A few things I learned from setting up a wiki

Bringing together the learning points of my foray into wiki creation and administration (note: I'm (clearly) not an expert or anything, so my learning points may not necessarily be examples of absolute best practice):

1. If you need to compare wiki platforms, you could do far far worse than consult WikiMatrix. This tool lets you compare your choices from roughly 100 platforms across a range of attributes. It even has a handy Wiki Choice Wizard which helps you narrow down your choices.
2. If you're going to make test wikis, create them as test wikis and give them test names! You will inevitably find that you want to experiment with settings, and for certain fundamental settings (e.g. whether it's a business or individual wiki) you can't do so without deleting the wiki and starting over. For some services, PBwiki amongst them, once you delete a wiki the name becomes unavailable forever; so if you need to delete your test wiki, you don't want it carrying the name you were going to use for the real one!
3. Make sure you get in touch with any relevant Marketing and Communications or IT people to check that your wiki does not contravene their web marketing policy. This could be within your institution or, as was the case with me, within the organisation running the conference the wiki was for. Some talk beforehand about what you can and can't do will save you the hassle of re-writing later.
   
4. Consider giving freedom of writing access to your wiki. My wiki requires people to e-mail me (the administrator) to enable writing access, and it's turned out to be a real barrier to people editing and adding pages. Also, it's been extra work for me administering this aspect of the wiki (though I have enjoyed getting in touch with new users).
5. Don't just assume people will get in touch on the wiki - offer them reasons to interact with others, and make it easy for them to do so. I added a "Travelling together" page to the wiki to encourage users to club together for cab rides from the closest train station - it's been quite popular! I also added a template for creating a personal profile page.
   
6. Participate yourself if you want others to (that probably goes without saying). Comment, write, and add, and others will soon follow your example!

I could probably write a deal more, but for now, that's all, folks!

Creating a wiki - details of the process

I'm going to a Careers Information and Employer Liaison conference next week, the topic of which is the impact of technology on our roles in careers. Given the topic, I had assumed there would be some sort of conference wiki along the lines of this one, and I was looking forward to contributing to it and getting to know some of the conference attendees beforehand.
I asked, and there wasn't one, and you can see where this is going. You are reading the blog of the administrator for the conference wiki. Admire it.

Setting up the wiki wasn't too difficult. By far the hardest part was choosing what platform to host it on - I was basically looking for a free, web-hosted product with no adverts and the ability to make the wiki editable only by people who signed up. I looked at quite a few platforms and created test wikis in three, and in the end decided on PBwiki. I wouldn't say it was perfect, but then, a lot of the extras that would have been nice are in the paid edition, and I guess they have a right to charge for the extra functionality.

Then came writing the content. How much to write? What would interest people? How much time could I realistically afford to spend on the wiki? How could I encourage people to add their own content? I know I haven't got the answers completely right, but I guess it's a learning experience. I thought of things I would find useful pre-conference, and tried to get those going - e.g. a page to arrange to travel with others, and personal profile pages for people to introduce themselves. Others may add their own pages, though this close to the conference I think that's unlikely.

I interrupted work on the wiki when I was told that the Marketing and Communications people of the organisation running the conference wanted a word with me. Cue nightmare visions of wiki being taken down because not brand-compliant. Fortunately, they turned out to be really nice people who just wanted to make sure that I was linking to their site where appropriate rather than duplicating content. I did take down a few pages I had written - but it could have been so much worse. That'll teach me not to check with people!

Now I'm at the stage of encouraging people onto the wiki. Ideally this process would have started earlier - the wiki was only really ready to be advertised about a week before the conference starts. But you take what you can get. I have e-mailed conference goers to alert them to the wiki; the e-mail gives them some idea what they can do that would benefit them. I am also building in the option to use the wiki after the conference for post-session discussions and networking. Fingers crossed!