Help:How to Run or Manage a Wiki Project

This page is for compiling best practices on running a wiki content barn raising.

Have writers periodically report percentage of completeness
During a barn raising, it seems useful to have writers periodically report their articles' percentage of completeness. (See Maryland Barn Raising Tasks.)

Completeness: blood-rare does not equal well done
When regarding an article, each writer's idea of "complete" is different. Like a steak, a wiki article can seem fully cooked to one author and extremely undercooked to another. Some will use headings; some will link to many useful Websites; some will research exhaustively; some will link to OCLC/Worldcat rather than just citing Family History Library Catalog listings; some will add source citations; some will link to related articles; some will post queries on related forums and e-mail lists to get information from other experts. Some will do these things, and some won't.

So what's the solution? Is there a way to get writers to add the abovementioned value in every article? Is there a way to more accurately record a percentage of doneness for each article? Should a cleanup crew be held in reserve to go through articles that have been cooked blood-rare and tip them up to well done?

Revision of long articles -- 1:1 correlation between # of edits and % done
As I look through the topics pages linked from the Maryland Barn Raising page, I'm seeing a close correlation between number of edits to a page and how close it is to being finished. This is true with longer pages like Maryland Military Records, Maryland Societies, and Maryland Maps, not short pages like Maryland Bibliography. There may be some kind of ratio we can use to calculate % progress on an article we must revise based on its initial word count before revision begins vs. its number of edits or character count of edits. Ritcheymt

Make assignments more granular than "Revise Article X using Template Y"
Barn raisings are most effective when contributors are given assignments smaller and more detailed than "Revise Article X using the headings on page Y." Two such successful highly-granular barn raisings completed by volunteers are these:


 * 1) Creation of tables for each state listing county creation dates and parent counties such as Maryland County Creation Dates and Parent Counties. The request for a user's help on this project was made here.

Limit the amount of cleanup contributors do to others' work
Each contributor has strengths and weaknesses. Some contributors like to watch the contributions of others and add value to their articles. This can leave the original contributor feeling like the cleaner-upper is "stalking" them. It breeds some resentment and defensiveness, even if User B is adding good stuff to User A's articles. If you get signals that this is going on, it's a good idea to redirect User B on creating a body of fresh, new content rather than following User A's contributions and fixing them. There is a lot of virgin ground to be planted in this wiki -- a lot of desert that has never been developed -- a lot of places, topics, and records that have never been written about. It's easier to keep everybody happy if contributors aren't made to feel like somebody is watching and policing all their contributions. In order to keep all the contributors happy, it is sometimes necessary to tell a contributor "Hey, why don't you write [New Content X] rather than dressing up [Someone Else's Content Y].