WelcomeFounder

Draft letter

Congratulations, wiki user, creator, developer and/or reader! and welcome!

If you’re reading this, it means you’re starting on a strange and exciting exploration of wiki. We, the world-wide wiki community, want to welcome you into the Wiki Ohana.

“Ohana” is a word from the Hawaiian language – the same language that gave us the word “wiki.” It means “extended family.” Like a family, the Wiki Ohana is a diffuse, diverse, unorganized group. We didn’t choose to join; everyone who starts, uses, reads or edits a wiki is part of our ohana, whether they like it or not, whether they know it or not.

Wiki, as a technology, is not very complex. Ward Cunningham, wiki’s creator, called it “the simplest thing that could possibly work.” What makes wiki interesting is the culture and practices that come with it. But the growth of wiki as a technology is outpacing the growth of wiki culture. We think the ohana can benefit if we communicate more about our culture.

As you delve farther into the wiki world, whether as an editor, developer, or community leader, you’re going to discover many mysterious challenges and counter-intuitive characteristics of wiki. You’ll deal with wiki spam, with vandalism, with community building, with conflict. We want you to know that we have had the same problems before, and maybe our experiences – our successes and failures – can help you deal with yours.

Moreover, we know that you are unique; your project is unique; your community is unique. You are going to break new ground in how to use wikis, and we want to know about it. Your knowledge and experience will enrich our community and make our culture stronger. We need you.

So this is your invitation to stay in touch. We know you’re going to be busy, but we want you to know that your ohana is out there if you want to talk to us. It’s OK if you don’t – you’ll still be part of the family – but we want you to know that you can if you want to.

Here are some links that may be helpful in learning more about wiki:

• http://c2.com/wiki/WhatIsWiki – The Portland Patterns Repository, the first wiki created by Ward Cunningham
• http://usemod.com/cgi-bin/mb.pl – MeatballWiki, a wiki community discussing communities and collaboration, especially on wikis
• http://www.communitywiki.org/ – Another wiki community about wikis and wiki culture
• http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wiki – The Wikipedia entry on wiki
• http://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/Wiki_Science – The WikiBooks? book about wiki science
• http://www.wikimatrix.org/ – a side-by-side comparison of wiki engines
• The Wiki Way – Ward Cunningham’s original book about Wiki technology and Wiki culture
• http://www.wikiindex.org/ – A worldwide index of wiki sites and the wiki community
• http://www.wikiohana.net/ – the organization wiki for the Wiki Ohana outreach program
• http://www.wikipatterns.com/ – some practices to help you build your wiki

Here are some ways to get in contact with the rest of the ohana:

• irc://irc.freenode.net/wiki – the IRC channel about wiki
• http://www.recentchangescamp.org/ – RecentChangesCamp, a yearly meeting of wiki practitioners
• http://www.wikimania.org/ – An annual meeting organized by the Wikimedia Foundation, the group behind Wikipedia
• http://www.wikisym.org/ – A conference of the Association for Computing Machinery (ACM)

Discussion

This is what we want to say:

• Welcome to the wiki world! We congratulate you on your decision to start a wiki. It’s a great idea! We hope you will find the wiki way as exhilarating (or mind bending or thrilling) as we found it to be.
• Part of our mission is to spread awareness of the WikiPrinciples: Being open and welcoming to newcomers and to editing, growing incrementally, encouraging sharing instead of owning, and using soft security to keep your wiki both safe and free.
• We encourage you to welcome new editors on this wiki site just as we have welcomed you to the wiki world.
• If you would like some more tips on how to run a wiki, please visit us at WikiOhana. We’re here to help.

What happened here

I wrote a draft letter on the plane on the way home from RecentChangesCamp 07. I think it could use use some editing down, but I went for a very sparse letter that explained the idea of the Ohana and then gave a lot of links to places to find out more about wiki culture. Anything longer, and nobody’s going to read it. --EvanProdromou

I like it Evan! MarkDilley