
Ask HN: Models for Collaborative Websites? - tduberne
I am playing with the idea of creating a niche information website, where I want users to be able to contribute and improve the content.<p>I am looking at the Wikipedia and StackOverflow models to get inspiration on how to foster quality contributions. Is there any other good example of a website where good quality content emerges from user contributions?<p>Using a pure Wiki or Stack-exchange model is not an option, because:<p>- I want to be able to impose a schema for the different items that can be documented, to improve searchability, so a wiki is a bit too unstructured, but<p>- the general structure should be closer to an encyclopedia than a Q&amp;A<p>The aim is to provide a collection of quality information, which is missing in that niche, not to make money, in case that matters.
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amsha
The structure of your website's data is less important than its moderation
process. High quality online communities tend to have strong, well-defined
moderation policies – Wikipedia and Stack Overflow are good examples, as are
HN and certain subreddits (eg AskHistorians).

Regardless of the technology behind a website, online communities without
strong moderation tend to die over time as low quality content crowds out
everything else.

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tduberne
Thank you for the remark. That is indeed also what I am looking at, or more
precisely the interaction between structure and moderation policy.
Stackoverflow is a very good example of how they interact. At such an early
stage, I am mostly trying to identify structures on which policies can be
built, as policies are much easier to change.

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brudgers
_I want to be able to impose a schema_

The alternative is document search.
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Document_retrieval](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Document_retrieval)
It's how Wikipedia, StackOverflow (and Google) provide reasonable search
capabilities. Requiring normalized data is likely to reduce user
participation. Good luck.

