorough exploration of the wikis, I will most likely start having the students use the wiki that I create to post their research work and projects at the end of the semester.”

“I will definitely use the wiki with my class this year. I have already begun creating a wiki over the summer and plan to use my class as test bunnies this year.”

“I can use PBwiki as a resource which parents can access and also develop curriculum that I can use in the classroom with students.”

“After using the wiki wiki website for a couple of months I would like to use it with my students as another teaching method.”

“I would use the Wiki web pages to create pages for students to post their work right away and to do grades at home.”

Our friend and top educator Kathleen Ferenz sends us a report from a workshop she recently lead on PBwiki:

“Here are some winning quotes from this week’s workshop evaluations,” she writes:

• “I love the ability of the wikis to easily create webpages for students and classroom use. The students can easily add information and student work for all to see through the use of the wiki.”
• “Learned about the power and usefulness of Wiki.”
• “Useful tools for sharing information with students, parents and other teachers.”
• “The introduction to wikis and google docs.”
• “PBwiki and Google resources are very useful skills that I aquired during this workshop!”
• “Good ideas to use in my classroom and in my professtion life.”
• “I can see the benefit of using wiki wiki with students and pass on the skills to fellow teachers at school.”
• “Wiki web pages for collaboration for teachers and students.”
• “Using Wiki is a fantastic opportunity for collaboration!”
• “Vast potential, fun, practical. Will immediately implement at my school.”
• “Setting up a pb wiki is invaluable.”

Coming up tomorrow: An answer to the question, “How would you use PBwiki in education?”

Here’s a great new feature especially handy for our businesses, education, and government users: Access-via-email lets you set an email domain, and anyone with an email under that domain can grant themselves Contributor access to your wiki. An example will make this a lot more obvious - here at PBwiki we run a bunch of internal wikis and this feature makes it easy to set up self-service — no more “hey, what’s the password for that wiki?” with new employees and new wikis. I set ‘@pbwiki.com’ in the ‘Access via email’ section of the wiki settings and now anyone on the PBwiki team can let themselves in using their name@pbwiki.com address. Easy!

The “Access via email” feature is available for all Silver, Gold, and Platinum wikis (it depends on the wiki being configured with a Contributor user level).

Today we had a team meeting about improving PBwiki logins and access controls. This is something that is a top priority for us, and we’ll be working on it in phases starting immediately.

What to expect in the coming months
Better control over access on your wiki. You’ll be able to send certain pages to certain people, including groups of people (”Send this page to the engineering team”). For example, if you edited an agenda but only want marketing to get notified of the change (or the VP of marketing), you’ll be able to do that. You’ll be able to seamlessly add and remove access from your wiki using a simple interface.

Better visibility of who’s doing what. Our new system will let you easily see who changed what on your wiki. For example, if you add 20 people to your wiki, you’ll be able to see who’s confirmed their invitation and who’s edited a page.

Better handling of multiple wikis. Not much more to say about this except that it will be awesome.

Two examples
Let’s take two examples: Mr. Businessman and Mrs. Teacher.

Mr. Businessman is in charge of the wiki for his small company. He needs high security for his wiki — including an auditable trail of who changed what on the wiki, and IP locking so only people from his company can access the wiki (IP whitelisting is already available for business wikis). With these new features, he can say that Michelle changed the Meeting page on 8/10/07. He can have a full, printable record of changes. He is working on a draft and doesn’t want his manager to see it yet, so he hides it from everyone except his colleagues in marketing. He needs the marketing team’s input, so he gives them access.

Later, after it’s finished, Mr. Businessman will change the permissions so the CEO can see everything, the VP of Marketing can see all marketing materials, and his project manager can see relevant projects.

Mrs. Teacher has a classroom with 35 students and she uses PBwiki as a collaborative space for writing essays together, posting her syllabus, and letting the students collaborate. Using the new system, she’ll be able to import all of her students from an Excel/CSV file into her wiki and give them immediate access. She’ll also be able to see exactly who changed what on any page, including revoking access (or undoing a change). This is hardly ever a problem, but we know educators want to be sure about who’s changing what.

These changes will be slowly rolled in over the next few months, so keep your eyes peeled. We’ll keep you updated every step of the way. If you have feedback, leave a comment here!

-Ramit
Part of your PBwiki team

Folks,

This morning at 8:03am PDT, our San Francisco center had a power issue, causing about half of our servers there to go down. Due to the large amount of data we now safeguard, as our servers came back up, some of them took a while to verify the correctness of PBwiki’s data, and one of our database servers was fried. Thankfully, we’re quite rigorous about making sure data is in multiple places, so your data was not at risk.

But PBwiki was slow/unavailable for about an hour. We sincerely apologize; we’re putting in place mechanisms to keep the service from being as affected by a single outage and able to recover more quickly and gracefully. We take great pride in making sure that you have smooth, snappy, secure access to your data at all times.

Sincerely,
David Weekly, CEO