Tip2: Throw out the rule book!
April 28th, 2010
Don’t start with a lot of structure and rules. Make a wiki available, then see how people use it, and grow accordingly. Follow the lead of the people using it – that’s at the heart of how social software works!
This tip goes to the heart of what the web2.0 movement is all about. Everybody is contributing. In this way, the result is better than what you would ever get when you tried to enforce it to your team or department.
It is not really the absence of rules that constitutes to the success of a wiki, but the freedom that people feel that they can take part in it when and how they want.
Why does 'absence' of too many rules gets teams on average to a better result? What motivates people to take the time to enter a new wiki page or to amend an existing one. In general because they feel that is something they ought to do.
Revisions, the feature you need but will rarely use
The single most important feature that explains why you don't need too many rules is the wiki's revisions system. Everything that was ever there, good or bad, is remembered. And is there for everyone to see. I have seen only on rare occasions that somebody had to revert to a previous version because somebody messed it up. People just need to understand that that feature is there. This understanding will keep them from spamming the wiki or getting engaged in some foolish escalating correction upon correction game.
The question of motivation comes back later, when we will try to understand what it is that makes people wanna come back to the wiki to make it better.
Page templates should help, not enforce
A word of caution about page templates. These templates are available when pages of a certain type are created. These should not be viewed as "fill in all the boxes on this form, or else it is invalid". Rather it should help new page authors structure the information on the page so that some kind of uniformity is reached. Rather use templates to assist on what kind of content is typically provided on a page of that nature.
I don't know where we are going, but we are getting there very fast
This is a slight exaggeration of course, but there is some truth in it. You may know where you start with a wiki, but you will need to have an open mind to see where people take the wiki. Don't try to limit the use of your wiki when it goes into a direction you did not anticipate. When the team decides that they need content on a topic, try to understand rather than to stop it.
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