Re: [OGDev] help with some questions? (WikiSym 2006)

On Wed, Mar 29, 2006 at 05:25:33PM +0100, M.B.Gaved wrote: Here's my response for the Open Guide to Manchester To quote from http://manchester.openguides.org/ : This site is part of the OpenGuides network of city guides, and exists to provide a living guide to Manchester, contributed and updated by the people who spend time here. We're independent and non-corporate, and exist to provide a comprehensive guide to the Manchester we know and love. I don't really have an anticipated audience. Content goes on the guide, and people access it, currently mostly through Google searches. Occasionally, people contribute to it. I don't really know who these people are other than traces in my Apache weblogs. I'm hoping over time that more people will subscribe to the ogm-discuss mailing list and we can get more of a coherent community going. When I'm looking up information and find a city guide, I'm often frustrated by the adverts, the poor navigability, and the content. Entries rarely link to each other, and are rarely organised neatly. The content is often out of date or biased, and there's no way to correct it. I think my Open Guide is easier to navigate, and easier to contribute to. The lack of adverts and clear (if unpolished) design help with this. There aren't many particular rules, other than those governing the licensing of content. Ther's a house style which helps keep things consistent. The only real "admin" work I do is deleting spam. I was involved with the Open Guide to Oxford through moving in the same social circles as the admins. When I moved to Manchester, I was invited to take over administration of the Open Guide to Manchester by one of the people responsible for its hosting. As admin, I am responsible for keeping the guide free of spam. As a user, I contribute new content and modify existing and contributed content to keep the guide as smooth and usable as possible. My goal was and still is to increase people's awareness of my Guide until it becomes a regular source of information for people. This will be done by promotion, content and grass-roots awareness. I don't see any finite stopping point. If it were to become too much hassle, it'd presumably be busy enough that I could recruit a replacement or supplemental admin to help me. I've had content added about things in Manchester of which I was not previously aware, which is good. There has recently been a minor spate of wikispam on many OpenGuides, which is a minor problem. At the moment, I only publicise my guide by linking to it from my blog, and from the Manchester community on LiveJournal in response to questions. In future (specifically once OpenGuides supports OpenID) I'll promote the Guide more heavily on LiveJournal and other Manchester-related sites and mailing lists. I have a plan to flyer physical locations, particularly those which are already in the Guide. I do not feel that my Guide is very successful yet, measured in terms of traffic received. Once it is getting more hits from users than search engine crawlers, I'll be happy. Once I start getting more regular contributors (particularly those who aren't OpenGuides devs), I'll be very happy. As long as the Guide is useful, which is a function of how frequently it's kept up to date. I don't see a finite end point, though I can imagine a situation where it fizzles out due to lack of interest. Try to make your site as usable as possible. Get non-geek friends to proofread the meta pages and see if they can make sense of it. Reasonable layout and photos both make a site more inviting. Dave -- Dave Page <grimoire(a)sparky.ox.compsoc.net> Jabber: grimoire(a)jabber.earth.li