Posts By Ryan Derousseau

Building a Wiki Community: Partnerships Anyone?

When Whorunsgov.com first launched in January 2009, we had very little partnership help. In the year since our launch, that has changed with brands like Foreign Policy teaming up with us during our Who Runs the War Project, which created thousands of extra page views. Main Justice, Medill Journalism School and Govloop are other partnersRead… Read more »

Building a Wiki Community: Pet Projects

Since launching the moderated wiki, Whorunsgov has, on a couple of occasions, created projects to entice people to contribute. We try to focus these projects on narrow topics that people have strong opinions about. The projects include: 1) Tracking Blue Dog Democrats’ stances on the proposed health-care bill 2) Highlighting advocates and lobbyists that workRead… Read more »

Building a Wiki Community: Gotta Love the Social Media

A significant difference between wikis created now and those created two-to-three years ago is the advent — and proliferation of — social media. Facebook is no longer used only by college kids, and Twitter results now show up on Google searches. What a change! In order to build a community, you must be able toRead… Read more »

Building a Wiki Community: Moderating Contributions

A few weeks ago, a member of the Whorunsgov community contributed some valuable information to the profile of Douglas Evans Coe, a leader in “The Fellowship.” This contributor did a great thing by trying to help us all know more about Mr. Coe, and even provided a source. But there was one problem: The sourceRead… Read more »

Building a Wiki Community: The 90-9-1 Problem

In last week’s discussion on encouraging the timid contributor, Govloop creator Steve Ressler left a link to the phenomenal — and horrifying — site 90-9-1.com. It explains a common community interaction ratio seen on wikis. The 90-9-1 Principle states that members of a community will interact with the wiki in a defined way. According toRead… Read more »

Building a Wiki Community: Helping the Timid Contributor

An email we see daily at Whorunsgov often comes from a reader suggesting an addition or change to a profile. While emails like this often mention valid changes, the reader could have made the change directly in the profile without informing us first. The strange part about these emails; after we suggest the readers makeRead… Read more »

Building a Wiki Community

A couple days ago, I was speaking to the infamous founder of govloop, Steve Ressler. We were discussing ways businesses and government agencies use govloop. During this brainstorm, it occurred to Steve that a blog about Whorunsgov’s attempts to build a community for its moderated wiki could benefit many govloop members. While I had heardRead… Read more »