You can't be fired if you choose for these 10 wiki introduction rules
March 31st, 2010
The article "Top 10 Organizational Wiki Tips (and how to use them)" is already some time out there, but it has become somewhat of a special guidance to us.(See http://www.ikiw.org for more fine content on wikis)
In 10 points the do's and don'ts of introducing a wiki are clearly laid out. Introducing wikis can be darn hard, but also amazingly simple. If you don't do anything else, follow at least these rules. There are little other things that are not covered by them.
In the following set of articles to be published over the coming weeks, we'll be highlighting some of the pitfalls and advice we've learned the hard way.
Summarized the wiki tips revolve around following principles:
- Lead by example. Relentlessly put content relevant for your organization in the wiki. Mail references to the wiki to everyone.
- It's better to have an unstructured, unfinished page in the wiki about a topic than to have nothing at all. Mark text to be completed as 'to be completed...'
- Know you are in for the long run, you'll get it up and running in a matter of months, not weeks.
- Let the social aspect work, your wiki should not be something only you can write. Put incomplete sections in there that team members will need to complete. Give 'write' privileges as much as possible
Watch this space for more information in the coming weeks.
Tricks to make your Wiki work
March 20th, 2009
I was in several projects where we used Wikis for project documentation. I have found it worked best when
- the average page is max 2-3 A4 pages long
- the audience is rather technical (they need to deal with the wysiwyg /textile editors)
- one or two people are responsible for keeping the wiki fresh (removing dead links, marking outdated information, regular clean up and restructuring)
One good trick to keep the Wiki alive is to carefully edit the main pages. They introduce the Wiki and help the users navigate to the more detailed pages.
Control the tree and the main branches and the pages will grow like leaves. You should work on these top pages like a newspaper editor. Keep the content fresh, pay exceptional attention to layout, and rotate some news stories.
If
- your audience is not so technical (business analysts, non technical people) and
- the pages tend to be quite long,
- you need a lot of graphics and tables,
you can consider our MS Word based Wiki solution.