Wiki-Wiki Lessons from Wales and Cunningham

Mike Rogoway of OregonLive.com interviewed the "collaborative creators" of Wiki/Wikipedia.

Here's one interesting point of the conversation:

"Q: The vast majority of people who use wikis still don't necessarily participate in the wiki community. Are there strategies for getting people more involved?

Cunningham (to Wales): Do you have a ratio, readers to writers? Wales: We don't know. It's at least 1,000 to 1. In terms of getting more participation, people are working toward WYSIWYG (what you see is what you get). It's a classic technology problem. You have to support the old users and do something new. Another way of getting participation is thinking about ways to encourage people to just get involved in some smaller way. A friendly atmosphere is really important to getting participation, particularly if you want diverse participation."

Now that reminds me of Clay Shirky's statement that "We cannot separate the technological aspects from the social aspects of running a virtual world."