Lessons from Wikipedia

    • How to increase participants and retain existing users

      • Create new opportunities and roles for active participants

      • Make it easier to track changes to articles of interest and thus ensure contributions survive.
      • Add social networking elements to MediaWiki
      • Reward" contributors that answer reader questions.
      • Allow contributors to subscribe to feeds by "topic area" so they can see what questions readers are asking.
      • Make it easier to add verifiable information
      • Discourage deletion of quality content
        • Add functionality that lets editors "mark" text that they have verified and approve of, so that text gets more gravity and stability in an article
        • "penalize" contributors and admins who demonstrate a pattern of removing others' verified work
        • make it easy for users to "report" a user or IP address that is deleting content to admins

  • Potential partnerships

        • Social networking sites
          • LinkedIn - particularly if people cite "professional development" as a reason for contributing to Wikipedia
          • Facebook
          • Twitter
        • Libraries and other cultural institutions holding workshops with visitors
        • Engaging high school teachers: contributing to Wikipedia articles may be an excellent way to teach students basic research and summarization skills
        • International Organizations working with local populations in developing context appropriate educational materials
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