[OWW-SC] Alternative Welcome System and Home Pages

[Julius Lucks]

Excellent!

Yes - this is just a concept - the details of the actual pages that  
would be created is something I thought the SC could come up with as  
a group.  Thanks for the changes.

Julius

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http://openwetware.org/wiki/User:Lucks
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On Apr 20, 2007, at 9:44 PM, Reid Williams wrote:

> I think this is an excellent idea. There were a few phrases that
> seemed too imperative to me ("Please add something about yourself
> there") that I changed.
>
> regards,
> -reid
>
>
>
> On 4/20/07, Julius Lucks <lucks at fas.harvard.edu> wrote:
>> Hi All,
>>
>> Vincent and I have been thinking a lot about how to get oww  
>> members to
>> contribute more content so that we can grow the existing oww  
>> community, and
>> attract new members by pointing to high quality examples of  
>> content on oww.
>> One of the things that struck us is that there doesn't seem to be  
>> an easy
>> way for a complete wiki novice to get into editing.  The existing  
>> welcome
>> email is very long and has many links for people to follow and I  
>> think it is
>> confusing to a novice.  Also I have spent some time browsing  
>> around OWW and
>> it seems hard for someone completely new to the site to find  
>> content by just
>> surfing around.
>>
>>
>> So Vincent and I want to propose a new welcome system that involves
>> automatically creating a 'home page' for new users when their  
>> account is
>> created.  I'll give you all the reasons why we think this is a  
>> good idea,
>> but to see for yourself, please look at our mock home page at
>>
>> http://www.openwetware.org/wiki/OpenWetWare:Steering_committee/ 
>> Outreach_chairs/mock_home_page
>>
>> or the one I am playing around with for myself at
>>
>> http://www.openwetware.org/wiki/Lucks
>>
>> The idea is that every user has 3 pages made for them when their  
>> account is
>> created: the typical User page, a home page, and a sample project  
>> page (more
>> about this one below).  The User page can be used to show more  
>> personal
>> information, but the idea behind the home page is to give people a  
>> hands-on
>> quick introduction to the wiki-way in terms of their own academic  
>> projects.
>> The home page is set up in such a way as to provide both an  
>> introduction,
>> and an example system for how people might think about posting their
>> academic content.  Being an experienced user, I often find that  
>> wiki's give
>> too much freedom in the choice of page and section names, formatting
>> options, etc.  The home page would give users something to work  
>> off of
>> rather than having to come up with a system on their own.
>>
>> The home page also has a section listing seperate project pages for
>> individual projects.  The third page automatically created is a  
>> sample
>> project page that gives a skeleton outline of what kind of info it  
>> would be
>> good to have in describing a project on the wiki.  The idea is the  
>> same here
>> - that people can just start to fill this out instead of having to  
>> come up
>> with some system on their own.
>>
>> I'm not sure about the technical difficulties of creating these  
>> pages, but
>> this is something along the lines of Reshma's recent suggestion of  
>> filling
>> in the User page.  The benefits of this system we think are as  
>> follows:
>>
>> * hands on introduction to the wiki for a new users OWN content  
>> rather than
>> a standard tutorial page that they would have to read and then  
>> apply to a
>> page they create
>> * having tutorial info on the page gives the user an incentive to  
>> start
>> editing and personalizing right away (to remove the tutorial info)
>> * having a scaffold of pages is much easier for someone to handle  
>> than
>> having a blank slate - we can emphasize that they can customize at  
>> any time
>> * the scaffold promotes good naming conventions and structuring of  
>> content
>> on the wiki - if everyone did this it could help people find  
>> information
>> easier because they would be automatically familiar with how other  
>> people
>> structure their content from knowing how they do their own
>> * this is more along the lines of what scientists need.  Wikipedia  
>> works
>> well because ALL the articles are in theory collaborated on by  
>> everyone, and
>> a simple User page suffices to identify someone.  Scientists work  
>> on many
>> projects and so need a place to put specific information about these
>> projects in a place where they have at least semi-ownership to  
>> acknowledge
>> that they are the principle person on the project, even though  
>> others may
>> edit.  I think having a project page system like this is more  
>> along the
>> lines of what people think of now in their non-wiki science and  
>> how they
>> might use a private wiki if they have one.  This makes it an easier
>> transition into opening up the data and might facilitate faster  
>> content
>> migration from the private wikis to the public one.
>> * the system is flexible and we can think of a way for people to  
>> easily hook
>> into lab websites and what not, but this allows someone not  
>> affiliated with
>> an OWW lab to get going easily
>>
>> The mock page could use some work, but I hope you all can give  
>> some good
>> feedback on the general concept.
>>
>> Cheers,
>>
>> Julius and Vincent
>>
>> -----------------------------------------------------
>> http://openwetware.org/wiki/User:Lucks
>> -----------------------------------------------------
>>
>>
>>
>>
>> _______________________________________________
>> OpenWetWare Steering Committee Mailing List
>> sc at openwetware.org
>> http://mailman.mit.edu/mailman/listinfo/oww-sc
>>
>>

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