Case Study: Kerrydale Street Football Club

Wikipatterns – Table of Contents

Kerrydale Street is a user-generated fan wiki created to celebrate Celtic FC, a Scottish Premiere League football team.  Celtic FC has a large, passionate, and international fan base who have been rabidly following the team since its first match in 1888.   During those 119 years of football history, Celtric FC has amassed a treasure trove of information that needs to be chronicled and celebrated – Kerrydale Street has become that place online.  In a little over one year’s time, Celtic fans have contributed over 3,500 pages of content, 7,000 images added, and over 18,000 contributions.  And those numbers continue to grow every day.

Why did the site creator choose a wiki?

The idea for the Kerrydale Street wiki came from a desire to have a companion site for a very successful Celtic forum site.  The site creator toyed with the idea of going down the usual “Fan Site” road with match reports, players of the month, etc., but decided that the best way to differentiate from these other sites was to let as many passionate fans of Celtic FC as possible help build the ultimate fan site.  A wiki proved to be the easiest way to activate the Celtic faithful.

What type of wiki is Kerrydale Street using?

Kerrydale Street is powered by Wetpaint (http://www.wetpaint.com), a free consumer-oriented hosted wiki service.

How is Kerrydale Street using the wiki?

The aim of Kerrydale Street is to complete a comprehensive guide to Celtic FC. To do that, Kerrydale Street houses such information as club history, stadium information, player and manager biographies, a photograph library, and a year-by-year history of the club.

Which wikipatterns are in use on your wiki?

  • Champion – the initial Champions of Kerrydale Street came from the forum and developed the initial site positioning and content structure. Quickly thereafter, the Champions built awareness of the site, invited other passionate participants, and managed the orderly growth of the wiki website.
  • Community Write – Kerrydale Street requires contributors to register for the site prior to contributing. This has elevated the quality of the content added to the site. This requirement wasn’t always so; the site used to open to anonymous editing. However, as rivalries in football are fierce, anonymous contributions from opposing fans hampered the positive momentum of the wiki website.
  • Use WYSIWYG – Fans of Celtic FC are united in their passion for their club; however, their technical skill varies greatly. WYSIWYG allows for the greatest amount of participation from the Celtic community, not just those who are passionate and also understand traditional wiki markup syntax.

What changes have you seen as a result of using a wiki?

The biggest change has been the absolute reach of the Kerrydale Street wiki website. Because anyone who is passionate about Celtic FC can participate in the site, it has grown quickly. And that growth has created a virtuous cycle of greater exposure and greater participation. As an example, Kerrydale Street is now on Page 1 of Google for the keyword term “Celtic FC.” And as more people are exposed to Kerrydale Street and realize that they can add to it, the goal of becoming the web’s comprehensive guide to Celtic FC on the web isn’t far off.