21–30 of 57 posts
Think of how long it took you to learn the value of good commenting... That's about how long it will take to teach people why they should document their business practices on a wiki.
You'll be getting them to use vi to enter expenses claims next.
Work on getting it mentioned in performance reviews. If 'non-techies' start to have their bosses poking around asking questions about "so why do I keep hearing that you refuse to use the wiki?", that'll help.
I mean, really. A wiki is about as technical as a whiteboard... they're just being lazy. No one's asking them to make beautifully formatted pages, just get the stuff in there because _that's how we track it_... it's part of their job. They need to realize it.
- Wikis require a heroic effort to keep organized. Most people, when faced with creating a new category, or even a new page would rather send an e-mail and forget it. The fact that you have to not only post something, but also decide where it belongs makes the job of posting feel much harder. "You mean I have to categorize my content before I post?"
- Wikis require more cognitive effort on the part of the poster. With e-mail or a message board, you can essentially dump your brain and hit send. With a wiki, you have to integrate your post, not only into the organization, as I mentioned above, but also into an existing post(s). "You mean I have to read and understand other content before I post?"
- Most wiki markup is based on the ideas behind the semantic web and should remain readable and understandable even in markup mode - unfortunately, people don't like to cede control of the way their document looks. I have seen non-techies spend hours jumping through HTML/WYSIWYG hoops simply to achieve a particular look - not realizing the nightmare of editing such a page (think word generated HTML pasted into the page). "You mean I have to sacrifice my format before I post?"
- Finally most wiki software doesn't have a easy to use e-mail notification system. Many times you have to manually "watch" a page instead of just watching the whole wiki or a whole category. When you do get an update e-mail - you have to actually go to the wiki - no hitting reply - this again interrupts cognitive flow for a lot of folks. "You mean I have to keep track of all the changes myself?"
I love wikis, and certainly think that they can increase productivity - but they require a greater cognitive effort on the part of the poster, and a lot of folks are unable to make the short term sacrifices to achieve the long term gain a wiki can offer.
We use Microsoft's Enterprise Information Management at my work. It was rolled out about a year ago and is now primarily used as a replacement for storing files. I started playing around with it and discovered, to my delight, that there's a built-in wiki feature.
There's a huge place for it in our daily operations. It could save thousands of hours in the long run if we got only a few people to contribute. The problem is that second part: How do you get people to contribute?
Here's my strategy:
1. Privately create lots of stubs beforehand along with an intelligent structure for linking them together. Also add tons of how-to articles (because for non-technies, obvious isn't so obvious)
2. Add pages that show how people could actually benefit from it
3. Brief our management, stressing the benefits, and ask for them to push it within their organizations
4. If all goes well, people will slowly start adding information. If even 5% of the employees contribute, it will quickly reach a tipping point and then explode in popularity.
5. I'll continue to add and edit articles on a daily basis for the next few months regardless of the initial reaction
6. Gradually make it the go-to point for certain types of information, forcing people to use it and see how useful it can be
I'm at step #2 right now. I'll have the opportunity to brief the management in about three weeks.
Also, I'm going to call it a "collaborative notebook" as that encompasses how people can benefit from it much more than calling it a wiki or knowledge base.
The thing I've found is that even just telling people what I'm doing in basic terms is unclear. They hear "wiki" and go "wiki wiki wiki" and then nod their heads when I'm explaining things to them.
What I've realized is that its not their fault if they don't understand what you're doing. Its your fault for not explaining it to them in a way that makes it clear.
We'll see what happens... wish me luck.
To edit a wiki usually requires understanding a markup language. Maybe some people simply go to a blank state of mind whenever they see markup. Have you trained the non-techies in using the markup language?
I'm technically inclined but I shutter at the idea of having to write anything in a Wiki, because the syntax is so unintuitive and annoying. I seem to recall adding line breaks, and it NOT showing line breaks on the preview. It was one of the use user experiences I've ever had: some fucktard decided that hitting "enter" wasn't enough to add a "
" to the content, so I have to go and dig through documentation to find out how to do it. Pisses me off thinking about it.
What you are facing is a standard problem in adaptation of technology. What most techies think usable might not be that much usable by non-techie user. As far as wiki is concerned, I find it challenging to use a wiki even being a techie. The obnoxious syntax of wiki is sufficient to scare away several users. As you mentioned, people like to send email, I would suggest creating a separate mailbox for leave application…
The problem isn't the idea of the wiki. It's the implementation. Any non-techie gets how to write a blog post in Wordpress. Spacing, make things bold, etc. I've been editing with various wiki software for years and I still find it cumbersome. If you can have a system that is a wiki under the hood but has a normal-person level interface, you would see more usage. Regular folks have better things to do than learn our o…
We use Atlassian's Confluence. Confluence is a nice collaboration tool built on wiki concepts. Us techies used a wiki prior but Atlassian's almost-a-wiki-but-not-as-scary-as-one is now so popular that it is a major issue when Confluence is down. It is pretty much company-wide now and updated almost every minute.
The problem isn't the idea of the wiki. It's the implementation. Any non-techie gets how to write a blog post in Wordpress. Spacing, make things bold, etc. I've been editing with various wiki software for years and I still find it cumbersome. If you can have a system that is a wiki under the hood but has a normal-person level interface, you would see more usage. Regular folks have better things to do than learn our o…