Kaplan is giving out an award of $1000 to any (no matter how nebulous) student group that has worked together on any sort of project.

"The award recognizes student teams for their contributions to the university, or the community and to education. Criteria: Team initiative and teamwork, planning and problem solving, creative solutions, enhancement of the campus or community..."

The dream

The wiki meets their criteria really well, but the problem is that we are decentralized and do not consist of just students. They have a 3-member minimum, otherwise the Wiki Developers could apply (only two are current students) on behalf of the project. So, here's the current idea: everyone who is a student (grad students as well) and interested in having their name and reg card number written down can email [email protected]. Information needed is: Full name, reg card #, email address, local phone #. Also, you can help draft the proposal text on this page.

$1000 would basically cover server costs for a year. If won, the entire sum of the award would go in to purely hosting/site costs and would be considered a donation, essentially.

What we did

  • Submit a written (typed, double-spaced, 3 page maximum) summary our project. We need to explain the goal of the project, why it's important to your team, how you worked together as a team to accomplish this project, strengths and limitations of the team, team initiative and problem solving, and what you learned about teamwork through the project.
  • A brief (80 words or less) synopsis of your project for the Student Awards Ceremony on June 7th in Freeborn Hall.
  • You may attach any other information that may be helpful to the Selection Committee: photos, flyers, brochures, programs, newspapers, etc)

w00t! That would totally pay the server costs. Count me in. —The Labster

I thought of the wiki the moment I saw this so it sounds good to me! -JackHaskel

Ok, let's get down to business. We might want to pull some information from here.

What was submitted

The text below was drafted on this page, collaboratively, and submitted to Kaplan with the application (below is nearly the final form).

DavisWiki.org is a cooperative website that the entire community can build, edit, and expand. The goal of the site is to create a valuable resource and act as a public voice for members of the Davis community. Ultimately, the contents of DavisWiki.org do not belong to a single person, or even a group of people, but the community at large. Everyone has the ability to participate in the project by editing and making additions to pages on the website wherever they see fit. Working off the belief that the general populous knows more than any small group of proprietors or developers, DavisWiki.org has the ability to be a self-maintaining, constantly evolving wealth of information as well as a discussion platform for the diverse members of our community.

DavisWiki.org allows its members to share their knowledge with the community and future generations. Through its unique construction and design, DavisWiki.org is able to link multiple areas of Davis together in one place; businesses, clubs, city and student governments and social sectors all intermingle.

The ability of its users to document everything within their capacity allows DavisWiki.org to act as an archival system for future community members. The knowledge contained within the site can be updated as needed but the original content is never lost, creating a comprehensive time capsule.

While the initial programming for DavisWiki.org was done by two people, the project has since exploded. Membership currently exceeds 900 users, and is still growing. In less than a year, 3,000 pages were created by community members. While a large number of those who use DavisWiki.org are undergraduates, the site attracts citizens from all walks of life as it aims to be a resource for the entire community.

Members of the Davis community, including students and non-students alike, make additions to pages, thus creating a completely noncommercial resource. The information contained within each page is written from actual experience and often undergoes a series of edits after the initial contribution. Frequent edits prevent opinion from being presented as fact, and, over time, results in content that is unbiased and neutral. The very nature of the project ensures that each page undergoes a review process by providing every contributor the opportunity to fix and change a page as it evolves. Teamwork is vital to the integrity of DavisWiki.org.

The greatest strength of our team is that there are so many contributors - and anyone can join in at any time. While one person would not be able to write a complete encyclopedia of Davis, 900 people can manage it pretty well. Every individual resident in Davis has unique experiences and can contribute something of experiential and educational value to the Wiki.

Similar to the composition of the site itself, the site is promoted through a unique process of teamwork. People are able to upload and print flyers from the site and distribute them themselves, making everything from the production to the distribution user-driven. Another example of such teamwork is DavisWiki.org's public service announcement, played on KDVS 90.3 FM, which was composed collectively on the site.

Having an open-access, freely editable resource creates the potential for vandalism. However, due to the fact that all contributors have the ability to edit anything, vandalism has a low payoff; it is easily removed by anyone who sees it.

New users of DavisWiki.org are frequently timid about substantially editing existing pages and creating new pages, perhaps because they fear that editing an existing page would be offensive to the original author. Most new users are too hesitant to make changes, and are much more likely to add a comment on an existing page than create a new page. In an effort to make editing less intimidating, the front page encourages new users to explore and edit according to their judgment. Additionally, "Wiki Sandbox," linked from the front page, allows users to experiment with different styles and formats without altering an actual page.

Establishing the user-friendly format was not an easy task. There are significant software and usability issues that accompany creating an online resource that anyone can edit. The initial creators of the project spent a great deal of time programming the software to power the site. The issue of server costs is also paramount: as the site expands so do the demands on the server. As DavisWiki.org grew rapidly after opening to the public the initial hosting company kicked DavisWiki.org's account off the shared server because the site was too active. This posed an immediate and serious problem: without a server there would be no website. Having planned ahead by collecting donations and personal contributions, DavisWiki.org was able to secure a server for a one-year period and transfer the website to it overnight.

DavisWiki.org has demonstrated that people are willing to share their experiences and knowledge for the benefit of the community. DavisWiki.org has no innate leadership, no director; it just happens, and it works.

This really turned out nice. Good job, guys! — ss

Who won

For 2005 "Building Roles" won the award. The wiki did not make it to the final selection round.

Discussion on how to improve

The Wiki is a valuable resource that establishes a sense of community across students (UG & G) and community members; helps to create informed consumers, and this feedback in turn increases the quality of local businesses; provides a wealth of information for travellers and new residents; is accessible to every citizen of Davis; provided a forum for discussing ACUSD elections; and represents thousands of hours of participation. I'm hard pressed to think of how any other group can match us on those dimensions. hmmm... this gets me to thinking. We should ask the award committee for comments on our submission. It would be nice to know what our application was lacking. Next time around, it might be useful to wow them with more usage statistics, concrete examples of how the wiki has impacted the outside community, etc. Are there any other small grants that we can apply for? —CraigBrozinsky

After reading the submitted paper it does not seems like very many of these were expressed. The paper seems to focus mostly on how the site is run, rather than what it offers. Perhaps that was the problem? —GiladGurantz

Yeah, it may just be that we didn't adequately gear the application to the reviewers' desires or background knowledge. Next year, we should track down a few non-wiki users to help streamline the language. —CraigBrozinsky

"Team initiative and teamwork, planning and problem solving, creative solutions, enhancement of the campus or community..." It seemed that those initial items (teamwork and issues) were more important than the benefits of the program/group.

Trust me, we won't end up winning until we use newspeak like "Striving in the Face of Adversity, providing a culture of life amongst underpriveleged, beaten, victims of pedophilia who identify themselves as gay black nazi vegan's who worship Allah. Wait... is there still time to resubmit the application?" —MichaelGiardina

While it's definitely disappointing that we didn't win, I could see some problems with the submission in hindsight.

The criteria focuses primarily on the team, "...explain the goal of the project, why it's important to your team, how you worked together as a team to accomplish this project, strengths and limitations of the team, team initiative and problem solving, and what you learned about teamwork through the project." Team shows up five times in the criteria, yet looking back over our submission, the team was never clearly defined. Our submission only briefly mentions that "...initial programming for DavisWiki.org was done by two people...." Then we go on about how the wiki builds community, etc. But going back to what was asked, we never defined a specific goal, like a one-sentence thing, how the team built the wiki, solved problems, took initiative, etc.

I don't think the wiki lost because we were somehow unworthy, but simply because we didn't meet the criteria in our write-up! That would also explain why we wouldn't have even made it to the final cut — the first cut is typically a quick run-through to toss out any applications that were filled out incorrectly, etc. I don't think anybody, least of all our founding fathers, should take this as a personal affront to the project, but we certainly should resubmit again next year! BTW: Not to douse anybody's fire, but I think boycotting Kaplan based on this specific event isn't exactly an appropriate or politically wise maneuver, especially if the wiki hopes to be considered in the future. —AlphaDog

  • I think you may be right, but the idea that it was all in the application shows the problem with the award. I was part of the the committee deciding who got ASUCD prizes. I will be honest in saying a lot had to do with the application, but academics was part of the qualification for the award so before anyone got any cash we checked their GPA to be sure they did not lie. I think the people at Kaplan just believed what Building Roles said in their application. If they would have investigated to see what the applying groups are actually doing I am sure Building Roles would not have won and the wiki would have had a much better chance. -RobRoy

  • I agree and thanks for writing what I didn't have time to write! It's also important to remember that people lose awards all the time. Heck, I didn't get into UC Berkeley, but I knew I could cut it there. It's just a matter of proving your worth to people that have little reason to care about you. I have tremendous confidence in our project and I am really proud of what everyone has done. Additionally, getting 1 grand from Kaplan would have been nice, but it really doesn't matter because I'm positive that we can raise $1000 by the end of the year.

    I believe, regardless of what Kaplan says, that the wiki is the largest act of collective teamwork I've ever taken part in. It's Kaplan's loss that they weren't able to support us, not our loss that we didn't get 1k for server costs.

    Of course, people have reason to be upset, but be realistic: If you have money you get to decide how it's spent and who you award it to. Again, we can raise money and operate the site independent of any such contributions. (And we did for this previous year!) —PhilipNeustrom

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