Tailorable blog

Top 5 misconceptions about wikis at work

Although many organizations are currently experimenting with wikis, some presumptions about wikis in the workspace appear to be sticky. Our interviews with managers as well as employees (before working with a wiki) revealed some opinions that may hinder the introduction process, if left undiscussed. What misconceptions have you encountered around wikis at work? John Rotenstein from Atlassian already mentioned a couple a while ago. Hereby my top 5:

1. “Making the technology available is enough for people to use it.”
   Carefully planning and supporting the introduction of the wiki is essential. People must trust the new technology, know when to use it (and when not), how to use it, have management support to use it, and find ways to embed it in their normal working routines. Putting the technology in place is just a small piece of the puzzle.
2. “Only information that will stand the test of time belongs in the wiki.”
   Comparing the company wiki with Wikipedia is not helpful: people have to learn that sharing raw ideas and initial thoughts can be great conversation starters and lead to a “pressure cooker” effect, where insights from different angles are combined into valuable results.
3. “You cannot trust the contents of a wiki page.” As with any piece of information, you have to judge wiki content carefully. However, the mechanism that all employees can mark and correct wiki pages helps in discovering and correcting errors. You’re not alone.
4. “If everybody can change everything, things will become a mess.”
   Ton Zijlstra told me to just make a slide with this text and then animate it, so “everybody” changes into “my colleagues”… If they still see that as a problem, then they need more then just a wiki.
5. “Putting information in the wiki is something you just do on the side.”
   These are actually two misconceptions: it takes time and effort to write a good wiki page, but more importantly, writing down results in a wiki could be the primary outcome of the work process, not a secondary documentation step. For instance, a design, meeting minutes, or a status report could just be delivered as a set of wiki pages. Management has an important role to reassure people that delivering project results as wiki pages is perfectly acceptable.

What are your experiences with presumptions around wikis at work?

Status tags for wiki pages?

Does 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.

What could a Social Virtual Workspace look like?

One of the developments I strongly believe in, is making our personal work environments more social. Knowing that my social network is not just a source of passion, but also a source of inspiration, expertise, and keeping track of current trends & developments, it seems to make sense to have this network on my radar, and integrated in my work environment.

At the moment, I use a mixture of Outlook, iGoogle, SharePoint, Skype, Facebook, Microsoft Office and a dozen other tools to get my work done. I would like to have a more integrated work environment, where I am in charge of what functionality is included and how it is presented to me. SharePoint2007 and iGoogle already show possible models of allowing users to select and combine the functionality they need, when they need it (which is what I call tailorability). The image I attached to this post goes one step further: it sketches an online service that focusses on your social networks (family, friends, colleagues, customers), keeps you aware of their status and activities, and integrates this with personal information management and collaboration functionality. The open interface for Facebook developers and OpenSocial are examples of inititiatives that could be the basis for such a service. It is essential to actually utilize the corporate firewall in the scenario: making sure that confidential information stays within the organization, while giving employees a low-threshold means to keep in touch with their network in the outside world.

What is your opinion on such a social virtual workspace and what do you think it will look like?