What wiki content would make people go to a wiki?

At the GiRo2006WorkShop we were asked to suggest what types of content would encourage people to visit an actuarial wiki. Wikis work well if they achieve critical mass: enough people visiting, enough people editing. One way to make this happen is for the wiki to contain information that people actually want.

For an example of a successful wiki, containing lots of useful information and maintained as part of a volunteer community, see the Distributed Proofreaders wiki. This wiki was built by an existing online community, whereas we are trying to build an online community: the end result is the same, but the means of getting there are different.

In our discussion group at the workshop, we came up with the following ideas:

• Links to useful resources, with comments and reviews. Resources could include articles, books, web sites, software tools... It's important that it's easy to find the link you want; this means some sort of organisation. With a mature Wiki, if the organisation doesn't work it gets changed pretty quickly.
• A glossary: actuarial terms, wiki terms, insurance terms ...
• Data sets, benchmarks ... with examples of their use.
• A problem page. No single agony aunt, but the community as agony actuary.
• Job ads, salary surveys, and so on.
• Events. Future, and reviews of past events.

Some of these are not practical in the short term, but they all provide food for thought.