Do You Wiki?

by Rob Pannoni
published on: 06/26/08 9:08:08 AM

Doesn’t sound like a question that should be asked in polite company. But we’re all friends here, right? So let’s talk turkey. If you’re running a business, you need to understand how this new type of technology works and what it can do to make your business more successful. You need to know this because the line between business success and failure can be very thin. As we speak, your competitors may well be using wiki technology to… [spooky music]…plot your demise. With technology that has true business impact, it doesn’t pay to come late to the party. 

So what’s the party about? In the simplest terms, a wiki is a web site that allows users to create, edit and organize information. From a business perspective, it allows you to improve communication, capture the collective knowledge of your organization and put this knowledge into action. Most wikis are internal to the company. But wikis can also be used to provide product information, training and support to your customers. 

So what would a business do with a wiki? Here are a few possibilities:

• A sales hub for forecasts, sales literature and competitive information 
• A portal for distributing internal information such as employee policies, benefit information and expense forms
• A knowledge base of product information for internal employees or external customer support
• A file repository for sharing documents
• A project management tool for product development docs, processes and schedules

Basically, a wiki helps you take the stuff that everyone needs to know—but nobody ever bothers to write down—organize it, and put it in a central location so that it becomes actionable business intelligence.

The wiki way

The word “wiki” is a Hawaiian word that means “quick.” Historically, wikis are oriented toward quickly capturing text-oriented information from multiple participants. Ward Cunningham, the developer of the first wiki software, WikiWikiWeb, once described it as "the simplest online database that could possibly work." Wikis capture content in hierarchical fashion, with parent pages and child pages. Pages can be moved around, allowing the information hierarchy to evolve as the knowledge base does. Wikis are hypertext oriented. That means a wiki page is usually full of links to other wiki pages or web content. Traditionally, a table of contents appears at the top of each page.

Heavy formatting and graphical polish are not the natural domain of wikis. It’s about fast, simple, efficient and shared. But today’s products often include the ability to insert graphics, video and useful widgets of various kinds. So wiki pages sometimes look like more traditional web pages.

The key to the “wiki way” is the notion that a business is collectively smarter than any of its individual members. The idea is that allowing users to create and edit information with minimal external control builds a knowledgebase more quickly. And because a wiki knowledgebase is designed to be self-correcting, it also yields higher quality knowledge in the long term.

This democratic, participatory view of knowledge is perhaps the most distinctive feature of what has come to be called “Web 2.0.” It’s the same principle that underlies other Web 2.0 technologies such as blogs, social networking and social bookmarking.

If you’re new to the idea of a wiki, it’s natural to have a bit of heartburn over the idea of turning over the keys to the corporate knowledgebase to employees without checks and controls over what gets posted. But in practice, wiki communities have proven to be capable of a surprising level of self-regulation and quality control. You might be surprised at what your employees can do if you stay out of their way.

The key to wiki quality is the ability to quickly correct and improve information. Wiki software typically has a rollback feature that allows you to review all previous versions of the page and instantly revert to any version. There is also a discussion area for each page where users can converse about any differences of opinion about page content. Some of these discussions get rather lively. But this has the beneficial side effect of forcing people to articulate their views in ways that promote learning and eventual convergence towards a shared understanding. So, in a sense, wikis are about getting your employees on the same page.

Just to be clear, wikis don’t have to be set up as a Lord of the Flies exercise. Wiki software allows you to control access by making some content read-only. Many wikis have a formal moderator or sysop role with extra powers to override individual posters. They also typically allow you to define groups that have different levels of access. Some users might have read-only access. Others might be required to have their posts screened by a moderator before the content goes live. You can exercise as much control as you see fit. But a light touch will generally give the best results.

Wiki-speak

The rise of wikis has led to a unique wiki culture and language, what I call “wiki-speak.” You don’t need to know wiki speak to use a wiki. In fact, much wiki speak is designed around the unique situations that arise in large public wikis such as Wikipedia. But if you’re going to visit the Web 2.0 world, you might as well absorb a bit of the local color.

You will note right away that wikians tend to have a sense of humor. Also, that they have the endearing habit of speaking in abbreviations. Don’t worry, you’ll get used to it. To get you started, here are a few examples of wiki-speak.

Namespace	The highest level of a wiki hierarchy. Also referred to as a DocumentSpace or just a wiki. Each page in a wiki must have a unique name. Having separate namespaces allows you to reuse common page names by putting them in separate logical domains even though they exist in the same wiki application.
Wiki Markup Language	A set of codes for formatting wiki text. Just to make things more interesting, these aren’t standard. Different wikis use different conventions. The reason for introducing a different markup language was that HTML code makes a document hard to read. Knowing wiki markup language is no longer an issue because most popular wikis have a WYSIWIG (What You See Is What You Get) editor.
Wanted Page	Wikis are designed for easy hypertext links between documents. In wiki markup language, a simple convention such as putting a word in brackets makes it a link. If the page a link references doesn’t exist, an empty stub page is created with the hope that some aimlessly wandering wikian will add the desired content at her earliest convenience. Regardless of whether the link was created with wiki markup language or a WYSIWIG editor, an empty page stub is referred to as a wanted page. The existence of wanted pages helps organically prioritize and shape the set of knowledge included in the wiki.
Assume Good Faith (AGF)	The fundamental principle behind the dispute resolution process for wikis. Don’t take things personally or infer malice where the more likely explanation is merely incompetence or insanity.
Vandalism	An attempt to intentionally sabotage content by posting something offensive or obviously incorrect. As noted above, wikians should always AGF. Incompetence or insanity do not technically constitute vandalism. Only deliberate malice qualifies.
Neutral Point of View (NPOV)	The mythical standard of taking personal subjectivity out of a wiki post. If someone believes your wiki post is biased, they might accuse you of POV. More likely, they will forget to AGF and accuse you of vandalism, insulting your progenitors in the process.
Edit War	Someone changes a page. The original author changes it back. The self-proclaimed editor changes it again. This process repeats until the participants come to their senses, run out of offensive names to call each other, or an official moderator intervenes. Web entertainment at its best.
The_Wrong_Version	Whichever version of a page a moderator decides to lock to end an edit war. The friendly folks at Wikipedia have even created a graphic you can add to a wrong version article: But of course you can’t add the graphic to a wrong version wiki page because it’s locked. Ha!

Just to reiterate, you’re not likely to encounter issues such as edit wars in your own wiki. For the sake of argument, we’ll assume that your employees are neither incompetent nor insane. Plus, you sign their checks, so most will cheerfully work toward the common good and behave respectably.

Now what?

The best way to understand wikis is to simply try one out. Etelos currently has two wikis in the Etelos Marketplace™:

Both of these applications are available as a free trial. So feel free to get your wiki on.