Seattlest/SeattleWiki February Membership Drive

Seattlest assumes that most -ist readers are familiar with wikis. Follow the link if you have no idea what I'm talking about.

These wiki things can be pretty useful and the usefullness of them increases as the amount of users and contributors increases. For example the wiki-based encyclopedia, Wikipedia, is perhaps one of the most useful depots of information available to you on the internets and that's because of their immense user base (and the organizational genius of wiki, of course).

All that introduction aside, Seattlest would like to point your attention to SeattleWiki.org. They're pretty new on the scene, but Seattlest thinks that SeattleWiki is bound for glory in our little corner of the internet. What they need now is contributors (that's you) to scoot their little butts over to the site and start contributing.

Their FAQ has the answers to your most pressing questions and this page will teach you all you need to know to start. Don't know what to write? Maybe you can add to the Seattle People page. Or could it be that you know a thing or two about riding a bicycle in Seattle? This is the page for you. Search the wanted pages for content that people are looking for but that you haven't written yet. You probably feel like you have some information about Seattle that you can't find a page for on SeattleWiki:

You may notice that there's no Start new page link or button anywhere. This is not a bug but a feature. One of the important ideas in Wiki sites is that every page should be linked from somewhere. So you should first find the page where the new link fits best, and then create a new link to that page, like this: [[My new page|this is my new page]]. After you save the changes, you can click on the new link (it will appear in red) and create the page.

If you can't find a good place to start your page from, you can always use your User page (if you are logged-in).

Create an account and start contributing. Seattlest will love you for it and to prove our love we'll be selecting two lucky winners who created an account and made at least three changes to SeattleWiki to publish their very own guest column on Seattlest.com next week. You heard me right folks. Two lucky people will not only get to be heard via SeattleWiki and assist in the contruction of SeattleWiki, the building of the internets and mankind's eternal quest for knowledge, but they will also bring fame upon themselves by way of Seattlest.com.

Here's what to do:

1) Go to SeattleWiki.org and create an account.

2) Dip into your vast reservoir of Seattle knowledge and make three contributions to the SeattleWiki site.

3) Email Seattlest and tell us your SeattleWiki username.

4) Launch your career in media punditry on Seattlest.com with a guest column next week.