Wikis - 1st Quarter 2009

What is a wiki? I bet if you asked 5 random people that question you would get 3 IDKs (that is “I don’t know” in texting speak) and 2 descriptions of Wikipedia. In the short article that follows, we will put the mystery to rest and provide ideas on how wikis can be beneficial to your business.

Neal

Wikis - put the users in control

I can’t control my teenager. Our government can’t control the economy. But you can control the content on your website. However, maybe you shouldn’t.

How website owners control their website content

There are varying degrees of content control available for website owners. I’ll list 4 broad categories. The last category, a wiki, may surprise you.

1) Web Developer:

Many website owners let their web developer make all the changes to the pages on the site. The owner tells the web developer what changes to make, but the web developer is the one that actually makes the changes. This is the preferred method for most professional websites for hopefully obvious reasons.

2) Content Management System: (owner controlled)

Your web developer can employ a Content Management System (CMS) that provides the owner a login and interface to add and edit content. Most systems attempt to mimic the interface of a word processor on the edit screens. This works great in situations where the exact look of the page is not as important as the content since the precise formatting of a web page takes years to learn.

3) Blog: (author controlled)

A blog allows an author to post an article on a website with relative ease. The blog software handles archiving old articles, provides searching capabilities, and gives readers the ability to post comments. A blog is actually a CMS system, however it is so prevalent that it should be considered a separate category.

4) Wiki: (user controlled)

A wiki is a type of CMS system for a website that allows the users to control the content of the web pages. Users can create and edit the pages. The website owner basically has no control, except perhaps limiting the users that can access the system for editing. While it is clear that this method will not work for a corporate website, it does have some interesting potential.

How can a wiki help my company?

Here are just a few ways a wiki may help.

1) Project Management

You can use a wiki as a project management tool to keep meeting minutes, post designs, load schedules, provide a team directory and more. This allows all team members the ability to access and keep the information on the project website up-to-date. A standard wiki feature allows for restricting the edit rights to users with logins. It is not required and the best known wiki (see below) does not require a login to edit. The restricted login is useful for project management wikis and should be used.

2) Instruction

You can use a wiki to keep instructions and other manuals for your products, systems, etc. This can be available for your company only or can be opened up to your customers. The input from your customers can be very valuable.

3) User Communities

If you provide a product or service then a wiki could serve your customer base. They can collaborate on suggestions, give advice, etc. User communities can be powerful and lead to better informed and more loyal customers.

The first wiki

The first wiki, WikiWikiWeb, was created by Ward Cunningham in 1995. Wiki-wiki is Hawaiian for quick and he chose it as a substitute for quick-web. This has been shortened to just “wiki”. Read more here.

The best known wiki

• Wikipedia is by far the best known and most visited wiki.
• The name Wikipedia was created from wiki and encyclopedia which clearly designates it as a wiki website encyclopedia.
• It contains over 12 million articles submitted by users from all over the world.
• Updates come at the rate of thousands of changes per hour
• There is no formal review process nor do the writers own the articles.
• The site boasts a top 10 traffic ranking on Alexa.

There are plenty of critics of Wikipedia. Most cite the potential for bias and vandalism. However, the value is tremendous if used for nothing more than a source for further reading since all articles must include references or they are likely to be removed by the readers of Wikipedia.

Conclusion

I’m not advocating that we let teenagers raise themselves or deny the government the power to control aspects of our economy. Instead, we need a balanced approach. The same thing applies to website content. There are situations where less control is better. In those times, a wiki may be just what you need.

Filed by nb on March 31st, 2009 under ClearPoint