As of the year 2013, the TechNet Wiki Community Council has 11 members (4 internal Microsoft employees and 7 community members). There are 14 areas of focus, and each member is assigned to a different area of focus each month. The council member leads the community in that area for the month.

August 2013 Areas of Focus

1. Guidelines & Best Practices
   • General Governance Guidelines - Identify issues and disputes
   • As disputes and issues come up, the council determines what the “rules” should be and evangelizes them out to everyone, making them official
   • For example, we had a community member publish scripts to the Wiki. Then Company #1 used the code (or independently created similar code). Then Company #2 used the code. Later, Company #1 sued Company #2 for using their code (obviously not knowing that Company #2 got the code from the Wiki and likely that Company #1 also got the code from the Wiki).
   • For example, we have a lot of people pasting in Blogs. But the content is very personal. What are the best practices around converting that content for the Wiki?
   • These are behavior-based, but many issues will naturally create Best Practices...
   • Example: We created the concept of the Other Languages section at the bottom of each article. Each language cross-links with the others, so that it’s easy to navigate between the languages. Now we need to spread this through the community a little better.
   • Example: Using the language codes in the titles on the English/regular Wiki, such as including “(es-ES)” in the title of Spanish articles. We need to spread through the community these nuances a little better (such as not to use "(en-US)" in a title).
   • Example: Using title casing rather than sentence casing or inconsistent casing. We need to spread this through the community a little better.
   • Example: Using the same fonts and font sizes (Segoe UI 12). We need to spread this through the community a little better.
   • Example: We currently have articles that use titles like, “About Hyper-V”, “Hyper-V”, “Hyper-V Overview”. Which one is right? Should we be consistent? We need to make a final decision and then spread it through the community.
   • Example: We currently have articles that use titles like, “How Do I Use Hyper-V”, “How to Use Hyper-V”, and “Using Hyper-V”. Which one should we use? The stake in the ground (made with Tony Soper and me) was that “How to Use Hyper-V” was the right one, but it would be better to decide this by the council and have various council members work toward making sure the community implements this practice.
   • We would identify opportunities like these and then work toward spreading them through the community.
2. Portal Growth - Yagmoth (& Richard Mueller)
   • Focus: The Adoption and Evangelism of Wiki Portals.
   • One specific best practice that affects navigation is Portal Growth.
   • Are all the right technologies and articles represented on the portals?
   • Do we have the best story for navigation from the portals?
   • Do we need to add more portals?
   • Should we cross-link portals better?
   • Example: We need to update all the portals with links to current content.
   • Example: We need to cross-link the portals better.
3. Cross-Linking Expansion - Richard Mueller (& Naomi N, Peter Laker)
   • Focus: The Adoption and Evangelism of Cross-Linking in Wiki articles.
   • Similarly, a key point of navigation for Wikipedia is cross-linking articles. Each article has a link in the first sentence to the main topical article. The paragraph expands more in an overview format, linking to more related articles. At the bottom you have the See Also section.
   • We would expand these best practices and help influence the community to use them.
   • Example: Embedded cross-link to parent topic in the first sentence of an article. We need to add these more and help lead the community to adopt this practice.
   • Example: Building out the See Also sections at the bottom of the articles. We need to add these more and help lead the community to adopt this practice.
4. Feature Requests & Bugs - Ed Price (& Richard Mueller) 
   • The Council will take a look at community-driven requests, evaluate them, and communicate them to the Wiki app team (and then take the information back to the community).
   • The team will evaluate and maintain the following Feature Requests article as a collaboration point with the community: Feature Requests for TechNet and MSDN Profiles and Social Platform Tools
   • #1 Bug - the Activity for Wiki hasn't been updated for 24 days. Example: http://social.technet.microsoft.com/Profile/peter%20geelen%20-%20msft/activity
   • Maintain this page: Wiki: Known Issues  
5. Spam, Plagiarism, & Article Deletion - Peter Geelen (& Naomi)
   • Evaluate and delete spam appropriately
   • There are other articles to evaluate whether we should delete them in addition to spam, such as test articles and duplicate articles.
   • We have built some best practices… you rename the title, replace the content with a note about spam, replace the tags with “spam” and “Candidate for deletion”.
   • The council will need to evaluate and delete the spam articles. 
   • Evaluate Spam account removal requests. 
6. TechNet Wiki Featured Articles - Ed Price (& Yagmoth)
   • Making sure we have a plan and people for featuring articles each week on the homepage of TNWiki
   • Helping refine the plan, process, and future schedule
   • Extend the plan for other languages as well, such as the Portuguese, Russian, and Chinese Wikis
   • To do: We need to update the Chinese and Russian featured articles. This includes several steps of building small teams with those key community members (small teams for each language) to pick the best articles.
   • To do: Build a monthly process of small teams for Portuguese, Russian, and Chinese so that it becomes a self-sustaining system where they submit the featured article updates each month. Since Portuguese is so active, we can rotate two new articles in every two weeks.
   • Ed created this framework: TechNet Wiki: Featured Article Teams 
7. TechNet Guru (Leveraging Forums) - Peter Laker (& Ed Price, Naomi N)
   • Is the Active Directory community contributing to the Wiki? What about PowerPivot?
   • Peter Laker launched a hugely expansive effort across forums... TechNet Guru Contributions - May
   • Example: Markus V's work in the FIM.
   • Example: DSForum2Wiki – this was an effort I liked so much that I wrote a blog article to figure out how it got started. Articles (which came from the DS forum). Blog explanation.
   • Example: Small Basic – I held a contest on the Small Basic blog to get some good content started. Then I blog about the resulting articles.
   • So there’s a whole world of possibilities in building and expanding communities around technologies on TechNet Wiki.
   • Example: BizTalk - Steef-Jan blogs about BizTalk + TechNet Wiki about twice a month on Sundays (lots of views). The community includes Sandro, Tord, Steef-Jan (all MVPs), and MS technical writers like Nitin and Mandi
   • We need to get into the individual forums and Microsoft blogs (MSDN/TechNet/Office) and start some Wiki competitions and efforts to migrate forum content to the Wiki.
   • Each forum should have a sticky note at the top with a discussion around adding that technogy's content to TechNet Wiki. Small Basic forum example.
8. Wiki Ninjas Blog Planning - Peter Laker (& Ed Price)
   • Where do we want to take the blog?
   • How can we make it more interesting or more interactive?
   • What kind of competitions do we want?
   • Manage any authoring requests or changes
9. TechNet Wiki Discussion Forum Community Growth - Tord
   • How do we want to integrate the forums?
   • Improve this forum: http://social.technet.microsoft.com/Forums/en-US/tnwiki/threads 
   • For example, the Small Basic community uses the forums for community driven contests and discussions around games they built. We could have a lot more of those discussions about Wiki content, content ideas, best practices, and community projects (like events or contests).
   • For example, the Portuguese community uses their Portuguese TechNet Wiki Forum to collaborate their efforts and goals better.
   • How can we integrate the Wiki Blog, Wiki Forum, and Wiki together better to increase community planning?
   • Example: Forum management... Evaluating Forum Moderation needs and adding/removing Moderators, Building Forum Moderation Best Practices, and Adding Sticky Posts and Announcements
10. General Community Projects and Social Initiatives - Zoltan
    • Such as contests/competitions, events, and efforts.
    • Determining strategies around other social tools, such as Twitter (Peter Geelen owns) and Facebook.
    • Spurring each other on to proactively get involved with contests, events, and community interactions
    • For example, Luiz (MVP) is increasing the scope of their TechNet Wiki Day promotion. They have 5 leaders (including Luiz, Yuri, and others) who nominate 5 Portuguese Wiki articles. They then post those articles (with links) on Facebook and have the Portuguese community vote on their favorite articles. The winner receives a Microsoft book or mug.
    • Example: Social Media explorations... Should there be a Facebook page?
    • Example: Should there be any updates to the Wiki Ninjas Twitter account? Should we add authors?
11. TechNet Wiki International Council - Bruno Lewin (& Ed Price, Yagmoth)
    • We created an article about the steps to getting your language established as a Wiki instance: Wiki: How to Get a New Language Started or Expanded on TechNet Wiki
    • We invited the initial members to join the council. private Forum in place.
    • We created an article that explains the council and lists the members: TechNet Wiki International Council
    • We have a French Forum to test effectiveness of language specific Wiki Forums. Bruno/Yagmoth need to figure roll out plan.
    • Next step: kick-off, establish communication channels, get input on what areas members want to work on [ETA week of 8/26]  
12. TechNet Wiki Advisory Board - Ed Price (& Monica Rush) 
    • Resurrect and grow the board: TechNet Wiki Advisory Board
    • This was re-launched.
    • The Advisory Board would exist to give feedback and advice on Wiki related articles, ideas, and activities.
    • It also exists so that the MVPs own their area of content.
    • Seek to fill it with MVPs only.
    • And then the monthly task is to keep it alive and kicking; to be the liaison between the Advisory Board and the Community Council and to also gather requests and topics from the Microsoft Technical Writers.
    • Next step: Add communication tools
13. Wiki Ninja Belt Rankings - Ed Price (& Margriet Bruggeman)
    • Work to execute on this idea (a TechNet Wiki reward program): Wiki Ninja Belt Rankings
    • Done: Fill out the descriptions with short and creative/fun bits about how great each rank is. Try to tie it into the requirements if possible.
    • Done: Refine titles, order of ranks, and requirements. I think more requirements can be added. Refine the weight of the requirements.
    • Doing: Identify all the rewards with dependencies. Work to create solutions/processes around those dependencies.
      • For example, one reward is to make a Wiki Ninja statue. Kurt Hudson has made some of those. See if he would be willing to make them. Identify how many people would "win" those statues. Is it too much for him? Is there a backup plan or alternative prize?
      • For example, it would be great to have one reward be that our profile lists our rank. Well, that's maybe a year's worth of meetings and jumping in hoops to get that to happen. So work must be done!
      • For example, one reward is to get an article featured in TechNet Magazine. We need stakeholder buyoff and participation from the TechNet Magazine team to make that happen.
    • Done: Work with Peter Laker to tie in the rank Requirements with his weekly TechNet Wiki Top Contributors awards.
      • For example, one requirement might be that you need the "Longest Article" award from his blog post on one of your articles.
    • Doing: After the Wiki Ninja Belt program is perfected, then it needs to be rolled out with regular blog posts announcing the progress, winners, and prizes. So we need a structure/system around announcing that. I suggest that we move toward Thursdays being a permanent day for the Wiki Ninja Belts. The Community Win idea was great, but it's become less about community stories (which are great), and more about a combination between Tuesday (feature an article) and Wednesday (feature something about Wiki best practices and solutions). So Thursdays could become a Wiki Ninja Ceremony day instead (which is actually a good transition from Community Win, since the Belt awards are community wins). So the bloggers would basically report out on a Wiki article (or two), which is tracking who wins what.
    • Done: Create a Wiki article that tracks how people are progressing through the Wiki Ninja ranks.  
14. Collaborating with Microsoft Field Representatives - Brent Groom
    • To leverage their content and customer interactions on TechNet Wiki.
    • First Brent is working to get TechNet Wiki involved in the Field Representatives' existing community initiatives.
15. Leveraging User Groups - Craig Lussier (& Zoltan)
    • To leverage user groups as pockets of communities (focused on individual products) who can work together on TechNet Wiki content creation and evangelism.

Each active Community Council member will pick one of the above sections to focus on for one month at a time. We meet about twice each month to discuss...

• Progress reports
• Need any help?
• Advice for each other (or sources for help)
• What's next? Who has what? Let's mix it up but target our strengths
• Who needs to leave and get replaced?
• Post Mortem - What went well or could be improved?
  

Other Topics

Here are other topics we should consider or that might be more ad hoc:

1. Content Migration and Adoption Projects
   1. Errors and Events Project
   2. Troubleshooting Content Project
2. Wiki Tools - Development, Design, Processes around Use, and Evangelism
   1. Win8 Widget
   2. Win7 Widget
   3. Wiki Toolbox
3. Other Councils - Need to make sure they get built and started/continued
   1. TechNet Wiki International Council (this was added as #11)
   2. TechNet Wiki Advisory Board (this was added as #12)
4. Wiki Ninja Belt Rankings - A TechNet Wiki awards program (this was added as #13)
5. Creating a single email account for easier communication with the community, including things like managing prizes. Look at having one person manage this. (suggestion from Philippe L, council contact = Bruno)
   1. This is done; the email is TNWiki at Microsoft, and it is used for communication around awards and featuring articles.
6. Creating a single email account for all the MS members and Community members to use.
   1. Brent did this.
   2. This is launched as a SkyDrive Group
7. Prize Handling / Prizes (Philippe)
   1. Currently this is more of a support of existing areas of focus, such as the Wiki Ninja Belts and the International Council.
8. Collaborating with the Field representatives at Microsoft to help create and maintain quality content.
   1. Brent is currently looking into this
   2. Do we want to make this an official Area of Focus? Yes. This was added on 7/12 as Focus Area #14)
9. Collaborating with MVPs on content
   1. Markus is leading this. Peter Geelen is supporting.
   2. Should this be an Area of Focus?
   3. Can we combine this with the Advisory Board, since members need to be MVPs?
10. Leveraging User Groups
    1. Craig Lussier is focusing on this.
    2. It could be expanded into its own Area of Focus.
    3. On 8/12, it was added as #15.

 

Previous Months

Previous months will be moved to this section.  

June-July 2013 Areas of Focus

1.   General Guidelines & Best Practices
   • General Guidelines - Identify issues and disputes
   • As disputes and issues come up, the council determines what the “rules” should be and evangelizes them out to everyone, making them official
   • For example, we had a community member publish scripts to the Wiki. Then Company #1 used the code (or independently created similar code). Then Company #2 used the code. Later, Company #1 sued Company #2 for using their code (obviously not knowing that Company #2 got the code from the Wiki and likely that Company #1 also got the code from the Wiki).
   • For example, we have a lot of people pasting in Blogs. But the content is very personal. What are the best practices around converting that content for the Wiki?
   • These are behavior-based, but many issues will naturally create Best Practices...
   • Example: We created the concept of the Other Languages section at the bottom of each article. Each language cross-links with the others, so that it’s easy to navigate between the languages. Now we need to spread this through the community a little better.
   • Example: Using the language codes in the titles on the English/regular Wiki, such as including “(es-ES)” in the title of Spanish articles. We need to spread through the community these nuances a little better (such as not to use "(en-US)" in a title).
   • Example: Using title casing rather than sentence casing or inconsistent casing. We need to spread this through the community a little better.
   • Example: Using the same fonts and font sizes (Segoe UI 12). We need to spread this through the community a little better.
   • Example: We currently have articles that use titles like, “About Hyper-V”, “Hyper-V”, “Hyper-V Overview”. Which one is right? Should we be consistent? We need to make a final decision and then spread it through the community.
   • Example: We currently have articles that use titles like, “How Do I Use Hyper-V”, “How to Use Hyper-V”, and “Using Hyper-V”. Which one should we use? The stake in the ground (made with Tony Soper and me) was that “How to Use Hyper-V” was the right one, but it would be better to decide this by the council and have various council members work toward making sure the community implements this practice.
   • We would identify opportunities like these and then work toward spreading them through the community.
2. Portal Growth - Yagmoth (& Luiz Henrique Lima Campos)
   • Focus: The Adoption and Evangelism of Wiki Portals.
   • One specific best practice that affects navigation is Portal Growth.
   • Are all the right technologies and articles represented on the portals?
   • Do we have the best story for navigation from the portals?
   • Do we need to add more portals?
   • Should we cross-link portals better?
   • Example: We need to update all the portals with links to current content.
   • Example: We need to cross-link the portals better.
3. Cross-Linking Expansion
   • Focus: The Adoption and Evangelism of Cross-Linking in Wiki articles.
   • Similarly, a key point of navigation for Wikipedia is cross-linking articles. Each article has a link in the first sentence to the main topical article. The paragraph expands more in an overview format, linking to more related articles. At the bottom you have the See Also section.
   • We would expand these best practices and help influence the community to use them.
   • Example: Embedded cross-link to parent topic in the first sentence of an article. We need to add these more and help lead the community to adopt this practice.
   • Example: Building out the See Also sections at the bottom of the articles. We need to add these more and help lead the community to adopt this practice.
4. General Wiki Feature Requests and Bug Requests - Richard Mueller (& Ed Price) 
   • The Council will take a look at community-driven requests, evaluate them, and communicate them to the Wiki app team (and then take the information back to the community).
   • The team will evaluate and maintain the following Feature Requests article as a collaboration point with the community: Feature Requests for TechNet and MSDN Profiles and Social Platform Tools
   • #1 Bug - the Activity for Wiki hasn't been updated for 24 days. Example: http://social.technet.microsoft.com/Profile/peter%20geelen%20-%20msft/activity
   • Maintain this page: Wiki: Known Issues  
5.    Spammers & Article Deletion - Peter Geelen
   • Evaluate and delete spam appropriately
   • There are other articles to evaluate whether we should delete them in addition to spam, such as test articles and duplicate articles.
   • We have built some best practices… you rename the title, replace the content with a note about spam, replace the tags with “spam” and “Candidate for deletion”.
   • The council will need to evaluate and delete the spam articles. 
   • Evaluate Spam account removal requests. 
6. TechNet Wiki Featured Articles - Ed Price (& Yagmoth)
   • Making sure we have a plan and people for featuring articles each week on the homepage of TNWiki
   • Helping refine the plan, process, and future schedule
   • Extend the plan for other languages as well, such as the Portuguese, Russian, and Chinese Wikis
   • To do: We need to update the Chinese and Russian featured articles. This includes several steps of building small teams with those key community members (small teams for each language) to pick the best articles.
   • To do: Build a monthly process of small teams for Portuguese, Russian, and Chinese so that it becomes a self-sustaining system where they submit the featured article updates each month. Since Portuguese is so active, we can rotate two new articles in every two weeks.
   • Ed created this framework: TechNet Wiki: Featured Article Teams 
7. TechNet Guru & Product-based Community Growth (Leveraging Forums + Blogs) - Peter Laker (& Ed Price)
   • Is the Active Directory community contributing to the Wiki? What about PowerPivot?
   • Peter Laker launched a hugely expansive effort across forums... TechNet Guru Contributions - May
   • Example: Markus V's work in the FIM.
   • Example: DSForum2Wiki – this was an effort I liked so much that I wrote a blog article to figure out how it got started. Articles (which came from the DS forum). Blog explanation.
   • Example: Small Basic – I held a contest on the Small Basic blog to get some good content started. Then I blog about the resulting articles.
   • So there’s a whole world of possibilities in building and expanding communities around technologies on TechNet Wiki.
   • Example: BizTalk - Steef-Jan blogs about BizTalk + TechNet Wiki about twice a month on Sundays (lots of views). The community includes Sandro, Tord, Steef-Jan (all MVPs), and MS technical writers like Nitin and Mandi
   • We need to get into the individual forums and Microsoft blogs (MSDN/TechNet/Office) and start some Wiki competitions and efforts to migrate forum content to the Wiki.
   • Each forum should have a sticky note at the top with a discussion around adding that technogy's content to TechNet Wiki. Small Basic forum example.
8. Wiki Ninjas Blog Planning
   • Where do we want to take the blog?
   • How can we make it more interesting or more interactive?
   • What kind of competitions do we want?
   • Manage any authoring requests or changes
9. TechNet Wiki Discussion Forum Community Growth
   • How do we want to integrate the forums?
   • Improve this forum: http://social.technet.microsoft.com/Forums/en-US/tnwiki/threads 
   • For example, the Small Basic community uses the forums for community driven contests and discussions around games they built. We could have a lot more of those discussions about Wiki content, content ideas, best practices, and community projects (like events or contests).
   • For example, the Portuguese community uses their Portuguese TechNet Wiki Forum to collaborate their efforts and goals better.
   • How can we integrate the Wiki Blog, Wiki Forum, and Wiki together better to increase community planning?
   • Example: Forum management... Evaluating Forum Moderation needs and adding/removing Moderators, Building Forum Moderation Best Practices, and Adding Sticky Posts and Announcements
10. General Community Projects and Social Initiatives  - Peter Geelen (& Peter Laker)
    • Such as contests/competitions, events, and efforts.
    • Determining strategies around other social tools, such as Twitter (Peter Geelen owns) and Facebook.
    • Spurring each other on to proactively get involved with contests, events, and community interactions
    • For example, Luiz (MVP) is increasing the scope of their TechNet Wiki Day promotion. They have 5 leaders (including Luiz, Yuri, and others) who nominate 5 Portuguese Wiki articles. They then post those articles (with links) on Facebook and have the Portuguese community vote on their favorite articles. The winner receives a Microsoft book or mug.
    • Example: Social Media explorations... Should there be a Facebook page?
    • Example: Should there be any updates to the Wiki Ninjas Twitter account? Should we add authors?
11. TechNet Wiki International Council - Bruno Lewin (& Ed Price, Yagmoth)
    • We created an article about the steps to getting your language established as a Wiki instance
    • Next step: Invite members to join the council.
12. TechNet Wiki Advisory Board - Ed Price (& Monica Rush) 
    • Resurrect and grow the board: TechNet Wiki Advisory Board
    • This was re-launched.
    • The Advisory Board would exist to give feedback and advice on Wiki related articles, ideas, and activities.
    • It also exists so that the MVPs own their area of content.
    • Seek to fill it with MVPs only.
    • And then the monthly task is to keep it alive and kicking; to be the liaison between the Advisory Board and the Community Council and to also gather requests and topics from the Microsoft Technical Writers.
13. Wiki Ninja Belt Rankings - Ed Price (& Margriet Bruggeman, Yagmoth)
    • Work to execute on this idea (a TechNet Wiki reward program): Wiki Ninja Belt Rankings
    • Done: Fill out the descriptions with short and creative/fun bits about how great each rank is. Try to tie it into the requirements if possible.
    • Done: Refine titles, order of ranks, and requirements. I think more requirements can be added. Refine the weight of the requirements.
    • Doing: Identify all the rewards with dependencies. Work to create solutions/processes around those dependencies.
      • For example, one reward is to make a Wiki Ninja statue. Kurt Hudson has made some of those. See if he would be willing to make them. Identify how many people would "win" those statues. Is it too much for him? Is there a backup plan or alternative prize?
      • For example, it would be great to have one reward be that our profile lists our rank. Well, that's maybe a year's worth of meetings and jumping in hoops to get that to happen. So work must be done!
      • For example, one reward is to get an article featured in TechNet Magazine. We need stakeholder buyoff and participation from the TechNet Magazine team to make that happen.
    • Done: Work with Peter Laker to tie in the rank Requirements with his weekly TechNet Wiki Top Contributors awards.
      • For example, one requirement might be that you need the "Longest Article" award from his blog post on one of your articles.
    • Doing: After the Wiki Ninja Belt program is perfected, then it needs to be rolled out with regular blog posts announcing the progress, winners, and prizes. So we need a structure/system around announcing that. I suggest that we move toward Thursdays being a permanent day for the Wiki Ninja Belts. The Community Win idea was great, but it's become less about community stories (which are great), and more about a combination between Tuesday (feature an article) and Wednesday (feature something about Wiki best practices and solutions). So Thursdays could become a Wiki Ninja Ceremony day instead (which is actually a good transition from Community Win, since the Belt awards are community wins). So the bloggers would basically report out on a Wiki article (or two), which is tracking who wins what.
    • Done: Create a Wiki article that tracks how people are progressing through the Wiki Ninja ranks.  
14. Collaborating with Microsoft Field Representatives - Brent Groom
    • To leverage their content and customer interactions on TechNet Wiki.
    • First Brent is working to get TechNet Wiki involved in the Field Representatives' existing community initiatives.

April - May 2013 Areas of Focus

1.   General Guidelines & Best Practices - Luigi Bruno
   • General Guidelines - Identify issues and disputes
   • As disputes and issues come up, the council determines what the “rules” should be and evangelizes them out to everyone, making them official
   • For example, we had a community member publish scripts to the Wiki. Then Company #1 used the code (or independently created similar code). Then Company #2 used the code. Later, Company #1 sued Company #2 for using their code (obviously not knowing that Company #2 got the code from the Wiki and likely that Company #1 also got the code from the Wiki).
   • For example, we have a lot of people pasting in Blogs. But the content is very personal. What are the best practices around converting that content for the Wiki?
   • These are behavior-based, but many issues will naturally create Best Practices...
   • Example: We created the concept of the Other Languages section at the bottom of each article. Each language cross-links with the others, so that it’s easy to navigate between the languages. Now we need to spread this through the community a little better.
   • Example: Using the language codes in the titles on the English/regular Wiki, such as including “(es-ES)” in the title of Spanish articles. We need to spread through the community these nuances a little better (such as not to use "(en-US)" in a title).
   • Example: Using title casing rather than sentence casing or inconsistent casing. We need to spread this through the community a little better.
   • Example: Using the same fonts and font sizes (Segoe UI 12). We need to spread this through the community a little better.
   • Example: We currently have articles that use titles like, “About Hyper-V”, “Hyper-V”, “Hyper-V Overview”. Which one is right? Should we be consistent? We need to make a final decision and then spread it through the community.
   • Example: We currently have articles that use titles like, “How Do I Use Hyper-V”, “How to Use Hyper-V”, and “Using Hyper-V”. Which one should we use? The stake in the ground (made with Tony Soper and me) was that “How to Use Hyper-V” was the right one, but it would be better to decide this by the council and have various council members work toward making sure the community implements this practice.
   • We would identify opportunities like these and then work toward spreading them through the community.
2. Portal Growth - Luiz Henrique Lima Campos
   • Focus: The Adoption and Evangelism of Wiki Portals.
   • One specific best practice that affects navigation is Portal Growth.
   • Are all the right technologies and articles represented on the portals?
   • Do we have the best story for navigation from the portals?
   • Do we need to add more portals?
   • Should we cross-link portals better?
   • Example: We need to update all the portals with links to current content.
   • Example: We need to cross-link the portals better.
3. Cross-Linking Expansion - Markus Vilcinskas
   • Focus: The Adoption and Evangelism of Cross-Linking in Wiki articles.
   • Similarly, a key point of navigation for Wikipedia is cross-linking articles. Each article has a link in the first sentence to the main topical article. The paragraph expands more in an overview format, linking to more related articles. At the bottom you have the See Also section.
   • We would expand these best practices and help influence the community to use them.
   • Example: Embedded cross-link to parent topic in the first sentence of an article. We need to add these more and help lead the community to adopt this practice.
   • Example: Building out the See Also sections at the bottom of the articles. We need to add these more and help lead the community to adopt this practice.
4. General Wiki Feature Requests and Bug Requests - Richard Mueller (& Ed Price) 
   • The Council will take a look at community-driven requests, evaluate them, and communicate them to the Wiki app team (and then take the information back to the community).
   • The team will evaluate and maintain the following Feature Requests article as a collaboration point with the community: Feature Requests for TechNet and MSDN Profiles and Social Platform Tools
   • #1 Bug - the Activity for Wiki hasn't been updated for 24 days. Example: http://social.technet.microsoft.com/Profile/peter%20geelen%20-%20msft/activity
   • Maintain this page: Wiki: Known Issues  
5.    Spammers & Article Deletion - Peter Geelen
   • Evaluate and delete spam appropriately
   • There are other articles to evaluate whether we should delete them in addition to spam, such as test articles and duplicate articles.
   • We have built some best practices… you rename the title, replace the content with a note about spam, replace the tags with “spam” and “Candidate for deletion”.
   • The council will need to evaluate and delete the spam articles. 
   • Evaluate Spam account removal requests. 
6. TechNet Wiki Featured Articles - Ed Price
   • Making sure we have a plan and people for featuring articles each week on the homepage of TNWiki
   • Helping refine the plan, process, and future schedule
   • Extend the plan for other languages as well, such as the Portuguese, Russian, and Chinese Wikis
   • To do: We need to update the Chinese and Russian featured articles. This includes several steps of building small teams with those key community members (small teams for each language) to pick the best articles.
   • To do: Build a monthly process of small teams for Portuguese, Russian, and Chinese so that it becomes a self-sustaining system where they submit the featured article updates each month. Since Portuguese is so active, we can rotate two new articles in every two weeks.
   • Ed created this framework: TechNet Wiki: Featured Article Teams 
7. Product-based Community Growth (Leveraging Forums + Blogs) - Peter Laker (& Ed Price)
   • Is the Active Directory community contributing to the Wiki? What about PowerPivot?
   • Peter Laker launched a hugely expansive effort across forums... TechNet Contributions
   • Example: Markus V's work in the FIM.
   • Example: DSForum2Wiki – this was an effort I liked so much that I wrote a blog article to figure out how it got started. Articles (which came from the DS forum). Blog explanation.
   • Example: Small Basic – I held a contest on the Small Basic blog to get some good content started. Then I blog about the resulting articles.
   • So there’s a whole world of possibilities in building and expanding communities around technologies on TechNet Wiki.
   • Example: BizTalk - Steef-Jan blogs about BizTalk + TechNet Wiki about twice a month on Sundays (lots of views). The community includes Sandro, Tord, Steef-Jan (all MVPs), and MS technical writers like Nitin and Mandi
   • We need to get into the individual forums and Microsoft blogs (MSDN/TechNet/Office) and start some Wiki competitions and efforts to migrate forum content to the Wiki.
   • Each forum should have a sticky note at the top with a discussion around adding that technogy's content to TechNet Wiki. Small Basic forum example.
8. Wiki Ninjas Blog Planning
   • Where do we want to take the blog?
   • How can we make it more interesting or more interactive?
   • What kind of competitions do we want?
   • Manage any authoring requests or changes
9. TNWiki Forum Community - Steef-Jan Wiggers
   • How do we want to integrate the forums?
   • Improve this forum: http://social.technet.microsoft.com/Forums/en-US/tnwiki/threads 
   • For example, the Small Basic community uses the forums for community driven contests and discussions around games they built. We could have a lot more of those discussions about Wiki content, content ideas, best practices, and community projects (like events or contests).
   • For example, the Portuguese community uses their Portuguese TechNet Wiki Forum to collaborate their efforts and goals better.
   • How can we integrate the Wiki Blog, Wiki Forum, and Wiki together better to increase community planning?
   • Example: Forum management... Evaluating Forum Moderation needs and adding/removing Moderators, Building Forum Moderation Best Practices, and Adding Sticky Posts and Announcements
10. General Community Projects and Social Initiatives 
    • Such as contests/competitions, events, and efforts.
    • Determining strategies around other social tools, such as Twitter (Peter Geelen owns) and Facebook.
    • Spurring each other on to proactively get involved with contests, events, and community interactions
    • For example, Luiz (MVP) is increasing the scope of their TechNet Wiki Day promotion. They have 5 leaders (including Luiz, Yuri, and others) who nominate 5 Portuguese Wiki articles. They then post those articles (with links) on Facebook and have the Portuguese community vote on their favorite articles. The winner receives a Microsoft book or mug.
    • Example: Social Media explorations... Should there be a Facebook page?
    • Example: Should there be any updates to the Wiki Ninjas Twitter account? Should we add authors?
11. TechNet Wiki International Council - Bruno Lewin (& Luigi Bruno)
    • Write-up coming from Bruno Lewin
12. TechNet Wiki Advisory Board - Ed Price (& Monica Rush) 
    • Resurrect and grow the board: TechNet Wiki Advisory Board
    • Each member should be invited back. We should also invite previous non-Microsoft members of the Wiki Council.
    • The Advisory Board would exist to give feedback and advice on Wiki related articles, ideas, and activities.
    • Seek to fill it with MVPs only.
    • And then the monthly task is to keep it alive and kicking; to be the liaison between the Advisory Board and the Community Council and to also gather requests and topics from the Microsoft Technical Writers.
13. Wiki Ninja Belt Rankings - Margriet Bruggeman (& Ed Price)
    • Work to execute on this idea (a TechNet Wiki reward program): Wiki Ninja Belt Rankings
    • Done: Fill out the descriptions with short and creative/fun bits about how great each rank is. Try to tie it into the requirements if possible.
    • Done: Refine titles, order of ranks, and requirements. I think more requirements can be added. Refine the weight of the requirements.
    • Doing: Identify all the rewards with dependencies. Work to create solutions/processes around those dependencies.
      • For example, one reward is to make a Wiki Ninja statue. Kurt Hudson has made some of those. See if he would be willing to make them. Identify how many people would "win" those statues. Is it too much for him? Is there a backup plan or alternative prize?
      • For example, it would be great to have one reward be that our profile lists our rank. Well, that's maybe a year's worth of meetings and jumping in hoops to get that to happen. So work must be done!
      • For example, one reward is to get an article featured in TechNet Magazine. We need stakeholder buyoff and participation from the TechNet Magazine team to make that happen.
    • Done: Work with Peter Laker to tie in the rank Requirements with his weekly TechNet Wiki Top Contributors awards. 
      • For example, one requirement might be that you need the "Longest Article" award from his blog post on one of your articles.
    • Doing: After the Wiki Ninja Belt program is perfected, then it needs to be rolled out with regular blog posts announcing the progress, winners, and prizes. So we need a structure/system around announcing that. I suggest that we move toward Thursdays being a permanent day for the Wiki Ninja Belts. The Community Win idea was great, but it's become less about community stories (which are great), and more about a combination between Tuesday (feature an article) and Wednesday (feature something about Wiki best practices and solutions). So Thursdays could become a Wiki Ninja Ceremony day instead (which is actually a good transition from Community Win, since the Belt awards are community wins). So the bloggers would basically report out on a Wiki article (or two), which is tracking who wins what.
    • Done: Create a Wiki article that tracks how people are progressing through the Wiki Ninja ranks. 

 

See Also

• TechNet Wiki Community Council
• TechNet Wiki Community Council Members
• TechNet Wiki Community Council: How to Become a Member
• TechNet Wiki Advisory Board
• TechNet Wiki: Featured Article Teams
• TechNet Guru Contributions
• Wiki: Known Issues  
• Feature Requests for TechNet and MSDN Profiles and Social Platform Tools

Other Languages

• Consejo de la Comunidad TechNet Wiki: Áreas de enfoque (es-ES)