(Pardon our dust — thanks Seattle Municipal Archives)

This weekend this space will be a construction zone.

If all goes as planned, at the other end of the weekend we'll have a site that's richer, more engaging, more dynamic, easier to navigate, and ready to reflect all the coolness and quirkiness that Columbia Citizens bring to it.

And maybe, hopefully, we can kick off a new round of Wiklis.

For a preview, you can poke around our test site.

Thanks for your patience. After Monday, if you find broken links or anything else that doesn't work, you can either post a comment here, or try your hand at some wiki editing.

What's happening this week? What are people talking about? Where's the latest weekly digest? How can I be a part of all this?

I'm hoping the new site will make all that much clearer. There's been a lot of under-the-hood tinkering, some breakage, occasional cursing — and a bunch of new ideas for how our site can come back stronger, easier, and more interesting.

There's a mockup on the test site — very drafty, but it gives the basic idea. Take a look. Weigh in.

Here are some great ways to make sure you stay connected.

Are you on facebook? We've got a facebook group of about 600 neighbors. It's a great way to get emailed reminders for Columbia City's iconic events, or to check in occasionally to see what neighbors have posted.
Columbia Citizens also have a facebook page. Fan that, and you'll see the beginning of new threads from our discussion board, mixed right in with your facebook newsfeed.
Are you on Twitter? This has been a fun new experiment of the past few months. Columbia Citizens tweet new threads from our discussion board, and we also relay tweets from around the neighborhood. Follow us here.
Do you use a feed reader? Have the internet come to you! It's easy to set up a feed reader to view updates. Feeds arrive as bulleted items for easy browsing. If something piques your interest, you can check out its linked content, or you can tag it to read later. Otherwise you can wipe the reader slate clean and move on. Columbia Citizens offer a variety of feeds. You can track one discussion or several. You can get WikLi alerts. If you want, you can track each and every site edit. Or you can customize a feed to track something more specific. More details are here.
Do you want a daily email digest? You can also get a summary of the day's discussion, straight to your email inbox, with direct links to each post to make it easier to join in. If you'd like more immediate updates, you can arrange for that when you sign up.

This week's Wikli will mark a milestone. This is #100. That's one hundred weeks of Columbia Citizen news, alerts, commentary, and images — all shared by neighbors, for neighbors.

As our collaborative weekly newsletter, the Wikli highlights all that Citizens have shared on the site over the past week. It helps to mark a rhythm for neighbors' regular check-ins. It draws in readers and writers, and it seems to make this complicated wiki a little less so.

And in celebration of this momentous occasion… it feels like a good time to kick off a Wikli sabbatical.

It's time to step off the weekly treadmill, and to focus with neighbors' help to make the site even more accessible, more engaging, more inclusive, and more compelling.

So here are two challenges: how to improve the site in the long term, and how to keep things humming in the short term, while the Wikli's away?

• This space could use better attention to site design, organization, and outreach. So if CSS, UI, and SEO mean anything to you, we'd surely love some of your TLC.
• In the meantime, there's no rest for the wiki. The calendar, the discussion board, the photo gallery, and all the pages will still be up and running, available for you to pitch in with what you know and care about.

Can we aim to get this done by springtime? Your thoughts on all this are vital, as always.

Truth be told, this Citizen has resisted the siren song of social media, suspecting facebook, myspace and their ilk might turn out to be just so many more online obsessions. And they are. But the lure of the neighborhood's internet-work is strong, and there's a rush of new interest in Columbia City connecting.

Christo de Klerk kicked off a Columbia City group awhile back, and this week it's breezed past 200 members. If you're a facebook member in the "Seattle, WA" network, you can join and invite your neighbors.

This seems to be another good way for Citizens to self-identify and share information. Facebook isn't a wiki, so it won't replace what we're doing here. But facebook might make it easier to connect with the friends of our friends — a useful tool in this neighborhood. So let's see if this helps with the community building we do here — check it out.

Over the past year, many people have participated in this experiment in community building, the wiki. It's time for a wider discussion to share ideas and impressions.

Let's get together and talk about the future of the wiki.

Where: The Alehouse
When: Monday, August 18, 7pm

n.b. laptops and libations don't mix. Leave yours at home.

There are so many angles, so let's make this a free-form discussion. Here are a few questions to think about beforehand.

• What do you want to do with Columbia Citizens?
• What's working? What could work better?
• What's motivated you to participate so far?
  • What would make the experience more fun?
  • What might motivate other neighbors?

In the meantime, here are some numbers.

• ~4000 monthly visits
• ~12 000 monthly pageviews
• ~30 comments per week
• ~270 total pages
• ~440 subscribers to Wikli alerts
• ~75 Citizen members

If you have ideas or questions you'd like to share, please use this comment thread. If this conversation is something folks enjoy, then maybe we can have it more regularly.

Anonymity I'm not a big fan. When we associate our identities with our ideas, I think the discussion is more open, and the setting is just more interesting. There's an added value in getting to continue conversations in person, or in just reaching out when the keyboard is too big an obstacle for effective communication.

We've talked about this, BR. At the very least, it's helpful to know when ideas in a single discussion thread like this one are coming from the same person. Maybe it's me, but it's a lot like voices from shadows.

Participation From my perspective, the main benefit of anonymity is increased participation. But participation alone doesn't foster dialogue. There are other elements — a non-threatening setting, a friendly overall tone, and some good ideas, to name a few. As more Columbia Citizens tap in, I think there's some point when the benefits of required identities outweigh the costs. We're not there yet, but I hope to get there.

Censorship I was intentionally harsh when I called myself a censor, because it's not something I do often or take lightly. In this discussion board over the past year, I've deleted two terse comments and edited a third (you can track the edit). Aside from my megalomaniacal drive toward ultimate wiki-world domination, I was motivated mainly by my concern about tone.

It seems like a paradox that most public goods need dedicated stewards. It's true of our public spaces and institutions. People care about and participate in this forum to varying degrees. I care a lot — but I don't want that interest to come across as officious or overbearing.

Discussions here can be sparse sometimes. They happen over time. Attention shifts, and the opportunity passes for a timely response. If others were to respond in measured, even tones, then a moderator could just set back and enjoy the conversation. That would be amazing.

You know the routine — technical difficulties… hardware failure… servers down… your data is safe… yada yada yada. The system was down for much of yesterday, and it was 12:30 AM when things got back to normal in wikidot-webland.

Meanwhile our Citizen-editors were stymied all day. With little to edit, I got to turn in early on Tuesday evening.

Now that we're back up and running, let's pull the Citizens' Wikli together tonight. You'll get your Wikli fix Thursday morning.

Thanks.

S.

I am also aware of a semi-active Yahoo group at http://groups.yahoo.com/group/ColumbiaCitizens/ . Then I also learned of a private email list that an active neighbor named Marj manages. Those are more good examples of positive grass-roots organizing.

Can someone explain the relationship between them all? Is there a hope to consolidate all three? What's the conversation like between the people who actually have ownership?

I suppose that "ownership" is a bad word to use. Anyone who reads this post or is a participant in any of these efforts probably feels some sort of "ownership" of the grass-roots organizing. As well they should! I guess I should say "What's the conversation like between the people who actually have "admin powers" to those efforts?

Or, is it a secret?
:-)