2010/05/17
So, as I've mentioned a few times now, the SharePointDevWiki.com is migrating to SharePoint 2010 from Atlassian Confluence.
I'm just flicking through the web site and was thinking that I really should get some feedback off the people who use this site before simply migrating the content over in the same structure.
A few questions I've got flying around my head:
- what do people prefer out of the layout of the SP2007 dev space (task driven) to the SP2010 dev space (comparison to SP2007)?
- ...should it even matter if we can now use navigation, taxonomies, folksonomies and search to consume information in the site?
- would users prefer more pros/cons type 'play book' content over regular blog post style articles that evolve over time? or both?
- what are the pages that SharePoint Developers value the most?
- what's missing for SharePoint Developers that would be useful to them?
Please feel free to add comments below this post. I'd appreciate anything pros and cons 
2010/03/31
I just wanted to say a big THANK YOU to the guys at CustomWare
who offered to host the Atlassian Confluence site for me as the server it was on was struggling a little under the load from all you AWESOME visitors and contributors!
I am still looking to migrate to SP2010 at RTM time on May 12th, but we just needed something that wasn't falling over so much until then
CustomWare are experts in Integration and Collaboration. They connect SharePoint with other systems, ranging from Salesforce.com to SAP and Oracle. They are also experts in Wiki's and Atlassian-based solutions, you can check them out at http://www.customware.net
2010/02/25
As you may be aware I founded the SharePointDevWiki.com in December 2008. The goal of the wiki was to provide a place for likeminded SharePoint community members to share information. I was, and still am, sick and tired of having to trawl through blogs to keep up to date in a chronological fashion spread across 500+ SharePoint community blogs or rely on Google/Bing. The purpose of the wiki was to try and bring this information together in a more logical way which matures over time, rather than pages being reedited or reposted chronologically.
Statistics
Wiki Visitor Growth
The site currently sits at about 22,000 Unique Visitors a month and 45,000 page views. It was ranked #5 on PostRank for ‘SharePoint’ sites for 2009 below the Microsoft sites and EndUserSharePoint.com. 70% of the traffic in 2009 came from search engines and 20% came from Direct Traffic.
Top Authors
I ran some stats on the SharePointDevWiki.com last night and was interested to see that out of 1720 page creations/modifications that 1200 (72%) were mine. A big thanks to all the authors, but top 10 listed here:
Jeremy Thake - 69.77%
Alex Angas - 1.92%- Brian Farnhill - 1.45%
- Rich Finn - 1.34%
- Keith Dahlby - 1.28%
- Mark Rackley - 1.16%
- Aidan Garnish - 1.05%
- Paul Grenier - .99%
- Thomas Resing - .93%
- Waldek Mastykarz - .76%
Podcast growth
There have been 3 podcasts published to date (which are also available on iTunes) that have had over 575 downloads since mid January 2010.
Webcast/Screencast growth
There have been 9 webcasts/screencasts (which are also available on iTunes) that have been published since mid Jan 2010 that have had over 3000 downloads.
Twitter account growth
The @SPDevWiki account has just over 1,400 followers and is listed on 112 Twitter Lists with 739 tweets since the site was founded. Most recently I have started tweeting links that I personally used to tweet on @jthake on this account too. Topsy now states this account to be influencial.
Reasons why users don’t participate
People don’t realise
I get lots of comments that they “don’t realise they can edit the content” after them telling me a page was incorrect. With “wiki” in the title I assumed too much obviously and I think this has caused some collaboration not to be happened.
People don’t know how to or where to
The next most common theme is that people have got to the point where they want to contribute and “don’t know how” or “don’t know where to put it”. When I initially started out there was a lot of discussion around the structure. Most were keen on having none and people just adding it, but without some form of structure and foundation, authors just don’t know where to put pages.
“Why should I?”
I guess the biggest reason authors don’t contribute is not because of lack of content but is more to do with creating their own little island of information under their own Personal Brand. Obviously there is significant effort in putting Information together to publish and authors demand ROI.
This is easily tracked via statistics such as:
- number unique visitors,
- page reads,
- trackbacks,
- RSS subscriptions (via feedburner),
- mentions on social sites (postrank.com) etc.
With readers at their blog, they can explore other content by the author and are indulged in their Personal Brand.
This visibility is not so apparent in the Confluence platform that SharePointDevWiki.com is run on with only really:
- last modified author for a page;
- a line entry for the most recently edited pages on homepage;
- and a user profile page listing their contributions to the wiki like [~arangas].
There is definitely more collaboration happening outside of this on SharePointOverflow and MSDN Forums…why?...because they have metrics on show with badges you can earn and a points system. This is something definitely to take into account with wikis and isn’t facilitated with most wikis out of the box. This approach is quite new and coined “Community Equity”.
How I’ve encouraged participation
Explain how to contribute
I have got two webcasts which explain how to contribute on the about page.
Planting Seeds
As with any wiki you need to encourage growth and I have done this over the last year and a bit by planting seeds.
Good examples of these seeds usually come from discussions in the community such as:
- Site Features vs Site Templates vs Site Definitions
- Solution Package Development Tool Comparisons
- Why don’t ASP.NET Developers use WSS?
- The Ultimate SharePoint Developer Tool
- SharePoint Versions
- Building a SharePoint Development 2010 Machine
- SharePoint Lists landing page (lists CRUD with lots of example code – better than MSDN where it just ghost docs the API)
- SharePoint Implementation Approach Comparison
- Getting Started with WSS4.0 and SP2010 Development
- SP2010 Sandboxed Solutions
Look for content
There is lots of great content out there that would complement the current wiki content around Development and Administration. I purposely leave the End User space alone for EndUserSharePoint.com. I often approach bloggers to see whether they’d like to repost the content on the wiki in the relevant spot.
Collaborate to correct mistakes or add to discussion
I’ve found sample code and pros/cons and guidance has matured as the community has collaborated on it. Collaboration raises the quality of the content and sets a trusted authority status on it because if the wiki content people read is incorrect, they can go in and modify it. If it’s incorrect on blog posts/MSDN/TechNet the best they can do is comment at bottom which authors might not take on board and readers may not get to reading the comments.
Encourage authors
So along the way, I’ve tried to encourage specific authors I have come across via blogs, forums etc. Usually they take a bit of pushing but it has worked out well from this perspective. Mark Miller over at EndUserSharePoint.com has done a much better job of encouraging authors. It is best to get a core set to keep continuity going and let others contribute more naturally over time.
How to promote the wiki
Good content
Nothing promotes the wiki better than good content that can be discovered via bloggers, twitterers referring to the pages.
Badges
There are site badges that people can add to promote the SharePointDevWiki.com on the about page.
Social Media Promotion
There are LinkedIn Groups, Facebook Groups and a Twitter account setup. This helps spread the word within these communities to raise awareness of the site.
T-Shirts
I had some great t-shirts with 10 different slogans printed up for #SPC09 which was very effective, you can check out the shirts in the wild here.
Stickers
I had some stickers printed too which are for laptops which I also gave out at #SPC09. I still have heaps left…so let me know if you want any ;-)
The Future
Clearer contribution messaging
I need to focus some time on making it clearer that “you can contribute” and also on “how you can contribute”. I’m not sure how effective the webcasts have been.
Stroke those egos
Community Equity is a must to encourage growth, nothing encourages authors more than them being a “top author” or “3 stars” on their profile ;-)
SP2010 Platform
I am going to move off of the Atlassian Confluence platform soon and migrate to the SharePoint 2010 platform. I am currently writing a fully automated application to do this not just for Confluence either.
The main reason to move to SP2010 is I think the platform from an editing experience is mature enough now to handle authors, SharePoint 2007 wiki’s just weren’t up to the job. I also want to explore the social aspects of SP2010 around My Sites (profiles): activities, tagging, notes.
I think having a good site that users’ can see the benefits and power of the platform will help the community put it into context more and also hopefully demonstrate to clients it too.
More Content!
Obviously “content is king” so this year once I’ve done the migration I am going on a huge campaign for content and new authors to come on board. Please contact me if you’re interested and don’t worry if you promised me at #SPC09 that you’d contribute…I’ll be chasing you up soon!
Community Alliances
A key thing in the SharePoint community I believe is cross promotion. I really want to help build the community as a whole which includes sites such as:
External Resources
