Originally Posted by Judy in Calgary

I'm thrilled that the mods have given us a Wiki section in which to write articles.

I've kicked off the process by writing the following articles:

• In the Canada Lifestyle section I've written an article on Careers. The sub-topics that I've addressed are Equivalency of Qualifications, Networking and Resumes.
  
• In the Canada Lifestyle section there also is the option of writing articles that are relevant to a single province. I've written one on the Alberta Health Care Insurance Plan.
  
• In the Expat City Guides section, I wrote two articles on Calgary. One was on Residential Areas and the other was on Schooling.

I've had one other experience of contributing to a Wiki-like guidebook. That was at TripAdvisor, which is a travel website and discussion forum. There I contributed to the Inside Calgary pages, the Inside Banff National Park pages, and a bit to the Inside Vancouver and Inside Victoria pages.

I experienced at least two benefits from contributing to a Wiki-like guidebook.

First of all, as the pages of the guidebook got populated with more and more information, I was able to point newbies to various pages in the guidebook rather than answering the same questions again and again and again. That felt really good.

Secondly, it was just plain fun. I was fortunate enough that another TripAdvisor poster who was very knowledgeable about Calgary got enthusiastically involved. It was fun to see new pages springing up as she added them. Also, each of us knew things that the other didn't know, so each of us tweaked pages that the other had created. This meant that pages that had started out being pretty good got even better.

When it came to the Banff National Park page, there were three of us involved, and the same thing happened.

If you know something about Canada or a corner of Canada, are half inclined to say something about it in the BE Wiki, but think, "Oh no, I can't be bothered to figure out how the formatting of the Wiki works," don't worry. Just go in and type what you want to say. If my experience at TA is anything to go by, there are some people who take pleasure in going into the articles and cleaning up the formatting.

Also, the Wiki software saves the existing document before publishing an update. So if you go into a document, make changes, and totally mess up, the situation can be rescued by reverting to a previous version of the document.

The fact that many authors contribute does lead to a slightly higgeldy piggeldy organization of the information, but the outline provided by the website managers helps to maintain some semblance of order. In the case of the BE Wiki, it is organized much the way the forum is organized. There are sections on:

• Expat City Guides (arranged by country and then by state / province)
• Immigration (by country)
• Finance (by country)
• Lifestyle (by country)

You don't have to be addicted to writing, like me. Pity the workers for whom I write environment, health and safety procedures, eh? Even if you have just two sentences to contribute to the Wiki, it all adds to the collective knowledge base. In fact, the more authors the merrier. That's one of the things that makes a website feel like an online community.

I look forward to having my existing articles tweaked by the rest of you, and I look forward to seeing the Wiki populated with new contributions from many more people.

Steve_P has kicked off the process by tweaking my article on schooling. Many thanks, Steve.

See you all at the Wiki.

Originally Posted by flashman

It might be interesting to have some guidance on having the right attitude for settling in Canada.

In reading between the lines of some posters I suspect that they may have difficulty because they are opinionated, aggressive, inflexible etc.

Originally Posted by Hobbess

Another suggestion for the Wiki that I didn't see in there is Shipping. It's a big cost of the move and something I'm working through right now. An explanation of some of the terms like Groupage and any other tidbits about customs etc would be useful.

I don't know wether it would be ok to advertise certain companies as being recommended but there could be links to the few threads that have been discussing good and bad experiences.

Originally Posted by Judy in Calgary

Excellent suggestion, Hobbess.

You do know, don't you, that anyone can start a Wiki article.

In fact, there even is a Wiki article on How to create a Wiki article.

Originally Posted by Hobbess

luckily with American thanksgiving things are a quiet so should be able to get something started!!

Originally Posted by Hobbess

Started - Shipping

Based on what I know so far, I've not got past the quotes stage so have no experience of the actual process. Hopefully others can fill in or I can at some point in Feb when I go through it.