Encouraging Semantic Mediawiki use with non technical people

Overview

Success and failure

Techniques

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http://farm3.static.flickr.com/2666/4027443168_879c7b7ccf.jpg

Who is a non-technical person

• Never learned programming concepts
• Didn't realize Wikipedia can be edited
• Maybe used a web content management system, blog, Facebook

What do non-technical people want

1. to solve their problem, usually a "one of those" web site with some special requirements
2. something that looks good - design is still paramount
3. to learn about the participatory web
4. to create reusable data?
5. to have more control over their own site
6. to work with someone they trust

What do I want

1. promote digital literacy ­— filling out forms isn't it
2. get people to consider issues of site design
3. help flatten organizations
4. promote transparency and co-development
5. grow my own skills based on others' requirements

Types and motivations of participants

• Executive — "everyone else is doing it," inexpensive solution
  • ideally they will participate but getting them to can be difficult
• Creative group or individual — may be inspired but needs constant guidance

Compare to wordpress - task driven - "Raskin vs Englebart"

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Failure

http://wiki.zooid.org/images/no-edits.png

Success

1. Useful read-only resource
2. basic editing using forms
3. wiki markup
4. Creating templates
5. Creating queries
6. Adjusting classes
7. Creating classes
8. understanding of good schema design, distributed data, licensing

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Identify groups, strategies

Threaten - others are doing it, loss of leadership

Inspire - self empowerment, less dependence, creating, leading, "where the web is going"

Commitment vs follow through

Guiding

Topic leads

Profles of uses

The importance of design

• promote the cues of Wikipedia but provide something original

Exhibit example of copying and pasting to excel using semantic web data