Status tags for wiki pages?

January 22, 2008 on 1:18 pm | In social software, web2.0 |

draftDoes anyone know any good practices regarding status tags for wiki pages? In a wiki where many people co-create and share information, it is often useful to see the status of an article: it this an initial draft, is there discussion around this text or is the article maybe even a candidate for deletion? Just like wikipedia uses the {{NPOV}} tag to mark articles that do not represent a neutral point of view, it may be a good practice to mark the status of wiki pages. Any suggestions or do you know of any good practices?

I expect that the set of tags depends on the purpose of the wiki; the purpose of the wiki I am referring to is co-creation and sharing information over the boundaries of departments within an organization. Sounds familiar? I would prefer the set to be as short and clear as possible. My suggestions:

  • FirstDraft: indicates initial thoughts, not really being discussed yet, comments are welcome.
  • UnderDiscussion: indicates articles that are being discussed, alive, contributions are welcome. 
  • Official: indicates pages that reflect an official policy or widely accepted standard. When editing this page, users should ensure that their revision reflects consensus. When in doubt, discuss the changes first.
  • NeedsUpdate: indicates articles that contain outdated information and lack recent discussion. Practical for wiki maintenance.
  • CandidateForDeletion: indicates articles that contain outdated information that may be removed altogether. Deletion of wiki pages should not be taken lightly, but some cleaning up once and a while may be smart.

5 Comments »

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  1. The key, I think, is helping people see what you want them to do with the tags. So, maybe a front page that lets you slice and dice the tags and the underlying pages associated with them.

    The best examples of this I have seen are in a presentation from Jordan Frank of Traction Software (http://www.tractionsoftware.com) last fall. He’s seen clients use their software with very specific tags, and then those posts can be recombined in useful ways on a front page. The example I perused also included machine tags, so you could sort/filter by creation date and owner and the like.

    Comment by Jack Vinson — Tuesday, 29 January, 2008 #

  2. My colleague Ruud suggests:
    - “Preliminary”: stage prior to a “FirstDraft”. For instance: thoughts, notes about a brainstorm, initial ideas to start a discussion, and so and. Could also be called “NeedsDiscussion”.
    - “Final”: maybe not suitable for a wiki, but could be a useful tag to indicate pages that are just “done”. At least an alternative for “Official”.

    Comment by Robert — Tuesday, 29 January, 2008 #

  3. You could also have a look at the way Wikipedia marks pages whose content is under discussion, considered controversial, not within the Wikipedia guidelines in some way, or candidates for deletion.

    Comment by Ton Zijlstra — Saturday, 16 February, 2008 #

  4. Hi Ton,
    We looked at Wikipedia indeed; that is for instance where the CandidateForDeletion comes from. We would like to see whether such a set of tags also works within an organizational context to maintain a user-generated list of wiki pages that need some maintenance.

    Comment by Robert — Monday, 18 February, 2008 #

  5. Great idea to think about tagging here. Your current collection will work fine I think; adding more sub-disctinctions can be done later in the process. I agree with the comment of Jack “The key is helping people see what you want them to do with the tags” So I would suggest you to translate the different tags you came up with. Isn’t it (technologically) possible (I don’t know) to translate the words in a collection of assoicative pictograms which is more meaningful or atractive for users. I could imagine (quick braindump) something like a baby, youngster, mature, old person. Just an idea.

    Comment by Marcel — Thursday, 13 March, 2008 #

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