A Teams and Tools Guide

Rules and Ideas for Using Wikis

Here are some general rules for wiki use; some I've learned myself and others I've gathered from colleagues.

1. If an organization doesn't have wide adoption of tool-use practices (in this case wiki-use practices), then make sure each group using a wiki remains a small, authenticated, private group. Group social process is needed to keep contents of the wiki on track; accountability is crucial, and you need either good tool-use practices among the entire team (for a large team), or a team that's small, so personal management techniques are effective.

2. Applications for Wikis

• As a 'work-in-process' area when group is working against a deadline on a report/document: Assemble the Wiki pages into a deliverable document in typical word processor.
• Large document creation with many people involved over an extended period of time.
• Managing versions of a large document. Use wiki to detail the changes in a version/release and link the file to the wiki text explaining the changes in that version.
  
• Press Releases - particularly now that SOX is driving more people across an organization to participate in annoucements

3. Topics/documents should be broken down into at least one Wiki page per major sub-topic, section or area of work.


4. Be careful when, at deadlines, multiple people are working on same page at same time - test how your particular Wiki tool handles this and devise a process to accomodate that.


5. One of the most powerful aspects of wikis is that you can quickly, easily create new pages and new links to pages as you think of information related to a topic. But, often its not obvious how to create a new page, or even that some great, new info has been added. Suggestions to make these benefits more real for users: provide a clear, brief set of instructions for new users.

• Put a New Page icon in HTML tool bar, so it's available when editing a wiki page. Or put an example prominently in default text of each new wiki instance you create.
• Point out the "Recent Changes" as a way for new users to 'get' how others are contributing to the material in the wiki.

Article with ideas for using wikis

How to organize everything by wikifying your life.