More Thoughts on starting a UnionWiki
I've been doing some more reflecting about this UnionWiki idea that Mark Dilley and I have been thinking about starting over at http://www.communicateordie.com/node/17#comment-12
A big concern I have about doing our own wiki is that it would duplicate a lot of stuff at Wikipedia. There are already lots of articles over there about labor unions. Sure, we could cut and paste the article content from Wikipedia into our own, but what's the advantage of doing that? There is none. It's actually a big pain because you'll probably want to synchronize the two different versions of the same article.
Another drawback to running our own wiki is that it will see much less traffic than Wikipedia. Would most users go (or even know about) the UnionWiki instead of Wikipedia? I doubt it. Maybe a handful of hardcore union folks would, but that's about it. But if part of our mission is to spread the good word of the labor movement to the larger public, we probably shouldn't be walling ourselves off from the rest of the Internet. We should probably be mixing and mingle with the general public on Wikipedia.
The one big benefit of doing it ourselves is that you get tighter editorial control over the content and material. With Wikipedia, you have absolutely zero control because even anonymous users can edit the content there. The articles on Wikipedia tend to be rather blandly written. Our own wiki could have more color and be written in a pro-worker, pro-union voice, making it more suitable for other unions to link into.
The question is, is that benefit worth the effort of doing our own Wiki? Or should we just create a small task force to update and labor-related articles on Wikipedia? What do others think?
I see two issues right off
I see two issues right off the bat with not moving forward with a UnionWiki because of Wikipedia. First, Wikipedia is a neutral point of view website. So if we argue that unions are good, someone else can either argue that they are bad or neuter our pro-union view. We need a wiki that is ours, to say what we want, and I for one want to scream pro-union! Secondly, let's see what is on Wikipedia:
From the category of "Labor," there are 85 articles, and 9 subcategories with a combined total of 91 articles there. These include international discussions regarding labor. Additionaly there is a list (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_trade_unions) and a meta page on the Labor Movement. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Labor_movement)
Certainly there is much information there and that work should not be discounted. But I have to believe that the international labor movement is much deeper than the nearly 200 articles on Wikipedia, by 10 fold! We would not need to sync our UnionWiki with Wikipedia, but we certainly would have pointers back and forth. Maybe union articles would be written on the UnionWiki instead of on Wikipedia, who knows.
Off the top of my head, we could have these categories: History, Bargaining (strategy and language), Organizing (internal and external), Communication (the benefits of one on one communication, email, fliers, meetings, websites, phonebanks, etc.) - just to name a few.
The idea, for me, is that we create websites (weblogs and wiki) where any interested person can start creating content. (again this idea of devolving power that I mentioned in another thread.)
I hope to come across as passionate about these ideas rather than bull headed or worse.
That's my 2 cents. :-)
It's definitely a good idea
The question for me is not whether or not it's a good idea. It is. I'm mostly worried that it's going to take a huge amount of time and attention to promote and develop before this resource gets the kind of use by the labor community that it deserves.
There's a lot that would go into building a successful union wiki. You're going to have to recruit others, train them on how to use a wiki, set policies, etc. I'm not able to commit a lot of time to such an undertaking.
But if you are willing to take the lead on this, I will help and support you any way I can. Let me know how I can.
I recommend posting a blog item with a proposal about the UnionWiki project that goes into some detail about how to accomplish all this. We need concrete ideas and suggestions for pulling this off. If you are passionate about it, than you are the man for the job.
Let's start a new site
I had a thought. Why don't I create a new Drupal site specifically geared for discussion around creating our own UnionWiki? You can be in charge of it. It will have the same user base as communicateordie.com. We'll use unionwiki.communicateordie.com for the domain. The actual wiki would have its own domain.
Let me know if you are interested and I'll set the site up.
Drupal
Wow Steve!
I am just learning drupal on this site. :-)
I would be more interested in just picking a wiki engine and starting. I think the community will grow from it.
Would you be interested in hosting a wiki right now?
Drupal's not too tough
Drupal's not too tough. And I'd always be here to help. You'd get a lot out of it, too, as it's a great tool to get familiar with. But, if you don't want to take that on, I'm not going to twist your arm.
I can host the wiki, no problem. Just let me know which wiki you want me to download and install and if you want your own domain name.
Wiki Engines
I like OddMuse, simply because it is what I am most familiar with on a user end: http://www.oddmuse.org/cgi-bin/oddmuse
but MediaWiki is pretty popular: http://wikipedia.sourceforge.net/
The problem is I don't know code. So it would be up to you to maintain it until I figured out the code, or someone else came around that could help. (code patches, spam black list, etc. - the actual wiki needs no code knowledge.)
Is there anyway that the wiki and the weblog could interface with each other? For example, if I typed in a wiki word, like MarkDilley or in MediaWiki style [[Mark Dilley]], here in the weblog, it would link to the wiki page?
Steve, I really appreciate your time in talking about this stuff. Best, Mark
Interface to wiki
Is there anyway that the wiki and the weblog could interface with each other?
Mark, yeah, there is a way to do that. It would actually be pretty easy to do.
I took a look at oddmuse and it looks pretty basic. If you want to try something more powerful like MediaWiki, let me know. I don't have any problems handling code patches, applications installations, etc.
I think I'll set up oddmuse for now just to test it out. I'll let you know when it's done.
Drupal has some sort of wiki feature though
it just does if we can get it working properly :-)