Added: "Participation encouragement" page

Out of a desire to increase participation in the Tinwiki (which I think is basically essential if Tinwiki if to come close to achieving its potential), I have created a new page on participation encouragement.

I realise that I may be treading on the toes of William One Sac and the Tinwiki editors, so I will completely understand if the relevant page is moved, removed or rewritten.

My objective is to have a page which I can link to in my forthcoming posts, which will (amongst other things) seek to highlight the Tinwiki and encourage participation in it.

So, any additions to the new page (particularly any additions to the "why bother?" section) would be very welcome.

Similarly, if any readers of this thread have any concerns or issues which are causing them to hesitate about participating in Tinwiki then I'd like to hear what those reasons are so that thought can be given to them.

All the best,

Isaac

[edit on 2-9-2007 by IsaacKoi]

IsaacKoi,

Nice, that's a timely and appropriate addition to the tinWiki help pages. Just now I have linked to it from the page called About TinWiki.org, and also from a page I created a short while ago called Chores, and I also think to create a third little "button" to link to the new page from my signature.

The page deserves to be linked to from some additional places, though, like the Help pages and absolutely from a possible new Community portal that might be created. (There has been a little talk about such a page at least..)

I also took the liberty of adding a short message to the bottom of your newly created page, which is a tip regarding writing article text in one's own words and to name sources. I hope I didn't make too much of it, but I would say that topic is a profoundly important consideration for all article contributions.

Anyway, I almost can't tell you how perfectly right it felt now when I saw this new page. Yeeee-haaw. :-) It gave me some impression like it was like a really healthy vitamin shot or something to tinWiki. I absolutely feel that it adds a needed and important resource to Help, except it's in a certain way more than a help page, it's like an explanation of why there's any point (no pun...) to tinWiki in the first place. A little tinWiki advertising of that sort is not an endeavor that should be underestimated, or so I would say.

Optimist

This is another great addition to the tinWiki IsaacKoi, excellent. You are really giving me some good ideas and are inspiring me to try and find new ways to "get the word out" about the tinWiki website. Kudos!

Well I have made an attempt at formaing a new a new topic on Tinwiki, so I hope all has worked out as planned.

Many thanks for the link to the dummies guide to tinwiki, couldnt have done without it. Hope I can do more in the future.

Participation has most definitely been encouraged.

Great.

Due to other commitments, I'll probably be off-line for the next week or two - but I'll be back with a couple of bigger posts to encourage participation now that the most of the groundwork has been laid.

All the best,

Isaac

Thanks Optimist.

By the way, I've now submitted an article for the newsletter which seeks to draw attention to the Tinwiki. (If the article doesn't get accepted for the newsletter, I'll post it in the UFO forum as soon as I get the rejection notice).

I'll post another (much bigger) article in the next few dayswhich will, among other things, also seek to drawi attention to the Tinwiki.

All the best,

Isaac

IsaacKoi,

I like it. :-) By the way, I put a link to the Participation encouragement page in my signature, like I mentioned.

I really feel like tinWiki is taking some nice steps forward these days, which I would say is a very good thing. In my opinion, tinWiki, being what it is, has a quite important purpose on the web.

Optimist

Thanks. The article I mentioned above was circulated to the ATS newsletter mailing list last week ("ATS Premium: Top 10 UFO Photos (and masses of others)"), and the following day I posted the longer post which also discussed the Tinwiki ("Free UFO Researcher Starter Pack).

The text about Tinwiki in both posts was fairly similar (you can read it here, and was basically summarised the material I'd written for the "Participation encouragement" Tinwiki page.

I had hoped that those posts would prompt a bit more discussion of the Tinwiki. Oh well.

All the best,

Isaac

Isaac,

Hello.

I am not good at following up things, very often. This reply is rather late.

When I read your post, I had the thought that your material will be good to link to from articles about tinWiki. I also believe that, even if the response was not as good as you hoped for, you did improve tinWiki's basis and fundament. Every step counts.

Lately, I have done some minor -- but hopefully 'key' -- improvements in tinWiki itself. My thoughts, after having done some edits of that type now, is that, in addition to publicity and 'spreading the word', it is also important to improve 'useability' at the tinWiki website itself. That is what will allow visitors to want to come back over and over again, and will also improve the possibility of awareness of tinWiki spreading by 'word of mouth'. And part of the fundament of that whole process of tinWiki being improved and getting better known is precisely stuff such as your campaign.

Optimist


P.S. I came across tinWiki by coincidence and not through ATS, and frankly my knowledge of ATS was very superficial and it actually was some time before I realized that tinWiki was related to this ATS place I'd seen now and then in the past. My not noticing that your material had already been published of course reveals that I still can't actually call myself an ATS-er. Being slow to catch on to things, it's actually just recently that I've started to check out the ATS newsletter when I receive it in my e-mail... Well, I guess that's enough confessing for now. :-)