Here are some of my key leanings from the past few years of working with wiki communities. I will write more about each of these points in the future posts.
- Use a license that maximizes content use. Give copyrights of the content back to the user.
- Promote your active users to roles of greater and greater responsibility. Make them administrators, content police, editors, spellcheckers etc.
- Create a space where all users can add value. Extract value form everyone: your readers, technical experts and language experts and the silent majority.
- Design for participation. Simple interface, easy to use.
- Don't enforce social norms with software .
- Help the community define and evolve rules of cooperation.