Tip9: Ask the Wiki.
September 4th, 2010
Prompt people to use the wiki. When someone asks about creating space for a project or revising a document, encourage them to use the wiki.
Relentlessly push the wiki usage
This is the bad news. It doesn’t really matter how well you prepare the wiki launch. You will need to (hopefully you will have some early adopters that will support you) push and push and push to get the wiki to its critical mass. Once everyone more or less accepts that the critical information is in the wiki, at least the more dedicated members of your team will have the good habit of keeping it up to date.
Not everyone will participate
It is always easier not to do what should be done. Many people do their job only for the pay check. They are not interested somebody would actually save time later if only they would update a wiki page from time to time.
Entropy always rises, unless you add energy
If you ever had a thermodynamics course, you may remember 'thermodynamics’ second law. This law states that in a closed system, entropy (which is a degree of chaos) always rises. Unless you add energy from an external source, systems migrate to a state of absolute and total chaos. This energy is what you should add. Each time the system tends to decay, you need to put in effort to put things back on the rails.
There is a nice similarity to many business processes in general and wiki updates in particular. You will need to keep paying attention to the quality, completeness and usability of the wiki.
Can I have my own wiki?
A typical question if you are responsible for one or more wikis in your organization. In larger, more regulated industries I have seen many times that the default question to this question is NO. Or processes and procedures are so complex that people actually don’t bother asking the question.
Most of the time it is a good practice to let a motivated team have their own wiki. A minor requirement is that, when needed, content can be linked in between wikis.
If processes, licenses or any other reason prevents you from creating a separate wiki, it is perfectly normal to make a sort of navigation menu on the wiki’s main page. Each menu option then navigates to a sub-wiki where a team can regulate itself in terms of content and frequency of update. Enter the team’s name, the name or pictures of the team members on the navigation page. It will make clear that a subsection really is their private domain.
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