Volunteers Wanted

With your support, Wangjianshuo’s Blog has become an important website about living in Shanghai. The readership increases everyday. I am overwhelmed by your compliment and encourage. The number questions I got on all aspects of Shanghai also increased dramatically. I have tried my best to answer as many questions as possible and answer them as quick as possible. However, my bandwidth is limited and I am not an expert on all areas (such as how to get a visa). So I turn to you, my readers, for help to make the site more helpful everyday.

I am thinking of a volunteer program to improve the quality and coverage of this site. I drafted the following “positions”.

Proof Reading Expert

I have proof read most of my articles myself (if time allows). I read the published entry(so HTML code is not displayed), mark mistakes and go back to MovableType to correct them. But English is not my native language and there are still many grammar and spelling errors in every article. I am aware of it. :$ (type this into your MSN Messenger and you can see what emotion it prepresents)

I know half of my readers are native English speakers. How about devote 10 minutes to proof read a piece of my (past) article and correct errors?

Time needed: 10 minutes per article.

Total work load: There are 624 published articles including this one on this site.

How many volunteers needed: About 10.

If you enjoy reading this blog and cannot bear the bad grammar of any entry, why not help me (and help other readers like you) to correct it?

How it works? I will setup a Wiki site for you and export all my articles into the site. You accept an article and you can freely edit the content of the article. After it is completed, notify me and I can export the article back to the main site. The Wiki site is also open to public, so everyone can add inputs.

Shanghai Expert

Are you a native Shanghaiese? Have you stayed in Shanghai for many years? Have you successfully relocated to Shanghai in the past half year? Would like to help others (especially the expat community) to survey in this city? Would you like to practice written English and see your articles published and read by 10+ thousands of people from 109 countries? This position is for you.

Time needed: Depends on you. You can either take full day travel in Shanghai and take pictures (as I did for Starbucks) and write an article the second day, or just use 5 minutes to drop few lines to answer someone’s question here.

How it works? After I get enough volunteers in this category, I will setup a case management system so people can directly send email to a group email alias or via web form and the question is put into public queue. You can pick up a question and answer it. If you want to send original article on certain topic, just like what I did, submit it via Wiki website.

Indexer

There are many articles in this site, and to find the right resource is not as easy as it was . I start to see repeating questions again and again while it has been answered in details in a separate article. Will it be useful if someone help to index the pages just like the index of a book? This needs skills. A good index can help people to navigate through this maze of articles more easily.

Time needed Maybe longer - you have to read all the articles and assign key words for each other and combine the keywords into a list. This is a tough job, sorry.

Volunteer needed Only one, since according to some books, it is best for one person to index this site so he/she has better sense of selection of keyword.

How it works Also on Wiki.

Thanks

Thanks for reading all these “job posting”. They are all volunteer jobs. I don’t know what I can give to volunteers. But do ask for anything you think I can offer. I may consider.

• Want a link on this site? Sure.

• A T-shirt with a logo? Yes. If someone can help to design, I can pay to print some.

• Want me to name a section on this site after your name? Well, maybe.

• etc…I don’t have many things to offer - just to show my appreciation, on behalf of all the readers who get help from you.

Do not hesitate. If you are intersted, would you please drop a short message to me

. In the mail, please tell me what type of volunteer you want to be, your contact information, your plan about how you can help and what you want to get from me if I can offer. I will contact you soon after I get the mail. The closure date for this application is June 30, 2004.