This document answers several Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ) regarding publishing to Wikibon.
About
What is Wikibon?
Wikibon is a place to gain and share knowledge about business and IT. Wikibon is an open community where you can read, write and collaborate on a range of topics. If you are passionate about a subject, you can meet other experts and create world-class research and how-to advice. Wikibon can help you get smart on a topic, hone your writing and analytic skills, build a reputation with a global audience and have fun!
Where does the name come from?
We were sitting around a room one day trying to figure out how to create a community platform based on research and advisory. We knew we wanted to use an open Wiki because it was consistent with a read:write Internet. We kept coming back to how we wanted to 'do good work.' Someone said 'Bon!' as in the french word for good and we thought let's be 'Wikibon-- the place to get good info and do good work.'
Do I have to register to use Wikibon?
No. Anyone can read, write and edit Wikibon notes.
Why should I join Wikibon?
Creating an account and logging in has many benefits. When logged in you can:
- Receive recognition for your contributions
- Private Message other users
- Customize preferences and Wikibon's appearance
- Create personalized watchlists of your favorite pages
- Sign contributions and comments to notes and be automatically notified of responses
- Access special features such as uploading files.
- Receive invitations to participate in meetings with your peers.
- It's Free!
Who are Wikibon Members?
This data is current as of November 2011. Wikibon has more than 15,000 registered members. The membership is predominantly made up of business technology professionals and breaks down as follows:
- 65% are IT pros (CIOs, CTOs, Sys Admins, Developers, Operations, Analytics Specialists, DBAs, IT Finance)
-Of these, 70% are managerial, 30% are technical in nature
- 20% of the members are from the vendor, channel or system integrator community
- 10% are independent consultants
- 5% are trade press, financial analysts, bloggers
The IT professional membership cuts across virtually all industries including financial services, energy, distribution, services, telecommunications, media & entertainment, education, government, distribution, consumer packaged goods, publishing, mining, agriculture and technology.
Approximately fifty percent of the community comes from organizations with revenue or an operating budget of more than $1B annually.
In addition to its membership, Wikibon.org receives between 50,000 - 100,000 unique visitors per month.
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Where does the information in Wikibon come from?
From people just like you who are passionate and knowledgeable about a topic. Contributors are writers, experts, practitioners, users, vendors and researchers.
How do I know the information in Wikibon is accurate?
Wikibon cannot guarantee with 100% certainty that every piece of information is accurate. However, the vast majority of information in Wikibon is written or reviewed by knowledgeable experts in a particular field. Information in Wikibon is constantly being updated by the community. From time to time, vandals will purposefully try to taint articles. Wikibon volunteers monitor the content of the site and fix problems as they arise, often within minutes or hours. The software Wikibon uses alerts monitors when changes are made to articles and it is very easy, with the click of a button, to revert back to an earlier version of an article. So unlike physical vandalism, fixing Wikibon subterfuge is much faster than the heinous act itself.
How does Wikibon make money?
Wikibon’s content is open source and freely available to anyone. We derive our income from three primary sources:
- Statement of Work-based consulting services. Our roots are in technology consulting. Our founders have deep relationships with IT execs and executives at tech companies. Over the past several years, technology buyers and IT suppliers have paid us for detailed research, surveys, cost models, architectural roadmaps, portfolio assessments and advisory support. When we complete a research project we present findings to our clients. Any non-confidential information is considered 'fair game' for us to use as we see fit. Unless the information is considered proprietary (which it often is) we typically will publish findings for the benefit of our users. Clients do not review published content in advance.
- Data. We integrate and package data and information products based on knowledge derived from the Wikibon community. We sell this data as an annual service.
- Media partnerships. We provide research and content services to media organizations, which they monetize through advertising. We participate in a revenue share with such organizations.
The community prides itself on independent analysis and as such, we strongly encourage that works published on Wikibon are not to be reviewed in advance by an author's clients or sponsors. Wikibon employees are not allowed to produce commissioned white papers and by policy are not allowed to share works with clients prior to publication. We write for a user audience. Because Wikibon is an open source community, anyone can use it as a publishing platform and there have been instances where paid for pieces have hit the site. However all contributed works are edited mercilessly and open to peer review. Specifically, anyone in the community is free to edit the pieces and we strive to produce research that is peer-based and accurate. If someone disagrees with our analysis, they are encouraged to hit the edit key.
Cumulatively, since our inception, about 10% of our revenue has been derived from end user organizations, 60% from technology suppliers and the balance from financial institutions, media partners, investors and other sources. Our clients include technology suppliers and buyers. The following is a list of our clients that we will update from time to time. Users of our services should understand that we derive income from these clients and while we always endeavor to provide an independent and objective perspective, buyers are encouraged to do their own research before making an acquisition decision.
Who are Wikibon's clients?
We do our best to update this list periodically but it is likely incomplete at any one point in time. The following are companies with whom we have had commercial relationships over the past several years and been proud to serve: 1010data, Accela Communications, Accenture, Aerospike, AIG, Amplidata, Arista, Asigra, Attivio, Attunity, Axxana, Blue Cross Blue Shield, Brocade, Broadcom, Cisco Systems, Cleversafe, ClickFox, Cloudera, DataDirect Networks, DataStax, Dell, Digital Reasoning, EMC, Emulex, F5 Networks, Falconstor, Fidelity Investments, Fusion-io, GE, Gigamon, Hadapt, Hitachi Data Systems, Hortonworks, HP, HStreaming, IBM, InfoObjects, Informatica, IO Data Centers, Johnson & Johnson, LSI, LucidWorks, MapR, Mass Mutual Financial Services, MongoDB, NAV Canada, NetApp, Nimble Storage, NIMBOXX, Nexsan, Nutanix, Oracle, Permabit, Pfizer, QLogic, Qubole, Rainstor, RecoveryPoint, Regence, Reldata, SanDisk, Scale Computing, Scality, ServiceMesh, ServiceNow, SimpliVity, SolidFire, Splunk, sqrrl, Symplfied, Syncsort, Tableau Software, Talend, Tegile, Teradata, Timken, Tintri, Think Big Analytics, Tokutek, Treasure Data, Unify, Unisys, VCE, Verari Sysems, Virtual Instruments, Vivendi, VMware, WANdisco, Xiotech
Does Wikibon share email addresses or private information?
Only under very rare circumstances such as if required by law. This site is a wiki which is different from many sites. Please read our Privacy policy for full details...It's not the usual babble.
Writing
Why should I write with Wikibon versus some other Web site or blog?
Many famous people will tell you the key to their business success is writing regularly. Writing forces cogent thinking and often inspires action. So whatever venue you choose, we celebrate your writing and sincerely wish you the best.
Wikibon is different than most sites in many ways. First, the founders of the Wikibon project have mentored and trained several hundred analysts over the course of twenty years and are making their writing templates and How-to expertise widely available to the Wikibon community.
Wikibon is open. Anyone can edit Wikbon and you won't find restrictive rules claiming ownership to your work.
Wikibon is sound business. Wikibon will help you build your reputation and your consulting practice. By accessing Wikibon tools, templates, expertise and community, you will grow professionally and as an individual.
Wikibon is fun. You pick a topic, float original ideas, get feedback from your peers, help others improve and create a content agenda that can be applied in many ways-- commercially or for any purpose you choose.
Wikibon is a place where you can meet and collaborate with other professionals to get work done. Wikibon is good, safe, challenging and fun.
Who owns the rights to my contributions?
Anything written on Wikibon can be used by anyone for any commercial or non-commercial purpose. Wikibon doesn't impose restrictions on the use of content submitted by the community. It's yours-- use it as you see fit. But please keep it ethical and clean.
Is my note worth publishing?
Great notes can directly help many different individuals or teams solve complex problems. The ultimate test of publishing worthiness is also the simplest: (1) publish; and (2) see if anyone edits or enhances your note. Click the 'watch' tab and you'll automatically be sent an email when someone edits your note.
What is a "Wikibon How-to" note?
A Wikibon How-to note is a piece that is structured according the the Wikibon How-To note standards. Its emphasis is on how to get a business or IT capability delivered. A How-to note focuses not only on "what it is and how and works" but "how to do it" with details about major milestones and actions in the analyze, design and deploy phases of a project.
A How-to note at the 'Level 1' standard has been reviewed by other community members and has been subjected to some level of peer review. It typically also contains numerous metrics and rules-of-thumb deemed useful to practitioners.
How long does it take to write a Wikibon contribution?
A Wikibon article or 'note' can take from minutes to hours to research and write. The simplest form of article is a forum entry. A Wikibon Professional Alert is typically less than 150 words and often takes several minutes to a half hour to write. A Wikibon How-to note ranges from between 1,500 - 5,000 words and can take between 6 to 20 hours (often having multiple authors contributing) to fully research, write, edit and publish.
Who will read my contribution?
Wikibon is made up of a growing community of experts, practitioners consultants and writers from every part of the world and includes users, vendors, consultants and practitioners.
How do I get started?
There are many ways to contribute to Wikibon from writing an opinion to a full How-to note. Check out the Contributor Center for more information. You can also simply click on the 'edit' tab and revise an article as you see fit. Please log in and receive credit for your contributions.
What are Wikibon's Contribution Policies?
Community
What is a Wikibon Author?
Wikibon regards anyone that posts substantive, idea-based content to to be an "author." This includes anyone who writes a How-To article, a Professional Alert or in some other way constructs and contributes idea-based content.
While anonymous posting is acceptable, Wikibon encourages authors to "sign" their work. Signing work makes it easier to forge collaborative relationships with other Wikibon authors or consumers, track contributions, and rate work.
What is an Originating Author?
The "originating author" is the individual that initially creates a piece of content. Typically, originating authors
- choose the content's title;
- organize the content's initial structure; and
- craft the piece to the point of initial usability by the Wikibon community.
Typically, originating authors are granted a "byline." Other contributors to the article can sign the section, graphic, or other element that they contributed.
What is a Wikibon Editor?
Wikibon editors improve the brevity, clarity, and grammatical and spelling accuracy of Wikibon text and graphics. These editors work together to establish and ensure consistency with Wikibon style rules.
What is a Wikibon Producer?
A Wikibon producer is an individual that takes existing Wikibon content and re-purposes it to some other language, form (e.g. video or audio), presentation style, navigational structure, or functional domain.
How do I create a Profile in Wikibon?
When you created an account for Wikibon your Username was automatically logged in the database and added to the userlist. To create a page, you still need to take a couple more steps:
- Enter your username in the search box and hit 'go'
- You will see a line of text saying There is no page titled "username". You can create this page. Click on create this page and start typing information about yourself.
Feel free to include links to your work, website and contact information. Here's a good example: Fred Moore.
Tools
How do I become familiar with the software Wikibon uses?
Wikibon uses simple to use but powerful software powered by Mediawiki, an open source wiki platform. The Help link is a place to find useful hints and tips.
How do I know who made contributions?
The 'history' tab provides a full log of changes by author. You can compare versions by clicking on the radio buttons in the history section of the article. Note: If a contributor has not logged in his or her IP address will be logged.
How do I find articles in Wikibon?
You can utilize the search box. Type the article or phrase you want and hit either 'Go' or 'Search.' 'Go' is a verbatim search and 'Search' looks for instances of the phrase entered in the search box. The Wikibon portals also contain a hierarchical structure listed by major categories. Search in Wikibon is case sensitive.
How do I report unacceptable conduct such as plagiarism or vulgarity?
If you deem an article to be of unacceptable content, or not original work, please do the following:
- click on the 'discussion' tab of the article and log a note
- Email us with the name of the article, the url and as much detail as you can provide.
Thanks for keeping the Wikibon community ethical and clean.
Can I delete an article?
Only sysops can delete an article.
