A major problem is that the wiki isn't very usable (not just to edit, but to USE). It's hard to find what you are looking for (especially if you don't know the exact phrase you need), and to navigate in general. Big problem: The search bar is hidden. You have to scroll down the sidebar to see it. The search bar should be either top right or front and center.
If it's not usable, then no one is going to use it. If no one uses it, then no one wants to work on it. Why work on something that no one's going to read?
Some ideas:
Make a detailed list of things that need worked on. Post a link to this list somewhere VERY VISIBLE on the front page. Right now there are three links of articles that need help, but I went to one, and didn't really know what would've been needed to better-ify it.
(My favorite idea) Make a monthly wiki thread on Discussion where you can ask for what specifically you want done. People can talk about it. Ask questions if they want. Get karma for it. It feels more visible, versus just going in and editing wiki stuff on your own, sans discussion. The wiki isn't active enough that the discussion pages for each article can support ongoing conversation, IMO. I clicked on two pages, and neither had anything at all in their discussion pages.
Set it up as a project on the volunteer network.
Run a one-month-ish competition for who has done the most (useful) work on the wiki. There are prizes that are cheap for you guys to give away, but worthwhile to others. (i.e. Sing Summit tix. Name a HPMOR character. One on one Skype conversation. etc) The most difficult part would be having someone judge the editors (which would be easier if you allowed multiple ties). The good part of this is it might jump start people into getting habituated to doing wiki work.
From the comments here, it seems like people aren't even in agreement about what the wiki is FOR. It probably needs a mission statement or something.
Post regular (weekly?) links to wiki articles on the LW discussion page. This will lead to: a) Getting people ONTO the wiki in general. (People will want to edit it more, if other people are on it more.) b) Discussion and improvement on that particular page.
tl;dr- It needs to be easier to use the wiki as a user. The wiki needs more traffic, to make editing it more worthwhile. It needs to be easier to find out what needs to be edited, hopefully with specifics of what needs work in the article. It needs to be clearer what the final product should be like.
How can we incentivize more productive activity on the LW wiki? There are many articles that could be created or expanded.
Are there previous discussions on this?
One suggestion: We could add a "good explanation!" button at the bottom of each article, and every time it is clicked, the user account responsible for the plurality of words in the current draft of the article gets 10 karma points. This requires that LW and LW-wiki accounts be synced, first.
How can this suggestion be improved?
What other suggestions do people have?