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Wikis For Conference CommunicationsASIST 2007Bradley Hemminger, UNC Chapel Hill

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Talk Overview

• Outline– Motivation– Methodology & Examples– Early Results

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Motivation

• In the past, conferences have produced static proceedings, which are summaries of presentations (abstracts to full papers). Having a way to raise questions, comment on ideas, or express relationships between them could enhance discussions at the conference, as well as provide a richer environment to search after the conference.

• Wikis are an interactive technology that can provide the virtual “space” where these more interactive, community based discussions take place.

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• Many people have suggested the idea of pre-meeting sharing (for instance, Ed Mitchell, Editor of Knowledge Board (2002-2006), London-based), based on experience from European meetings

• Read beforehand and then have:– Structured, facilitated sessions.

– Open-spaced gatherings.

– Intimate, conversation-based event.

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Social Communications

• Not all communications need be “scholarly”. Part of building the community is by bringing the people closer together through sharing information about each other, their activities, their interests. So facilitating social events, SIGs, Birds of a Feather can help build community.

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Methodolology

• Results are primarily a summarization of the ASIST 2006 Workshop Blogs and Wikis for Conference Communications: How useful are they?

• Experiences from early developers and maintainers of wikis & blogs for conferences– Meredith Farkas, Norwich University– Jackson Fox, Lulu.com– Brad Hemminger, Univ of North Carolina at Chapel Hill– Beatrice Pulliam, Providence College– Stephen Francoeur, Baruch College– Charles Livermore, St. John's University– Heather Morrison, Simon Fraser University– Deborah Swain, North Carolina Central University

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Example Conference Wikis

• ASIST 2005, ASIST 2006, ASIST 2007– Example 2005 Panel Session– Example 2005 Social Events

• ALA 2005, ALA 2006• IL2006• KMI06• CIL2006• JCDL 2006

http://www.ils.unc.edu/asist2005/wiki/

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ResultsEdits per day

0510

1520253035

404550

10.27.2005

10.30.2005

11.2.2005

11.5.2005

11.8.2005

11.11.2005

11.14.2005

11.17.2005

11.20.2005

11.23.2005

11.26.2005

11.29.2005

Edits

Dat

e

Series1

Registered User Edits

024681012141618

10.27.2005

10.30.2005

11.2.2005

11.5.2005

11.8.2005

11.11.2005

11.14.2005

11.17.2005

11.20.2005

11.23.2005

11.26.2005

11.29.2005

12.2.2005

Edits

Dat

eSeries1

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Pre-Meeting

• Providing audience input for scheduled presentations– Defining topics of interest, focus scope of presentation, discussion– Posing questions for presenters

• Allowing presenters to add information– Clarifying scope– Adding resources (more easily than through program)

• Planning activities– General Social events (dinners, lunches, outings)– Group Based Activities (SIGs, chapters, BOFs)

• Promote dynamic discussions (not prescheduled)• Provide personal information to improve networking experiences

(What do you want to learn? What do you have to share?)

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During Meeting

• Posting late breaking news, announcements• Posing “live” questions to be answered in

question and answer part of sessions/talks• Scheduling/Signing up for activities

– General Social events (dinners, lunches, outings)

– Group Based Activities (SIGs, chapters, BOFs)

• Governance, Administrative meetings

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Post-Meeting

• Adding Reviews and Comments by Participants on events

• Linking related materials to event/session

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In Reality…Wikis were used• As central place to hold current and collaborative information about

the conference• To add material about presentations, and to update or clarify their scope.

• To provide late breaking conference announcements.

• To share information about the conference environment: location, restaurants, hotel, wireless.

• To schedule activities (outings, dinners, BOFs, SIGs).

• To share information on how to experience the conference.

• By attendees to share information about themselves (to network).

• For governance activities.

• By non-attending participants.

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They are not well utilized for

• Posting pre-meeting input (scope, questions, etc).

• Posting post-meeting thoughts, comments.

• Posting during meeting comments or reviews about papers/presentations/events. Will require more education, incentives for people to change behavior and use this as a place to share information. A major hindrance, though, is lack of free wireless at conferences.

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Requirements to be effective

• Easy and frequent promotion and marketing of the wiki. For instance the 2005 ASIST wiki was much more used, when we made extensive efforts publicizing it (handouts at registrations, emails, announcing during the conference).

• Seeding the wiki with material. If it’s empty no one will come (like an empty restaurant).

• Free wireless internet access. (this is true in that the pre and post meeting are affected as well if people cannot participate in the wiki during the conference)

• Spam controls

• Constant supervision to help novice users, and control spam.

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Blogs vs Wikis People seem to blog more on talks, than making edits on

wiki pages. There was a definite preference by users to be able to find information in one location. Given that more content was added by blogs, but in potentially multiple different blogs, we suggested the most effective solution would be to have consistent tag mechanism used to identify blogs are part of the conference. Then these could be harvested, and links to each blog that talks about a particular conference event would be given a link on the wiki page for that event. This yields a single page associated with the conference event, which would contain wiki supplemental information, and links to all blogs relevant to this event.

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Some statistics from ASIST 2005Nov 08 2005

• Site statistics• There are 1,419 total pages in the database. This includes

"talk" pages, pages about ASISTWiki, minimal "stub" pages, redirects, and others that probably don't qualify as content pages. Excluding those, there are 136 pages that are probably legitimate content pages.

• There have been a total of 48,820 page views, and 1,120 page edits since the wiki was setup. That comes to 0.79 average edits per page, and 43.59 views per edit.

• User statistics• There are 73 registered users, of which 3 (or 0.21%) are

administrators

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The End

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Extra Material

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• Main Page (41,928 views) • About the wiki (21,551 views) • CRADLE discussion on ASIST 2005 Wikis and Blogs (15,184 views) • Attractions (11,998 views) • Let us know what you think about the wiki! (7,923 views) • Sunday (7,247 views) • How do I use the wiki? (7,199 views) • Tuesday (5,616 views) • Social Events (5,199 views) • Saturday (5,001 views) • Conference Participants (4,943 views) • New Members and First Time Attendees Brunch (4,675 views) • Wednesday (4,575 views) • Birds of a Feather (4,158 views) • Friday (3,912 views) • SIG get-togethers (3,713 views) • Governance (3,369 views) • Contact us (3,361 views) • Digital Reference: an Analysis of its Use by Children and Teenagers

(3,321 views) • Seminars (3,206 views) • Restaurants (3,205 views) • Monday (3,151 views) • Hotels (2,907 views) • Wireless Access (2,506 views) • Knowledge Map of Information Science: A Report on a Delphi Study

(2,486 views)

Most popular pages

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Views Per Day

0100020003000400050006000700080009000

10.27.2005

10.30.2005

11.2.2005

11.5.2005

11.8.2005

11.11.2005

11.14.2005

11.17.2005

11.20.2005

11.23.2005

11.26.2005

11.29.2005

Views

Dat

e

Series1

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Edits per day

0510

1520253035

404550

10.27.2005

10.30.2005

11.2.2005

11.5.2005

11.8.2005

11.11.2005

11.14.2005

11.17.2005

11.20.2005

11.23.2005

11.26.2005

11.29.2005

Edits

Dat

e

Series1

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Registered User Edits

02468101214161810.27.2005

10.30.2005

11.2.2005

11.5.2005

11.8.2005

11.11.2005

11.14.2005

11.17.2005

11.20.2005

11.23.2005

11.26.2005

11.29.2005

12.2.2005

Edits

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Anonymous User Edits

02468101214161820

10.27.2005

10.30.2005

11.2.2005

11.5.2005

11.8.2005

11.11.2005

11.14.2005

11.17.2005

11.20.2005

11.23.2005

11.26.2005

11.29.2005

12.2.2005

Edits

Dat

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SysOp User Edits

0

5

10

15

20

2510.27.2005

10.30.2005

11.2.2005

11.5.2005

11.8.2005

11.11.2005

11.14.2005

11.17.2005

11.20.2005

11.23.2005

11.26.2005

11.29.2005

12.2.2005

Edits

Dat

e

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Spam Edits

0246810121416182010.27.2005

10.30.2005

11.2.2005

11.5.2005

11.8.2005

11.11.2005

11.14.2005

11.17.2005

11.20.2005

11.23.2005

11.26.2005

11.29.2005

12.2.2005

Edits

Dat

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Significant Dates

• Conference Oct 25th – Nov 2nd 2005

• Nov 18th 2005 Logins required

• Jan 4th 2006 Changed to Read Only (but some spammers still gained access)

• May 2006 Effectively shut down outside edits

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Blogs vs Wikis Differences

• Blog: author based, more as expression space for recognized individual authors.

• Wiki is more based on content/community. Does not necessary distinguish or identify authors. Easy to setup structure paralleling existing conference event structures with one page per event or program item.

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Require wiki logins?

• Users setup—use password verification for additional security (media wiki after 1.6)

• Preload all users (we setup batch way to do this for all ASIST members using their member ID, but chose not to do this)

• Do not require any login—we thought this was best given our goal to encourage people to easier use a system they may not be familiar with.

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Handling Spam

• Team that constantly checks for spam– Recent changes– Block problem ip addresses

• Tools for this ( )

• Require authenticated logins

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Statistics Nov 08 2005

• Site statistics• There are 1,419 total pages in the database. This includes

"talk" pages, pages about ASISTWiki, minimal "stub" pages, redirects, and others that probably don't qualify as content pages. Excluding those, there are 136 pages that are probably legitimate content pages.

• There have been a total of 48,820 page views, and 1,120 page edits since the wiki was setup. That comes to 0.79 average edits per page, and 43.59 views per edit.

• User statistics• There are 73 registered users, of which 3 (or 0.21%) are

administrators

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Statistics Nov 30 2005

• Site statistics• There are 1,425 total pages in the database. This includes

"talk" pages, pages about ASISTWiki, minimal "stub" pages, redirects, and others that probably don't qualify as content pages. Excluding those, there are 133 pages that are probably legitimate content pages.

• There have been a total of 95,796 page views, and 1,330 page edits since the wiki was setup. That comes to 0.93 average edits per page, and 72.03 views per edit.

• User statistics• There are 97 registered users, of which 3 (or 0.21%) are

administrators

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Statistics Jan 03 2006

• Site statistics• There are 1,428 total pages in the database. This includes

"talk" pages, pages about ASISTWiki, minimal "stub" pages, redirects, and others that probably don't qualify as content pages. Excluding those, there are 136 pages that are probably legitimate content pages.

• There have been a total of 195,078 page views, and 1,544 page edits since the wiki was setup. That comes to 1.08 average edits per page, and 126.35 views per edit.

• User statistics• There are 175 registered users, of which 3 (or 0.21%) are

administrators

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What is a Wiki?(weekee, from Hawaiian term for superfast)

• “A wiki is a freely-expandable collection of interlinked web “pages”, a hypertext system for storing and modifying information – a database, where each page is easily editable by any user.”

• “Wiki is a …collaborative space…because of its total freedom, ease of access, and use, [and] simple and uniform navigational conventions … [It]…is also a way to organize and cross-link information.” (Leuf & Ward Cunningham 2001,p14-16).

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About Wikis

• Wikis are an example of social software (blogs, IM, IRC). They permit groups of people to work together in a virtual environment. No special privileges are required, edits are input on the document itself, all updates are visible immediately.

• http://www.public.iastate.edu/~gerrymck/WMW-I.pdf for summary of wikimedia.