WikiCU talk:About

Future of WikiCU

OK, guys, help. I graduate in May. How do we take WikiCU forward? I'm perfectly happy to continue owning the site and keeping it on my server as this takes up very little time or money. However, once I graduate I'll have very little time or inclination to moderate the site or make any significant changes. And it's not just me. TTan recently observed that "the current cadre of editors are mainly former CUCom regs and almost all of them are alums," and most other users tend to make worthless contributions (inside jokes, irrelevant, self-promoting, etc). As TTan says, "we need fresh blood on WikiCU." So we either need a marketing strategy or I need to have over the reigns to someone else. Now, the university - which includes the student councils and all student groups - doesn't want anything to do with the site because they're afraid of being liable for any contributions. (Technically, under the DMCA, websites aren't responsible for user-submitted content, but the university is stubborn, hey what's new.) In light of this, I see the follow options:

• Continue as before. Hope and pray for new editors. Maybe apply a new skin/theme/style to make it look all swish.

• Transform the wiki into something more like a portal with a Columbia start page, blog feeds on the front page, weather, Spec headlines, votes, a forum, etc. CUCommmunity reborn. On the downside this would take a lot of effort - I certainly couldn't do it myself. And do people really want another version of what is ultimately a social networking website when they've already got Facebook? This option would become infinitely more attractive if Culpa and/or Cueats and/or BoredAtColumbia.net would join us in building a mega portal.

• Hand the site over to Spec. They'll still be around in 10 years, and in between hopefully lots of Speccies will work on improving the site. But they're hardly the most innovative bunch (remember all those efforts at making a splog). And because they're run by a big group of people, and new people every year, they might never get round to making any improvements. Also several contributors here really don't trust the Spec.

• Hand things over to another successful CU website. Bwog? Culpa? Would they even want anything to do with WikiCU? At least they've demonstrated the ability to create a good website, respond to student requests, and keep their respective sites running for several years.

• Give it to Wikia, the commercial arm of Wikipedia. They'll keep it running. But it'll have a ton of ads and Columbians will lose all control.

• Give it to some other student. But who? Plus this doesn't solve much because this student will also graduate like me, and isn't necessarily more reliable than me. I think Culpa does something like this - the site is owned by one person, but they designate one or two current students to run it on an everyday basis. Questions: what if this one person completely neglects the site? and how does this person choose current students to run it? surely it's better to hand WikiCU to an on-campus organization that will keep the site running for years to come even if it doesn't do a great job???

Please let me know your thoughts and ideas.  − Reaganaut  04:08, 19 November 2007 (EST)

If the site can remain on this server I see no need for most of the proposed fixes. What we really need are more people with an interest in the sort of material that's compiled here. Here are some ideas for that, specifically:

• Improve the site's Google rating. I'm not really sure how (maybe Google bomb stuff), but this has really low visibility on search engines, which hurts its relevance and ability to pull in contributors.
• Advertise. Flyering, appeals to Bwog, whatever.
• Reach out to alumni. They already contribute lots of stuff to the stories section of the alumni website, and have committed interests, like the Ultimate Frisbee team people. You could write to the alumni magazines (e.g. Columbia magazine or CCT) asking if they could run a story about the effort, which should pull in some disparate people.

All I can think of for now. Anything else? Pacman 04:17, 19 November 2007 (EST)