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

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

#51

Post by chris11 »

mixmax wrote: post #2

This sounds like a classical techies/non-techies problem. The techies are trying to implement something, in this case a wiki, that is an unknown concept to everyone else. And since the techies "get it" they expect everyone else to get it too. The thing is that to the rest of the organisation there are probably the following problems: - they don't know what a wiki is, and they don't much care. Even though they use wik…

I agree with forcing people to use the wiki. At my school, the email system was getting overwhelmed with mass emails from students selling stuff, looking for rides, trying to find items. There was already a site created by a student to sell things, look for rides, and post lost items, but nobody used it. Now they have just cut off access to mass email for nearly everyone, and the adoption of the site has gone up somewhat. So I would suggest that you first start with managers, trying to get them to only accept some things from the wiki, and consider cutting off some mass email access if it is being used for things that you want to move to the wiki. You will upset some people, but you will get them using the wiki.

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

#52

Post by nihilocrat »

In my experience, wikis are all doomed to becoming out of date and not a trusted information source, because the really important information ends up being in peoples' heads, or in code, or something like that. The wiki can only give you A) a 10,000-foot view of a system, or B) the details of that system as it existed.... two or three years ago.

Honestly, this doesn't really have anything to do with the original post, because it's happened in techie-only or techie-dominated companies I've been in. Anyone else had this experience?

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

#53

Post by ahoyhere »

jrockway wrote: post #48
sam_in_nyc wrote: post #27

Because editing wikis is an excruciating experience. Just look at the edit page... it's a textarea with strange icons above it, and the most fucked up formatting you've ever seen. 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 t…

Sure, if you use MediaWiki that's true. As far as I know, nobody uses that for internal corporate wikis; that is what wikis like Socialtext are for.

Socialtext! Hahaha.

There was a time once, when I was paid to work on Socialtext... but I'll spare you.

Let's just say that Socialtext is not the usability professional's answer of choice to MediaWiki.

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

#54

Post by ahoyhere »

geuis wrote: post #6

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…

Agreed 100%.

The idea of user-editable content isn't the problem. But wikis are an unknown quantity and a slippery concept for non-nerds to grasp. There are no affordances, no guidance, no structures to help orient people[1], and while wiki syntax is awful that's only a contributing problem.

It's like if a carpenter/handyman/car repair guy handed you a smooth, featureless egg-shaped object and said "This is a Ziki. You can do everything with this tool. Now, check my tire pressure."

Even if you knew how to check tire pressure in general, you'd be SOL.

Second issue is that people use wikis for things other than collaborative documentation, just like people use blogs for project management (just because they're easy to install), and that's not helping the adoption problem.

[1] I don't mean the document tree, either. People are used to structured content.

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

#55

Post by JabavuAdams »

mikeyur wrote: post #3
mixmax wrote: post #2

This sounds like a classical techies/non-techies problem. The techies are trying to implement something, in this case a wiki, that is an unknown concept to everyone else. And since the techies "get it" they expect everyone else to get it too. The thing is that to the rest of the organisation there are probably the following problems: - they don't know what a wiki is, and they don't much care. Even though they use wik…

I agree that you should force them into making the change. You won't make the most friends doing it, but it'll be less of a hassle. You need to take the 'facebook approach.' A lot of people HATED the new facebook design when it originally launched. I'm sure you remember, there were groups with millions of members saying "bring back the old facebook" and complaining about everything. Months later everything has calmed…

History looks backwards, but decisions have to be made looking forwards.

How do you distinguish the case where you do something unpopular, refuse to change it to conform to your users' wishes, and are wrong?

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

#56

Post by mikeyur »

JabavuAdams wrote: post #55
mikeyur wrote: post #3

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I agree that you should force them into making the change. You won't make the most friends doing it, but it'll be less of a hassle. You need to take the 'facebook approach.' A lot of people HATED the new facebook design when it originally launched. I'm sure you remember, there were groups with millions of members saying "bring back the old facebook" and complaining about everything. Months later everything has calmed…

History looks backwards, but decisions have to be made looking forwards. How do you distinguish the case where you do something unpopular, refuse to change it to conform to your users' wishes, and are wrong ?

It's a gamble you have to take. Facebook has enough users and enough people depend on the platform that they can make a change (not too drastic) and not many, if any people will leave.

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

#57

Post by jrockway »

ahoyhere wrote: post #53
jrockway wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sure, if you use MediaWiki that's true. As far as I know, nobody uses that for internal corporate wikis; that is what wikis like Socialtext are for.

Socialtext! Hahaha. There was a time once, when I was paid to work on Socialtext... but I'll spare you. Let's just say that Socialtext is not the usability professional's answer of choice to MediaWiki.

I am fairly familiar with the backend (lots of bitter Socialtext friends), and hate to recommend it for that reason, but the UI seems nicer than MediaWiki.

Also, I like to shill Perl whenever possible. :)

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