Wikify (content)
From Wikinfo
This article is about how to create wiki information out of normal information. For help about giving your article a polished appearence with links and bold italics, etc. go to the Wikinfo:Library or click Help in the navigation menu to the left.
As an example of taking normal information and turning it into wiki information, I'm going to use the Honey article. The reason why? Because most people have eaten honey, have seen packaged honey, some have cooked with honey and, generally, people know what honey is. You take your basic information about the subject and talk about it for 2 or 3 paragraphs. Then you search the internet for any controversial, wild sounding, fear inducing information. In the case of honey, 2 possible wild controversies are available. One is about what might happen if you feed nothing BUT honey to tiny babies, day after day. They might develop botulism. Just last year, out of millions and millions of babies in the USA, 100 were thought to have developed botulism. Since it is (at least in theory, though no case has been prominently posted on a website), it is at least possible that those 100 were caused by honey (though fruit, vegtables, meat and other foods have the same trace amounts of botulism spores as honey does), then, the Honey article presents this DISTURBING factoid in its 4th or 5th paragraph. And gives that datum a good, full paragraph. This is the way, the way Wiki articles are created from normal, common information. You find some DISTURBING datum (that has never happened to anyone you have ever heard of) and you present it EARLY in the article AS IF it were a common, everyday event.
Next, with the Honey article, we have the astounding datum, certain honey (at times) is actually poisonous. (How many people have you heard of that died from eating honey?) And that (whew) vital datum gets presented with good weight in the Honey article.
These are the ways to create Wiki articles. For a fuller example about Honey, take a look at Wikipedia's Honey article. This idea that wiki has good, useful information has gone past and is unlikely to ever manifest at all. Instead we find these (almost) trival, but strongly disturbing data placed early in articles, and presented as if everyone who ever ate Honey should be very, very aware of these disturbing aspects of honey. After all, can you be really sure that some terrorist group doesn't own the honey factory down the street and, through poor quality control, is using some rhododendron and azalea blossom honey in their packages, thus (according to the Honey article) making a honey of a death possible.
Stated another way, wiki information tends to lay toward disturbing and lies away from useful, helpful information. Present your controversial aspects early, give it full paragraphs (but don't point to websites with too much specific example), and you've probably got as good a wiki article as you can find anywhere.
