Wiki Life: How to Build Community

Hello and welcome everybody to our Wednesday - Wiki Life post.

What is the wiki all about? Why are we writing article? Only for the sake of writing articles? I kindly disagree. Writing articles just to say "Hey, I'm writing articles" is only an answer if you ask someone who has written his first article. The same was true at the time I had written my first article some years ago, but today it is not something which drives me to write more articles. There are tons of reasons for writing articles for our wiki, but in my opinion most of the them have to do with a single word - community. What a community is varies from the person you ask. However, I would make a bet that the answers are not so different like someone would guess. Like I said before, at some point you need something else which drives you. For most of us it is the feeling of community, to reach out to others, talk to them, discuss with them, and hearing their opinions and experiences. But is a community something which is not present and in the next second somebody says "We are a community"? I disagree for a second time. Building a community needs time and a lot of patience.

How can you start building a community? Today I found an article which is part of our wiki/community for round about three years. Back in 2010 Tony Soper started an article on how you can get started - How to Build Community. It is short and does not contain a lot of content, but this content is extremely valuable. If you want to know what people drives in a community, or if you want to create your own community, or if you want to be part of something bigger - I highly recommend that you internalize this article.

- German Ninja Jan (Twitter, Blog, Profile)