Now that our Web site is (relatively) stable, it’s time for me to document everything I have done for the generations to come.
I took to setting up a wiki not only for this purpose, but for a few other collaborative tasks as well. I think most organizations could benefit from an environment like this, especially student newspapers where staff members have varying class schedules and may never all be in the same room at the same time. Oh yeah, and there is that whole turnover thing.
If you also decide to go this route, here are a few things you can include to make your job easier:
- Writer’s guides
- Style Guide
- Common source lists
- Staff contact information
- Staff Class schedules
- Job descriptions and advice to pass down to the next holder of the position.
- Tutorials and guide for technical tasks, like uploading soundslides to your Web site
- Workflow diagrams
- Event calendar (or at least the link to one)
- Common files such as logos, templates, and house ads
- Set up a repository for ads to be dropped in the paper
- Where in the office to find X
- Instructions on how to renew your domain and other tasks that may be forgotten in the transition to a new staff
- Guides on how to edit the actual wiki
- Contact information for your business partners such as printers and common advertisers
- Links to web site statistics
- Links to every login page needed
- Links to useful Web sites
- Store all of your paper’s “greatest hits” for examples for new writers
- Contact info for people you need to know such as advisers, business managers, etc…
- Services used by your paper such as Flickr, Twitter, etc…
- Prominent people in the community and their contact information
Hope that got the juices flowin’! Let me know if I totally missed something.
8 Comments
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Some great ideas – thanks. I wrote a post about wiki journalism last year – at http://onlinejournalismblog.com/2007/09/10/wiki-journalism-are-wikis-the-new-blogs/ with a link to a longer (8000 word) wiki-hosted version. I’m in the process of editing this down for a book chapter too – so this will definitely come in useful. Feel free to add to or amend the wiki.
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@paul Wiki Journalism? That sounds like a cool experament. Some people even use Wikipedia as a source for breaking news. And others are writing books (like you are) via Wiki. So why not extend it to the actual journalism?
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Sean, this is a great list and is roughly what we do in the online department, but obviously ours is geared to be more technical. However, it’s become very difficult to find the pages after they have been created, and then we repeat information. I don’t believe MediaWiki indexes articles in a central location and thus I’ve updated the homepage by hand. It’s a tough job to keep everything orderly, so if you have greater insight into that, I’d love to hear it.
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Funny, I set up a Google site for my paper just a few days before I read this. My paper’s CMS is ridiculous, so I’m trying to document how everything works and where all the important files are. Thanks for the list.
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Yeah I have been having issues with MediaWiki. It was meant to handle a wiki of ungodly proportions and may not be the best for a college paper. Although MediaWiki doesn’t have an “index” page that lists every article alphabetically. Maybe doing something with that would help?
@Megan Google Apps is looking more appealing, so I may jump ship. Besides learning how to edit a MediaWiki is one thing I don’t want to force on anybody.
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I should mention that MediaWiki does have an index page of all articles linked from its “Special Pages” section. That will typically be in your left column navigation, with a URL of http://www. … .com/wiki/Special:Specialpages.
So it’s there, but I feel like the wiki’s front page should be more encompassing or that categories should have the ability to be found easier. In other words, MediaWiki is basically for programmers built exclusively by programmers. Still, with a few nights of effort, you can get it under control.
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My thoughts exactly. The learning is just past picking up and editing, it takes a few minutes of tinkering.
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I like PBWiki despite the fact that it can’t be hosted on ones own server. It’s just so simple to use.
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