When organizations adopt the
Microsoft SharePoint platform, there are often at least a few people in the group who are very excited about the prospect of using the SharePoint wiki feature. They have used
Wikipedia, seen what an incredible resource it has become, and they have decided that they love the idea of a harnessing the same "
crowdsourcing" forces to capture knowledge within their organizations.
We think this is great, and these people are right to be excited about the possibilities for wiki technology in a business context. Here at Northridge, for example, we have used SharePoint wikis to create knowledge bases across our practice lines, ensuring that our culture and experience are documented, searchable, and available for new and long-time employees alike. Every day Northridge and Northridge Interactive team members add new wiki articles and click the "Edit" button to improve on already existing articles.
We have learned, however, that wikis are not magic all by themselves. The wiki concept is revolutionary and powerful, but its greatest strength can also be its greatest challenge. The thing that is revolutionary and powerful about the wiki concept is that the content in the wiki grows in a non-linear, organic, bottom-up fashion. What does that mean exactly?
A wiki is non-linear in that it is more like a network than a list or a hierarchy. A Word document, by contrast, is linear: you start at the top and read down to the bottom, and you must create headings and subheadings in a linear hierarchy. A wiki is more like the world wide web itself--a kind of three-dimensional network structure with many interconnected nodes. As a reader you can move around the hyperlinks in a wiki in a very non-linear fashion. As you bounce around in the wiki you are not really given a sense for "where you are" in the wiki, like you can when you read a document or a book.
A wiki grows in an "organic, bottom-up fashion" in that individual people, of their own volition, can come along at any time and choose to add or edit content. There are many authors, and it's hard to predict who will add what and when, and how that addition of new content will affect the overall structure of the wiki. The growth is "organic" in that it just happens, and there's only so much people in charge of the wiki can do to spur that progress along. The growth is "bottom-up" in that individual authors determine what to add, not administrators. This is true to some extent even in a highly controlled wiki, where there are few authors and most users are merely readers without editing permissions.
So how does this "greatest strength" lead to a wiki's greatest challenge? The challenge is that if you depend solely on organic, bottom-up forces to drive your wiki, one of two things is likely to happen. Either you will end up with something that's a bit of a mess, or you will end up with crickets (that is, no one contributing content, and therefore no one there to read--just the sound of the crickets chirping).
When a wiki is a mess, it's hard to find what you're looking for by browsing through the wiki. You're pretty much left with search as a way to find things, and even when you've found the article in the wiki you were looking for, once you're in the article it's difficult to orient yourself and decide where to go next. This is because a wiki is not taxonomy-driven, by design; there is no Table of Contents, no breadcrumbs at the top of the screen to help you navigate back up the hierarchy you drilled down into.
Sometimes this situation is ideal--when you just want to bounce around and see what interesting things you run into, you can just happily click from article to article and not worry about "where you are" or how to "get back" to some central location. Wikis are fun that way. But sometimes you are reading a wiki in a more goal-directed manner, and the seeming lack of structure can be disconcerting.
The key to wiki success is to avoid these two outcomes. How do you do that? By reintroducing top-down forces into the wiki, thereby harnessing and directing those organic, bottom-up forces. We suggest you do that in two ways.
First, start the wiki off by creating a little structure. That is, introduce some amount of hierarchical structure made up of categories and largely empty articles. This will make it obvious where people should put new content and establish some patterns and conventions for people to follow as they extend the wiki.
For example, if you were starting a wiki about your company's marketing and sales practices, you could start out by creating the first set of main article categories and using a bulleted list on the home page of the wiki to create a navigation structure to help readers and potential authors get oriented. This way, when someone thinks of an article to add, it will be obvious where to add it. Likewise, if an author is looking for an opportunity to contribute to the wiki, she can see what blank spaces need filling.
Second, put someone in charge of encouraging contributions to the wiki and policing the growth of the wiki. The encouragement part is to prevent the chirping crickets. The policing part is to prevent the wiki from becoming to unruly in terms of structure and navigation.
If a new author starts adding content outside of the established structures and conventions, that author can be nudged into line. After awhile, there will be enough content in the wiki that is following consistent patterns that it will become more and more obvious to new contributors how to add content in a way that is harmonious with what is already there.
In the early days of the wiki, when there is not much content yet, the policing and encouraging are a bit more important. Even in the early days, though, the encouraging-and-policing function need not be time consuming. It's mostly a matter of visiting the wiki on a regular basis and taking a look at the list of new and updated articles. If someone contributes, maybe send them a quick note of thanks. If someone adds something in the wrong place, maybe move it for them and send a friendly note explaining what you did.
To understand the "balancing forces" idea, it's helpful to consider how Wikipedia has balanced the bottom-up and top-down forces to become very successful. Anyone in the free world can contribute to Wikipedia, but at the same time the Wikipedia organization has imposed a fair amount of structure, and they have an active policing function to make sure things stay in line.
They have just enough open space to encourage new contributions, but just enough existing structure and after-the-fact policing to prevent things from getting out of hand. If they locked it down too much, far fewer people would contribute and there would be far less content and forward momentum. If they opened it up too much, it would be a mess and people would not find it useful. Balance these forces in a way that makes sense for your goals and your organization's culture, and wiki success is within reach.