PortlandWiki:Policies

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Revision as of 20:11, 23 March 2011 by Camior (talk | contribs) (add section on wiki culture)
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PortlandWiki's Evolving Policy Development Page

PortlandWiki's aim is to develop community-driven policies that are arrived at through proposals, discussion and some measure of consensus. Our expectation is that policies are not necessarily set in stone, but are those the community can modify and adapt as PortlandWiki grows and evolves.

Policy focus

PortlandWiki's "prime directive" (as it were) is to make PortlandWiki a genuine voice for the entire community of people who call the City of Portland home. To get a sense of the kind of community resource PortlandWiki aims to strive for, the Voice of Portland and Community Portal discussion pages are good places to start. While there, please feel encouraged to add your voice too.

Using copyright material

Any use of copyright content should be made sparingly, and only when deemed absolutely necessary to accurately and sufficiently communicate the specifics of a particular PortlandWiki article.

Please refer to PortlandWiki:Copyrights for details.

Connect with other contributors

Please also consider attending one of our weekly PortlandWiki edit meetings, currently happening each Monday evening at either the Powell's Technical Books, 40 NW 10th Avenue, Portland, OR 97209 (Corner of NW 10th Avenue & NW Couch Street. This is Powell's Tech's new location.) Check the Monday Meets schedule for times and locations.

Don't wait. Start now!

Of course you can always establish a PortlandWiki account and get started right away! In fact, you don't even need to sign up for a PortlandWiki account to get started.

New to writing wiki pages? If so, why not take a peek at our wiki basics page? There we offer a few tips you can use to create a fairly full-featured PortlandWiki page.

But don't worry about feeling like you have to include every page element shown on the wiki basics page. Just do what you can, and who knows? Maybe another PortlandWiki contributor will come along in short order and add to what you've started.

Wiki Culture: Why Wikis Works!

Wikis are successful online collaborations because most community members share a set of values about how wikis can work. The three basic principles about wikis--often referred to as "the wiki way"--are that wikis are organic, open and observable.

Meatball Wiki describes this as:

  • Open: The community should WelcomeNewcomers, and AssumeGoodFaith.
  • Organic: The community should grow (and shrink) organically, with the ebb and flow of interest.
  • Observable: The community should moderate itself through SoftSecurity, and ensure an OpenProcess in all decisions.

In development