Steve Pavlina Wiki?

[Keith]

The forums are a great meeting place for discussing personal development and related issues. They're less good as a reference. Discussions on a given topic straddle dozens of threads and are intertwined with other issues.

It would be absolutely awesome to see StevePavlina.com host a wiki dedicated to personal development.

That would enable StevePavlina.com members to collect the core ideas and insights from discussions and structure them in an easily-accessible format for others (and themselves) to use.

Given the community focus I would propose giving edit access only to signed-up members (ie. no Anons). If memberships could be shared between the wiki and the forums that would be ideal, but that may not be possible.

Thoughts?

[Keith]

Is there really no interest in this idea?

It seems like it would be spectacularly useful, to me.

[fourthdan]

It is an interesting idea. The only hitch is it's a lot of work - who'se gonna fill it?
Also Steve's beleifs and ideas not only keep changing over a period of time, and we all have different degrees to which we agree with them.

Turning it into a wiki would still be nice, though.

[Andreas]

I agree, let's look into this.

Setting up a wiki itself is not difficult, but the challenge is responsibility. Because the Wiki would contain interpretations from many people from this forum, Steve would need to put a disclaimer that those opinions don't necessarily reflect the beliefs of Steve Pavlina, etc. The nature of a Wiki is to come to a consensus on a subject.

But that's okay. A common reference to some of the ideas here would be highly useful.

I hope Steve considers the upsides as well as the downsides to this idea. At any rate, we could have a 30 day PavlinaWiki trial.

[Angela]

What's a wiki?

[Dan.Linehan]

A knowledge base that can be edited by anyone.

[mncz]

That would be one extremely cool wiki, but it would take a lot of nerve and neutrality to be able to contribute to it properly. For example (completely made up and imprecise example):
-------
Reincarnation: an idea that one person lives multiple lives. Supported in ancient religions like Hinduism and Buddhism. (extended edition of religions here). Modern believers of reincarnation support their belief by... (extended edition here)

Opposite beliefs include Atheism (hyperlink), Christianity (hyperlink). There is a scientific theory that points out that the idea of Reincarnation and related experiences can be explained by a defect in the human brain. Read more about it here (hyperlink).
---------
And just how one could manage to not turn this in a perpetual flame war?
Then again, I have always admired the fact that although quite controversial topics are triggered in these forums, they have always held a certain standard of mature discussion. Perhaps it is doable after all?

[Keith]

Originally Posted by Dan.Linehan

A knowledge base that can be edited by anyone.

Basically, yeh - though in this case I would recommend limiting it to logged in users only (ie. no Anons).

Angela, Wikipedia is the most famous example of a wiki. Each of those articles was collaboratively created by users and viewers.

Originally Posted by fourthdan

It is an interesting idea. The only hitch is it's a lot of work - who'se gonna fill it?

Everybody!

Originally Posted by fourthdan

Also Steve's beliefs and ideas not only keep changing over a period of time, and we all have different degrees to which we agree with them.
Turning it into a wiki would still be nice, though.

What I had in mind wasn't so much a collection of Steve's thoughts - the blogs and articles serve that purpose just fine - but rather a collection of the community's best thoughts.

It wouldn't be encyclopaedic like Wikipedia with it's Neutral Point of View policy. Rather, it would be a collection of relevant and different perspectives on particular issues. I would envision someone saying something insightful in a forum discussion and someone else saying "we should add that to the wiki".

eg. We could have a page on weight loss that collects together the best insights from the forums. It would probably also have hyperlinks to pages on different diets, exercise routines, relevant mental techniques etc. Similarly there would be a page on LOA.

Probably a good starting point would be a page per forum : one for Health & Fitness, one for Personal Effectiveness etc. As the pages get larger they can be fissioned off into appropriate subtopics.

[Steve Pavlina]

I thought about adding a wiki to the site a couple years ago. It seems like it would take a lot of admin/moderation work to create one of high quality. Accounting for the deliberate wrongdoer could be quite a burden, although there are various ways to deal with that.

There's an opportunity cost with each new project added. I honestly didn't see the wiki coming out near the top. I figured that my best bet would be to write a book and/or create other info products. I think the value delivery would be higher than with a wiki.

Other projects I'd probably rank higher than a wiki would be video blogging and webinars.

[Keith]

Originally Posted by Steve Pavlina

I thought about adding a wiki to the site a couple years ago. It seems like it would take a lot of admin/moderation work to create one of high quality.

I would recommend making the current forum moderators admins of the wiki. They've proved their worth.

I don't anticipating much admin work being required though - the community is composed of pretty responsible people.

Originally Posted by Steve Pavlina

Accounting for the deliberate wrongdoer could be quite a burden, although there are various ways to deal with that.

Give edit access only to registered members. That minimises the potential for deliberate wrongdoing by anonymous outsiders.

It's been my experience with wikis that, as long as the rightdoers outweigh the wrongdoers they tend to be self-regulating - any vandalism is quickly erased.

The beauty of starting a wiki here is that you're starting with a community of personal-development-seeking rightdoers.

Originally Posted by Steve Pavlina

There's an opportunity cost with each new project added. I honestly didn't see the wiki coming out near the top. I figured that my best bet would be to write a book and/or create other info products. I think the value delivery would be higher than with a wiki.
Other projects I'd probably rank higher than a wiki would be video blogging and webinars.

Those are great projects, but they're not comparable to a wiki - they're all one-to-many communication channels that enable you to talk to us. A wiki is a many-to-many communication medium.

If you would be so kind as to host a wiki and create the initial administrator group it need involve no additional work on your end: we can take it from there.

[Brutha]

I think the lifehacker example shows that just getting up a wiki isn't enough to create an active one.

Opposite beliefs include Atheism (hyperlink), Christianity (hyperlink). There is a scientific theory that points out that the idea of Reincarnation and related experiences can be explained by a defect in the human brain. Read more about it here (hyperlink).

By the way that is wrong. There are atheists who belief in some form of Reincarnation (if you think that human beings are created by random events and you belief that there is infinitve time, that leads to the same human being being created multiple (an infinite amount of) times)

[Dave Kaminski]

Originally Posted by Keith

I would recommend making the current forum moderators admins of the wiki. They've proved their worth.

That's a lot more work

[DayInTheLife]

I've seen wikis set up on all kinds of sites, and the only one that works well is wikipedia. Most are full of inconsistent, biased articles that are seldom read or improved.

The reason is that it takes a VERY large volume of users and editors to ensure accuracy and remove vandalism. Wikipedia articles about popular topics tend to be of high quality because there are too many knowledgeable people reading them frequently for inaccuracies to survive for long. More obscure topics tend to be incomplete and inconsistent because relatively few people have an interest in improving them.

A site with a much smaller audience than Wikipedia will not have the same level of quality in its articles. I think it would make sense to instead host un-editable, single-author articles approved on an individual basis by the administrators.

[Keith]

Originally Posted by DayInTheLife

I've seen wikis set up on all kinds of sites, and the only one that works well is wikipedia. Most are full of inconsistent, biased articles that are seldom read or improved.
The reason is that it takes a VERY large volume of users and editors to ensure accuracy and remove vandalism.

* Create - Wesnoth
* http://linux.strangegamer.com/index.php?title=Main_Page

IME it has very little to do with the number of users and more to do with the ratio of core users to newbies. So long as new users don't arrive at such a huge rate that they overwhelm the community, they either become expansions of the existing community or leave.

As mentioned, this would be a wiki for this community. That's a pre-existing strong community core of users.

Also as mentioned, unlike Wikipedia, it wouldn't be open to non-member edits, so you wouldn't have 'drive-by vandalisms'.

Honestly, a lot of these posts seem to be the standard hypothetical "Why wikis will never work" arguments. The fact is, in practice, wikis can and do work.

Sure, jumpstarting a wiki from nothing (the "build it and they will come" model) often fails. A certain critical mass of users is required to get started, as is a strong community feel. We have both of those here already.