The year 2012 has almost come to an end. In my view it has been it a great year for us in the BizTalk community. This year the number of TechNet Wiki articles on BizTalk grew exponentially to over a hundred. Not only the number of articles increased also the number of contributors. My inspiration to write TechNet wiki articles inspired others to do the same. Some of us got together during the BizTalk summit in December at Microsoft Campus.

The BizTalk articles focus on deployment, development and administration. Some of these articles reached the spotlight like:

• TNWiki Article Spotlight - BizTalk Virtual Mapper VS Custom-XSLT
• TNWiki Article Spotlight - BizTalk: List of Errors and Warnings, Causes and Solutions
• TNWiki Article Spotlight - Behaviour Driven Development with BizTalk

All these articles were written by dedicated BizTalk community members. Some of them got interviewed:

• Interview with a BizTalk Advisor Wiki Ninja!!! - Tord G. Nordahl
• Interview with a BizTalk MVP Wiki Ninja!!! - Sandro Pereira
• Interview with a Microsoft Integration MVP: Dan Rosanova
• Interview with a Microsoft Integration MVP: Michael Stephenson

2012 also meant a change for some of us MVP's. The BizTalk MVP's were merged with connected system MVP's into one group Microsoft Integration. This means that the scope has broadened for us. BizTalk will not be the sole topic we will be focusing on. However some of us already contributed more than just BizTalk related articles:

• Wiki-Ninjas on Technology: Windows Azure Service Bus EAI & EDI
• TechNet Wiki: Microsoft Integration Stack
• Wiki-Ninja’s on Technology: SQL Azure

In 2013 a new BizTalk Server version will be released. It's beta was released a couple of weeks ago. The product group is still innovating BizTalk and Microsoft invests in it. The product is very much alive and worldwide the number of customers increases. This will mean that in 2013 will be seeing more BizTalk related articles on the TechNet Wiki. The Wiki is a great platform and for us in the BizTalk community an excellent resource, which we gladly promote during BizTalk events.

Happy new year!

 - Ninja Steef-Jan (Blog, Wiki, Twitter, Profile)

Here is the weekly analysis of contributions to TechNet Wiki over the last week (Fri-Sat)

Firstly, here is the usual weekly leader board snapshot:

Due to some irregularities in the way contributions are recorded, and the wiki stats are auto-generated, I run my own crawl of the actual changes. Then I follow up with a manual check, to discount some of the contributions, as shown below.

Despite this being Christmas week, we still have plenty of great contributions to mention, so with no further delay, here are the results of a two hour crawl over the updated articles feed.

Note, this currently only highlights CHANGES to documents, and does not yet include the new articles feed, which I plan to incorporate in future awards.

Most Revisions Award   Who has made the most individual revisions

yottun8 takes first place with 24 revisions over 15 articles. This tally includes some excellent policing work, removing plagiarized content and spam

i.biswajith comes in second, with 19 revisions over 3 articles. Some good work improving his already awesome content.

Adriel Gavazza is in third, with 13 revisions over 10 articles.

Most Articles Updated Award   Who has updated the most articles

yottun8 is first with 15 articles

Adriel Gavazza is second, with 10 articles.

Richard Mueller is third with 5 articles

Most Updated Article Award   Largest amount of updated content in a single article

This award can work two ways. Either it can mean the most content added or the most content removed.

This week, yottun8 wins the award for removing the most content - a large chunk of plagiarized text, that was lifted from another source.

Good policing work yottun8. We are all very proud of the reputation of TechNet Wiki, and such plagiarism is not wanted.

It is therefore worth mentioning the second place in this category, which is one of the documents i.biswajith has been working hard on - Windows Trust, Migration, AGUDLP & ADMT

Although most of the changes were last week (21st) his work on the 22nd put this document into the awards for this week. Another great resource, examined closer in another award below.

Longest Article Award   Biggest article updated this week

This week, the longest document to receive significant changes was Tools for Troubleshooting Slow Boots and Slow Logons (sbsl)

A very useful article created by Justin Hall MSFT documenting troubleshooting experiences of Microsoft Support.

The last edit by rüdiger itner is unclear, as the revision compare page is a bit broken, and rüdiger didn't comment his changes.

The majority of this article is in fact an appendix containing a mammoth hex dump, but it is still by default the biggest changed document this week.

Most Revised Article Award   Article with the most revisions in a week

The Article to receive the most revisions is, as mentioned above, Windows Trust, Migration, AGUDLP & ADMT by i.biswajith

Although some of the text has been lifted from other sources, it is a nicely pulled together collection of info, and modernised piece of work, which i.biswajith is working hard to personalise, and well worth a look.

Smallest Significant Edit Award   Size isn't everything! Every edit counts.

Ignoring the addition of tags, this week's smallest but valuable contribution was to Ingresso Off-line para domino Windows Server 2012 created by Diogo Molina

Adriel Gavazza made a few small but valuable tweaks to a great article.

Quickest Helping Hand Correcting each-other's work is what TNWiki is all about.

This week's fastest fiddle to another's work is not actually a fiddle, but I believe is just a comment...

Wiki: エディターの利用 (ja-JP) written by yottun8 was apparently edited just 5 minutes after 'wiki legend' yottun8, but I am unable to find the actual edit that this other fella made.

I believe revision 8 may have just been to add a revision comment, possibly because they did not see the regular comments box at the bottom of the article?

Documents can have "comments" (without editing) and "revision comments" (edit notes summarising the edited changes).

Revision comments with no actual change are something we need to ignore in both the wiki stats and my crawler stats.

Congratulations as always, to all the wiki ninjas listed above.

Your work is always noticed and appreciated. 

Tune in next week for more of the same.

Hopefully see YOUR name in the awards!

Best regards,
Pete Laker

The end of the year is typically the period of rest and evaluation.

The first could be the case of TechNet Wiki, if we could not talk about hundreds of new articles, created in December only... :)

I myself have contributed to Wiki since January of this year. It was a great year for (and with) the TechNet Wiki and I think thousands share this opinion with me. Jan already shared the figures with us in the previous post, so I would like to write about how it happens.

The most basic thing, as someone may contact TechNet Wiki is finding an article and reading it. I think it happened to most of you already (to me as well, however I couldn't recall when).

Then some of these people find themselves at the second step, to start commenting on articles, but they soon find out that there is a better way to improve the content than commenting, once they can edit it as well.

Then they press the Edit button, and start correcting typos, and they just arrived to the third step.

From this point, what happens can be different: they begin to upload content to stub articles, or they create brand new articles. They add more comments, tags and content to existing articles, and even begin to keep an eye on others' articles with the help of RSS feeds - to further enhance the quality of the articles, or to find and mark spam articles.

The important thing about these in common is that they can experience the joy and fun of sharing knowledge.

Well, something similar happened this year to me as well - I only can encourage you to take the next step on TechNet Wiki!

Thanks for all your contribution and efforts so far, and I wish you a Happy 2013!

After everybody has gone for holidays (except Pete - he was so kind to give me his keys) it is my part to hold up the Wiki Ninjas flag for today.

Hello and welcome everybody to our Wednesday - Wiki Life post.

The year 2012 is nearly gone and 2013 is at the ready. So I like to summarize what has happen this year on the TechNet Wiki. Lets start with some hard facts: How much has the wiki grown in the last year? It was hard to find some numbers from the end of 2011, but luckily Tord has written a blog post about it some months ago.

At the time of his post 2,400 users have contributed 8,406 articles, 46,739 revisions, and 21,154 comments. But how has that changed during the year 2012?

Until today 3,533 users have contributed 12,320 articles, 67,939 revisions, and 33,095 comments. That means 1,133 new users, 3,914 new articles, 21,200 new revisions, and 11,941 new comments have seen the usefulness of the TNWiki.

But let the hard facts be what they are: Just numbers. Especially for me it was an exciting year at TNWiki. At the end of 2011 I joined the community and during 2012 Ed asked me if I want to write for the Ninjas blog. What was the only answer I could give him? OF COURSE (the real answer was a little bit different, but it should never reach the light, because there would be to much '*' in it).

How does this all start for me? Or to ask the question in another way: What were my personal highlights at the TNWiki? 

Because I became an editor at the MSDN "Training and Certification" forum my first thought was: "Why shouldn't there be some articles about the opportunities of Microsoft's trainings and certification program?" So I started the Wiki: Training and Certification Portal. What did Ed (whom we also know as Santa since yesterday) do after I started the portal? He made an article about it.

My second personal highlight was the translation challenge, where a lot of people have done a great job. But this wasn't the end. We had another translation challenge and a "connect and recruit" challenge started by Tord.

However, the wiki isn't all about challenges. There were also some great articles I like to read again every day. Lets point out some of them:

• Survival Guides - This doesn't need any explanation. Everybody should love them.
• E-Book Gallery - Some people might think: Oh no, not the gallery again. He mentions it in every second article. My answer: Uhm ... you're right. Same principle like above: Everybody should love the gallery.

In July Margriet has made the interview of the year with ... Mr Wiki Ed price aka Santa. I think everybody has waited for it a long time. In August it was the time that ... the wiki has reached 3,000 contributors. What did Ed do? He wrote a poem, which I'd like to include in this post:

A nice one, right?

Also in August Ed has made something every ninja has dreamed about: The Stick Figures Ultimate Collection 1. The usage of this collection should say everything, but let me point it out: That collection rocks!

At nearly the end of the year Pete (also known as XAML Guy) has made something special: The Windows 8 TechNet Wiki widget. With that widget he is ordering the organised chaos (also known as the TNWiki).

That was almost the year 2012, but wait ... one of my favorites posts was not so long ago ... some of you may already know it and they are right ... it was the merry christmas 2012 wish from Pete yesterday. Some of us had already knew it: Bill Gates reads every TNWiki contribution and Ed is Santa. Thanks Pete for making this publicly available.

That was my year 2012 at the TNWiki and I can't wait for 2013. If you want to tell me what your year 2012 has looked like, just leave a comment to this post.

At the end of this article there are only some words left to say: I wish you all a happy new year 2013 and we will see us again in January!

- German Ninja Jan (Twitter, Blog, Profile)

They've all gone home for the holidays, and left ME holding the keys!

Do they know what they've done..?

Secrets! 

This means I can tell you two top Microsoft secrets, and they should stay posted here for at least a few days, before anyone comes back from holiday and hides the truth!

Secret 1. I'm sure you heard the rumours, but it's true... Bill Gates reads every TechNet Wiki contribution, and sends chocolates to his favourite contributors!

Secret 2. Ed Price is Santa!

It's obvious really, there's only one man I know who gets that much done... (example)

Spread the love 

Wikis should support one another at this time of the year, so please take the time to consume and maybe even contribute to another lesser known wiki:

The Christmas Specials Wiki

Just for YOU

In honour of the hard work and so much goodness that has been contributed this year, I am pleased to announce that Microsoft has knitted Christmas jumpers for every TechNet Wiki Ninja stick man!

Take your pick...

What is a Ninja stick man? Link 1 - Link 2 

Final thought...

If this were Halloween, I'd be telling you that TechNet Wiki is an anagram for "I chew kitten".

Instead, more fitting for the kind of functions we are subjected to, at this time of year, I can tell you that it's also an anagram for "with necktie"!

Happy holidays from and to all the TechNet Wiki Ninjas!

Normal service will return tomorrow!

Best regards,

Pete Laker