Wikis, CMSs, & Community
Enhancing Publishing in Libraries
by Michael Ritchey (Twitter: mtritchey)
Today’s Lesson
• Overview of FamilySearch services
• Challenges & strengths in 2006
• Solution Concept & Requirements
• Quicken publishing cycle
• Multiply content output
• Boost teamwork, morale, community relations
• Improve content design, quality & relevance
Some Background on Our Perspective
1. Family History Library & Research Support
2. Research Support: 50 questions/day by phone & e-mail
3. 80% of questions answered by volunteers
4. Our volunteers & customers are senior citizens
5. 2006: Customer Relationship Management (CRM)
6. CRM model: customer’s question routed to an agent
7. 4500 family history centers worldwide
8. CRM model is not scalable to help family history center
volunteers
9. 2006: Knowledge Management System (KMS)
10. KMS closed to volunteers; obsolete content
Challenges
Challenge: Advise Genealogists Worldwide
Research advice on FamilySearch Internet, 2006
Challenge: cover more places
Challenge: cover more languages
Research advice on FamilySearch.org
about countries in their native language, 2006
Challenge: Update content faster
Research advice on FamilySearch.org revised 2001-2006.
Challenge: connect customers with experts
How do I find birth records
from Brazil?
(Yawn!) I wish I had
someone to help!
Sounds tough!
I dunno
Implement
old idea
Achieve
denial Fail
Our time-tested model
2006 Revelation:
Headquarters can’t
do it alone.
Is there a better way?
Our Strengths as an Organization
1. Expert staff
Our Strengths as an Organization
1. Expert staff
2. World-renowned
record collection
Our Strengths as an Organization
1. Expert staff
2. World-renowned
record collection
3. 60,000 volunteers
Challenges + Strengths = Community
1. Cover more places
2. Cover more languages
3. Update content faster
4. Connect customers with experts
1. Expert staff
2. World-renowned record collection
3. 60,000 volunteers
Challenges Strengths
Solution: Community!
Selling the concept: Wikipedia
Selling the concept: Wikipedia
1. 8th most popular Website
2. Content written by community
3. 3,000 new entries per day
4. Most errors corrected in 5 mins.
5. 11 edits per article
Requirements
Requirements
1. Open source
2. WYSIWYG authoring tool (yo mamma)
3. Article history/version control
4. Limit visibility of some articles
5. Volunteer authoring
6. Easy interlinking
7. Admin can lock down a page (Home page)
8. Notifications
9. System deployable by non-engineers!
Solutions
First solution: Plone CMS
FamilySearch Wiki: Plone site
Questions of concurrent authoring
scalability
2007 MediaWiki iteration
Quicken the
Publication Cycle
Challenge: Update content faster
Every revision required input from
• Director (approval)
• Publication strategist
• Usability specialist
• Technical writers
• Editors
• Correlation
• Software engineers
Update content faster on a wiki
• Get an idea
• Add it to the wiki
• Get input
• Iterate
Shortens the publishing
cycle…
…from months to
minutes.
Multiply Content
Output
Multiply Content Output
1. 800 19,000 docs since 2007
2. 82,000 edits in 2009 (as of 10/04/09)
3. Top contributors have 10k-16k edits ea.
4. 2009 edits = 719,000,000 characters
5. 6,900 characters/edit avg.
6. Top pages have 300-500 edits
7. Reference librarians writing 22,000 hours/year
Boost Teamwork,
Morale, Community
Relations
Teamwork, Morale, Community
1. Collaborative projects
2. Unfettered Subject Matter Experts (SMEs)
3. SMEs reach out for project help
4. Collaboration between community vols. & staff
5. Weekly user group/community meeting on Adobe
Connect
Improve Quality
&
Design
Quality
• Footnotes
• Bylines
• Change history
• Discussion pages
• Patrollers
• Moderators
• Watch lists & change notifications
• Members are Pit Bulls
• Community Meeting
Learnings
1. Relinquish control
2. Initiate projects with small teams; require 70%
consensus for redesign
3. Govern by social constraints, not system
constraints
4. Let community try any miscreants
5. Invest lots of time w/ community
6. Share success metrics to win support & resources
7. Empower, train & support volunteer project leaders
Today’s Challenges (Got advice?)
1. Not getting 25% of librarians’ time
2. Wiki mgrs. spread too thin to manage content dev
• Empower & train community as project mgrs.
• Experimenting w/ right mix of project mgmt. vs.
production
3. Democracy design paralysis. Limit re-work!
• Projects: Small team makes initial design; later design
changes require 70% consensus.
Conclusion: We are smarter than me!
1. The job is too big for Headquarters
2. Volunteer communities can do big jobs
3. Success = community collaboration
wiki.FamilySearch.org
Twitter: @mtritchey
