Ask HN: Why do non-techies simply not "get" the idea of a wiki?

+1 for Confluence

Yes, it's not free (or Free) and is made by a pretty established company, but it's a solid product, Wiki enough that if you want to get into it, there is a lot fo customization and detail that you can do, but at he same time friendly enough that if you don't care, you can just use the WYSIWYG editor to make your point. It also integrates nicely with JIRA, although I doubt that's used by much of the HN crowd.

As for getting people to use it, my team made a rule that if you sent us a question that (in our opinion) belonged in the wiki, we'd answer it there and send you back a link. After a few weeks of doing that, people just stopped asking and went there first.

We just gave up on this. We serve professional photographers, who tend to be above average in terms of techie-ness.

We implemented PB Wiki for our support pages. No one updated it.

We spelled it out in big letters on the wiki home page. No one updated it.

We even had a contest. Every time you add to a wiki page, you're entered to win a prize. No one updated it.

Not only did no one update it, it confused customers. Customers confused the "login" link at the top of the wiki with the login area of their CMS. That simply resulted in more support tickets.

So, this year we simply moved our support pages to WordPress and only our staff can update them.

Since it appears your wiki is internal, maybe you have a better chance, but it would take some serious staff development in my opinion.

It's an interesting thread. Historically organizations faced these same challenges getting people to consult a website and use E-mail, both of which are now viewed as the default. The problems you are facing do not come from the fact that non-techies are stupid. And learning how to solve them is good practice for working with normal prospects (vs. early adopters).

One specific suggestion: pick one thing that will reliably be in the wiki and get people used to checking it just for that. Then branch out. Two good places to start: meeting agenda page becomes meeting minutes that any attendee can modify; internal or product specifications that would benefit from a wiki's ability to branch to background and related pages.

I don't think it's a technology barrier at all (unless you are forcing them to use Wiki markup instead of a WYSIWYG editor) it's force of habit.

I use a wiki to take notes. I run navyhpsp.net, which is a wiki for Navy Health Professions Scholarship students distributed all over the US and recently overtook the official Navy HPSP site on Google (google for "Navy HPSP") I also set up a wiki for my med school (at the Dean's request).

I don't understand why there would be universal appeal to a corporate wiki, not unless it's searchable by google, in which case you at least have a chance of the information coming up when you go looking for "boilerplate" information in a search engine.

People inevitably choose different ways of doing things. If a group of you is using a wiki, then run with it. Don't force people to use it. If it's better, they'll get curious and ask about it. If not, don't worry about them. Every time you ask people to play with your toys, you are spending political capital. Conserve your capital. If you make them play with your toys, you can bet they'll cry and call for mom and dad, at best. At worst, they might try to break your toys.