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Wikis, CMSs, & Community

Wikis, CMSs, & Community. Enhancing Publishing in Libraries. by Michael Ritchey (Twitter: mtritchey ). Today’s Lesson. Overview of FamilySearch services Challenges & strengths in 2006 Solution Concept & Requirements Quicken publishing cycle Multiply content output

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Wikis, CMSs, & Community

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  1. Wikis, CMSs, & Community Enhancing Publishing in Libraries by Michael Ritchey (Twitter: mtritchey)

  2. Today’s Lesson • Overview of FamilySearch services • Challenges & strengths in 2006 • Solution Concept & Requirements • Quicken publishing cycle • Multiply content output • Boost teamwork, morale, community relations • Improve content design, quality & relevance

  3. Some Background on Our Perspective • Family History Library & Research Support • Research Support: 50 questions/day by phone & e-mail • 80% of questions answered by volunteers • Our volunteers & customers are senior citizens • 2006: Customer Relationship Management (CRM) • CRM model: customer’s question routed to an agent • 4500 family history centers worldwide • CRM model is not scalable to help family history center volunteers • 2006: Knowledge Management System (KMS) • KMS closed to volunteers; obsolete content

  4. Challenges

  5. Challenge: Advise Genealogists Worldwide

  6. Challenge: cover more places Research advice on FamilySearch Internet, 2006

  7. Challenge: cover more languages Research advice on FamilySearch.org about countries in their native language, 2006

  8. Challenge: Update content faster Research advice on FamilySearch.org revised 2001-2006.

  9. Challenge: connect customers with experts How do I find birth records from Brazil? Sounds tough! I dunno (Yawn!) I wish I had someone to help!

  10. Our time-tested model Implement old idea Achievedenial Fail

  11. 2006 Revelation: Headquarters can’t do it alone. Is there a better way?

  12. Our Strengths as an Organization Expert staff

  13. Expert staff World-renowned record collection Our Strengths as an Organization

  14. Expert staff World-renowned record collection 60,000 volunteers Our Strengths as an Organization

  15. Cover more places Cover more languages Update content faster Connect customers with experts Expert staff World-renowned record collection 60,000 volunteers Solution: Community! Challenges + Strengths = Community Strengths Challenges

  16. Selling the concept: Wikipedia

  17. Selling the concept: Wikipedia • 8thmost popular Website • Content written by community • 3,000 new entries per day • Most errors corrected in 5 mins. • 11 edits per article

  18. Requirements

  19. Requirements • Open source • WYSIWYG authoring tool (yo mamma) • Article history/version control • Limit visibility of some articles • Volunteer authoring • Easy interlinking • Admin can lock down a page (Home page) • Notifications • System deployable by non-engineers!

  20. Solutions

  21. First solution: Plone CMS

  22. FamilySearch Wiki: Plone site Questions of concurrent authoring scalability

  23. 2007 MediaWiki iteration

  24. Quicken the Publication Cycle

  25. Challenge: Update content faster Every revision required input from • Director (approval) • Publication strategist • Usability specialist • Technical writers • Editors • Correlation • Software engineers

  26. Update content faster on a wiki Shortens the publishing cycle… …from months to minutes. • Get an idea • Add it to the wiki • Get input • Iterate

  27. Multiply Content Output

  28. Multiply Content Output • 800  19,000 docs since 2007 • 82,000 edits in 2009 (as of 10/04/09) • Top contributors have 10k-16k edits ea. • 2009 edits = 719,000,000 characters • 6,900 characters/edit avg. • Top pages have 300-500 edits • Reference librarians writing 22,000 hours/year

  29. Boost Teamwork, Morale, Community Relations

  30. Teamwork, Morale, Community • Collaborative projects • Unfettered Subject Matter Experts (SMEs) • SMEs reach out for project help • Collaboration between community vols. & staff • Weekly user group/community meeting on Adobe Connect

  31. Improve Quality & Design

  32. Quality • Footnotes • Bylines • Change history • Discussion pages • Patrollers • Moderators • Watch lists & change notifications • Members are Pit Bulls • Community Meeting

  33. Learnings • Relinquish control • Initiate projects with small teams; require 70% consensus for redesign • Govern by social constraints, not system constraints • Let community try any miscreants • Invest lots of time w/ community • Share success metrics to win support & resources • Empower, train & support volunteer project leaders

  34. Today’s Challenges (Got advice?) • Not getting 25% of librarians’ time • Wiki mgrs. spread too thin to manage content dev • Empower & train community as project mgrs. • Experimenting w/ right mix of project mgmt. vs. production • Democracy  design paralysis. Limit re-work! • Projects: Small team makes initial design; later design changes require 70% consensus.

  35. Conclusion: We are smarter than me! • The job is too big for Headquarters • Volunteer communities can do big jobs • Success = community collaboration

  36. wiki.FamilySearch.org Twitter: @mtritchey

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