Graves Disease and Hyperthyroidism WikiThis page includes content that can be used to introduce the wiki to your community. It is written for email list communities, although forum-based communities can modify it for their purposes. The message should probably be sent from an admin of the email list, or at least explain that they are supportive of the project. If the person heading up the wiki project is different than the person sending this message, the email should recommend contacting the wiki project leader.
Below is a sample email message that will need to be customized to fit the needs of your community. It is written as if sent to the fictitious ABC Support Group. It also assumes that there is already a static ABC Support Group website. Words that will need to be changed are in italics.
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[edit] Email Content
ABC Support Group members,
We have begun a new community project that we want to introduce. We are excited about the new possibilities that it will offer our community and hope that you will share our enthusiasm. We are particularly interested to hear from those of you who would like to help out with the project, as well as any of you who have concerns.
The project is to create a website that will act as our community's long-term memory. It will also allow us to share our experiences and expertise more widely. Unlike our current website, this one will be editable by all of you, and we hope it will really be a community effort. We are still thinking about what content it will include, and would love your input. So far we expect to have pages about coping with ABC disease, personal stories, materials for newly diagnosed patients, links to web resources, traveling with ABC, parenting ABC children, and a ABC glossary and acronym dictionary. Are there other topics that are not well covered by existing websites? Are there topics that are shared within our email list that we want the world to know about? Are there resources that we want to create for our own community?
Before making the site publicly accessible, we want to seed it with content that will make it useful from the start. If any of you are interested in helping create the initial content, please let us know. Once the initial content is created all of you will be invited to read and contribute to it.
The project is also part of a research study performed by researchers at the University of Michigan's School of Information. The goal of the study is to learn how online support communities like ours can benefit from these community-created websites. The research team is providing the technology (a customized wiki) and suggestions on how to best use it. However, we are free to do with it what we want. We have spoken with Derek Hansen, who is heading up the project and feel comfortable with the ethical procedures they are using and the long-term sustainability of the project. You can visit their website that describes the project and their ethical procedures at http://www-personal.si.umich.edu/~shakmatt/support/index.html
You can also contact Derek Hansen directly at shakmatt@umich.edu if you have any questions or concerns. He will send out a separate email introducing himself to our community soon.
We are excited at the potential of this project to help our community and others that suffer from ABC Disease. We will send out a link to the website once we have put in some initial content. Let us know if you're interested in helping out or if you have any concerns about the project.
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