Tip5: Go to the source. Put some content exclusively on the wiki so people get used to it as the source of information.
July 7th, 2010
Your way to make the wiki be the true source of content is to make it indispensable.
Part of the cunning plan
We've written about this before. In most business situations, there is a lot of collective knowledge that cannot be remembered by most people. So all these typical topics are good candidates to be put in the wiki. We give a list of possible 'unique reference opportunities' below:
Reference information on people
- Your team members are the first candidates to be put in the wiki. I have used every occasion I got to create personal pages for each team member. I provide some basic information about name, location and so on. Then send the person the link to his page with a request to complete it.
- Basic lists like contact lists containing phone numbers, msn and skype id, email links, home phone numbers and so on are a pretty easy target. If you see it is used by many people, put a link to it on the home page.
- Great content like the team's barbecue pictures, or references to news articles or other publications seem like bringing little value to the wiki, but it surely attracts many visitors. If you are not using an easy to use way (read 'drag&drop') to insert pictures in pages like WordonWiki offers, you may find yourself doing quite some editing. As a tip, don't drop all links in the page, but make sure the pictures are visible when opening the page. To get people in the habit of editing pages, insert some funny captions along with each picture and invite others to do the same for the other pictures.
Reference information on the work/project
The names of the people from the customer site are often very interesting to be put in a dedicated wiki page. Don't be afraid to also add a line of explanation what each name really means. Indicate their role in the customer organization and explain for what they are supposed to be contacted or not.
Any reference or url to the selection of company processes or methodology elements that are applicable to the team can be referenced in a separate page. Don't hesitate to add explanatory text of how the team should judge the application of these standards. You can explain why some guidelines are absolutely essential and how some others are only of secondary importance. Your team will appreciate you put how and what to apply in writing. As a word of caution: beware of regulations that can exist in your company or industry.
Major milestones, important deliveries, budget or timing constraints should be explained in clear and simple terms. Don't use overly formal language. Rather write things down as you would explain it in a team meeting.
Dedicated topic pages
Each team and project will find itself from time to time facing a big challenge. Some nasty bug that is bothering them, some crash exercise to remedy a crash situation, some change project or alike. These topics often merit a set of dedicated pages. Something like a wiki in the wiki. You will find these pages get consulted and updated a lot during the crash exercise and are much less visited later. However that is not a problem. You will thank the effort you have put in as a team the day a similar problem reappears. You can quickly tap in to the knowledge that you built up six months before.
Don't bury pages to deep
One experience we would like to share is to take care not to bury pages to deep in the hierarchy. Although today's search algorithms should help you find back quickly the information, this only helps if you know there is some content that you can search for. If you are just browsing page content, make them rather rich in terms of number of links to other pages. It helps to limit as much as possible the depth of the navigation tree (Maybe max 4 or 5 levels deep in a wiki of a few hundreds of pages). One way we have used successfully is to have the links to all the dedicated topic pages directly accessible from the home page. Instead of creating an link to an index page, put all the dedicated topics one after the other on the home page. Even if you got 10 or 15 of those, it will only take 2 or 3 lines and people are immediately confronted with new links that are added.
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