-- RichardDonkin - 22 Jul 2001

Peter has a Twiki slideshow that discusses this - you need a key knowledge person (a WikiWonka? who can begin populating stuff -- almost acting like a webmaster initially. I had a team of 5 people doing that for a major telecomm company. We are now starting to see other people contribute to the various webs that we established.

-- DavidWeller - 22 Jul 2001

Acting as a webmaster initially is a good idea. So others could ring you up and ask some questions about the contents of some topics. But if they want you to change some contents, you say "oh, it's not my page, it's our page. Please try to change it in your browser and I'll help you..."

-- StefanScherer - 23 Jul 2001

Add an AskQuestions topic. In that topic have a paragraph or two about how to ask questions or answer questions that the visitor might know the answer to. That might help get the ball rolling. I think the original Wiki might have some information on how to spark a wiki community too.

-- DavidLeBlanc - 24 Jul 2001

Q for DavidWeller - how long did your team act as webmasters before you got other people contributing? A rough idea of how many webs and how big they were would be helpful.

We are currently on two webs, both with 170 topics (strangely enough), one with 20,000 words and the other with 75,000 words. (There are two more prototype webs using the FormTemplateSystem.) Most content comes from a handful of people, but the readership of these sites is much higher. Since we already have an active set of NewsGroups, there are no ThreadMode discussion topics on this site, through there are some thread-mode topics where people add hints and tips. Most topics are DocumentMode, which I suspect inhibits some people from adding things since the page 'looks finished' even when it really isn't.

Any ideas on how to encourage changes to document-mode pages are welcome.

Also, ideas on the usefulness of training courses would be appreciated. Have you tried delivering stand-up or informal training at all?

Re the AskQuestions topic - I did put up an empty ProductFAQ topic but have yet to see anyone asking questions there, perhaps because there weren't enough people on the WebNotify list.

-- RichardDonkin - 24 Jul 2001

Training courses were discussed at HowToGetInternalBuyInForTWiki (and possible at other places).

-- PeterMasiar - 15 Feb 2002