Well, it hasn’t really been away, but this week sees some big things going on over at the Nonsensical Encyclopedia.

On to these big things I started telling you about, then. January has seen an explosion (or at least a small increase) in activity at the site, prompting renewed fervour for article writing and just general mucking about without the admins consent. Nah, don’t worry, they ain’t gonna ban you or anything… as long as you don’t go all Gordon Ramsay on them and start questioning their legitimacy and such. See, I happen to know them personally and although they’re a little but insane they aren’t bad people looking to knock you down a peg or two.

This increased interest in the site has led me to take a hammer to the front page, instating a long-awaited modified landing pad for the Big Cheeses’ helicopters. Not really, on our wages they couldn’t afford a second hand bicycle from Hindley car boot. Hopefully this rejig will lead to even bigger ‘n’ better things, such as world domination or at the very least a slap on the back from some bloke in the pub. Which isn’t really likely, since I don’t think anybody in the Fox and Chicken would have even heard of the Internet.

Nevertheless, the Illogiblog has seen an upsurge in contributions and there’s actually the feeling that people care about the place again. Not that it was ever missing, but at least there’s a general collective community spirit beginning to appear once more.

Contribute to the Illogicopedia. Go on, you’ll like it.

As a bit of a follow up to my earlier piece on Wikia, I’ve gone to the trouble of outlining some specific things you ought to know when creating a Wikia wiki. Don’t see these articles as a personal attack on Wikia, who, on the whole provide a very good service. Consider them a rant against the general over-reliance on advertising at free content websites, something that’s becoming increasingly prevalent in this current economic climate, and something that cheeses me off slightly.

Look out for more posts on this subject in the future and perhaps some sort of archive bringing all my Wikia pieces together.

I’ve witnessed the downfall of Wikia due to its increased reliance on advertising first hand in the past year. Whilst I don’t want to dwell on the events of precisely one year ago, I decided to breifly revisit the subject with a general account of what happened from my point of view. It can be found here, and is the first piece I’ve published at HubPages.com, an online content hub (as it were) for writers and businesspeople to post articles.

It’s been somewhat painful, though I hope to have exorcised one or two demons. Hmm, I know that’s unlikely, but it was nice to vent my spleen again.

Of course, this is never as easy as it sounds. The dreaded writers’ block is always around the corner and trying to force yourself to be productive can be a heavy burden to carry, especially when there are outside distractions.

Sharrock’s lecture has inspired me to post my own tips for being creative, the techniques that I use to cope with the creative demand.

• Forget about the task in hand. No, really – once you’ve thought about something for a long time, it can weigh on your mind. Forgetting about it by doing another activity helps you relax and often you’ll come up with the solution to the problem just like that.
• Just take a walk, or watch some television and you’ll be surprised how many times an idea will come to you when you least expect it.
• Keep a notepad by on your bedside table. During the time in between wake and sleep, our mind can often make spurious associations, some of which may be useful. Remember to write them down, though, as you’ll probably have forgotten it by the morning.
• Bounce ideas off people. Your family, work colleagues and other people in the same field as you – all may have something to contribute and bring in an outside factor you were initially blind to.

As a parting note, just remember that being creative is a process, and not always necessarily a product. And remember, it can take years to find a working technique that’s right for you. What are your personal methods?

The About Page

For the conceptual part, take the time to think and write your site’s overall aim, a guide for users to see exactly what your wiki is about. At these early stages, it doesn’t matter if you do not have a definitive goal to write about – as you are working with a wiki, it will be possible to revise this, with the help of your fellow users, later on. It will help, however, as  the About page will often be the first port of call for your site’s (hopefully) numerous visitors.

Main Page draft

The next step is to draft out a front page. Again, at this stage this does not need to be visually arresting as long as it contains the essential ingredients:

• A header including the name of your site. For example, “Welcome to WikiCars, the definitive car encyclopedia”, where the second sentence is added as a subheading.
• A prominent link to your About page. Most wikis usually do this directly using the site heading. For example, in the header “Welcome to WikiCars”, ‘WikiCars’ ought to link to the About page.
• A link to the help portal. Well, it’s unlikely you have created one of these yet, but some Wikifarms like Wikia now include a brief set of pre-loaded help topics ready for you to customise to your taste and requirements should you so desire.
• A short description of your site, around two or three sentences communicating what it is your wiki actually does. In a lot of cases, this acts as a welcome message or addendum to the header, which communicated the essential elements of the site’s aims.

If you’re feeling more adventurous, you may decide to copy an existing wiki’s front page design. This will take more time to perfect to your specifications, but provide a more attractive user interface for people to interact with and look more professional. In general, as is the key with wikis, time + effort = success.

A fancy main page is not hugely important right now, however. In time it will be addressed as you develop more content to factor into the front page; featured articles and media; latest forum topics; site news, links and so on. As long as the front page is functional right now, that’s all that matters.

You may also choose to protect your front page, and eventually you may find that you want to restrict editing of the page to sysops only in order to prevent vandals. In these early generative stages, it may be helpful to leave the front page unlocked so that the first few users can help you out creating it. When the vandals arrive you can reconsider your options.

Appointing your first administrators

Administrators are the guys that make the wiki tick, the glue that holds your site together. The ideal candidate is active on the wiki, has a very good understanding of what the project is about and above all cares about what they do. They need to perform tasks such respond to queries, deal with troublemakers and do the housekeeping by touching up and clearing out articles.

If you founded the wiki as part of a group of people, selecting your first admins will be a pretty easy task. If you’re deciding to go it alone, however, it will help massively to recruit some new users from somewhere.

Your best bet is to scout around for wikis similar to yours. Do a Google search: for our example, this would be “car wiki”. The first few links will usually be Wikipedia ones, but scroll a little further and you may be lucky and find a variety of existing wikis similar to your topic.

If so, brilliant – take a look around for a bit, post a message in their forums or on administrators’ pages announcing your new wiki. If you did this in, say, four similar, relatively active wikis, you can pretty much expect a bit of Recent Changes traffic helping to get your wiki off the ground, for a while at least. Even if you can only muster a few edits at first, every little helps. Someone may inspire you to create a new and helpful policy page, or maybe make an interesting proposal for the about page.

In the absence of existing wikis on the subject, search for forums and strike up conversation there. You never know which of these users will become your next regulars or even administrators, so aim to appeal to as wide an audience within your field as possible without being too imposing. Forumers generally don’t like being preached to or being ‘spammed’ with irrelevant topics, so choose your sources carefully.

Be welcoming

Part of what attracts people to participate in wiki projects, particularly the smaller ones, is the sense of camaraderie around the place. Write in an informal, jovial fashion and generally interact with people as if you were talking to people in your local pub or bar. Build up a sense of community by putting a brief custom welcome message on each new registered user page. Check for the latest new users on the User Creation Log (Special:Log/newusers) and turn the “Talk” page link from red to blue.

Some wikis initiate a project whereby a selection of users regularly check for new users and welcome them. Something to think about for the future: form a “Welcoming Committee” to ensure each and every new user has a message on their talk page. In the long run, only around ten percent of the guys you welcome will go on to be semi-regular contributors. But, just think: that welcome message could have got you a few extra edits from that user.