Jimmy Wales from Wikia (a collection of sites users can edit) and Wikipedia (the free encyclopedia that anyone can edit)  spoke at last night’s Social Media Club meeting at CNET‘s office in San Francisco, CA.

Themes from Wales’ talk included several social media lessons he learned from Wikipedia:

• Give users accountability rather than being a gatekeeper of information and you’ll get excellent insights.
• Don’t reprimand users for their bad behavior on line. Instead, praise good users (posts, comments, etc) and validate peers you respect. People crave validation.
• Take a neutral point of view policy. Make sure users know there is no such thing as a “right answer”… just an open discussion and positive effort.

If you’re interested in learning more about the Social Media Club, go to: http://www.socialmediaclub.com.

Thanks to Chris Heuer & team for a great event last night.

I posted this from my Treo 750 (and later edited with bullets and hyperlinks on my mac).

Mobile Blog: Jimmy Wales from Wikia

Post Script: Did you know that Wikipedia:

• Operates with only 5 full time employees? The rest of the folks involved are all volunteers
• Recently raised $1 Million USD at a fundraising event. This amount is equivalent to to total expenditures of Wikipedia last year.
• Has twice the number of visitors than CNN and ABC combined.

Check out the Wikipedia humorous spoof: Uncyclopedia. It is one of the funniest pages on-line and a great example of collaborative humor and social media success.