ONLINE EVENT: Wikis and nonprofits

Sasha,

I too have been curious about how to get non-techies comfortable with wikis. There's nothing terribly difficult about wikis, but they are different than what folks are accustomed to. Simply the concept of editing a group page is a strange concept for them. They are used to an iterative process rather than the synchronous process a wiki promises.

I'm working with a group of HR executives across the US to work on national talent and HR issues. I have had more success encouraging them to use the discussion tab and then capturing key ideas from the discussion to post to the page. That's not an ideal appraoch but I'm just pleased they are starting to use the wiki. Since our wiki effort is only a few weeks old we haven't developed a habit of usage. A couple things that seem to be more effective for us include explicit requests to prompt them to use the wiki. For example, after a conference call we will send an email with something like, "please respond to the question XYZ on the wiki discussion tab (desired url)". We've also set up the RSS feed to automatically email users when a new discussion post has been added. These two items have helped spur more discussion and interst in the wiki. It's still a struggle to get non techies to adopt a new technology.

Some comments on the Wikis, Blogs and Content Management Systems (CMS). My association with Wikis started due to my use of the web application server Zope. The Zope community used wikis for brainstorming a lot the the development process. When I was teaching web development using Zope we would introduce the students to the Zope Wiki engine ZWiki as an example of a tool that they could use to get a website up very quickly. We have used ZWiki attached to a Plone CMS site to do similar brainstorming during some major projects here at CIP. That's an extreme example of using a Wiki on an intranet because it was a limited access intranet. We also used the comment feature as a way to adjust or extend ideas in the page before we wanted to commit them to the page. One of the nice things about the ZWiki design is that comments actually edit the page they are just placed at the bottom under the heading comments with a comment header identifying the poster.

On the question of blogs vs. wikis I'll provide the explination that I used when approaching how to put the website for our 35th Anniversary together.

Wikis - Wikis are a totally shared space. They are easy for people to use. The concept of wiki words makes linking the pages of a wiki simple. Inherently a wiki has no structure. It gains structure via crosslinking. What makes them great: simple design, everyone can edit, also can be a drawback if you are looking to have more control of your content.

Blogs - Weblogs or Blogs are by design chronological in structure. Most blogging engines provide a category mechanism for alternate structuring. Blogs are often associated with news style websites where a chronological structure makes sense. Again this makes the blogs relativly easy to use. But if you don't want that structure then you need to consider alternatives.

Content Management Systems(CMS) - A CMS, specifically a web CMS, provides a framework for building a website with multiple contents types. For most current web CMS this includes blogs and/or wikis. The issue with a CMS is that it will require much more work by those tasked with setup and maintenance. It is much more complex than either the wiki or the blog. Part of that complexity is usually more sophisticated security controls, better stylization and template controls and multiple rich content types.

I hope folks find this useful.

Hi jone,

I think that a wiki is set up with a discussion area to provide the greatest flexibility. It is then up to the team that is collaborating to agree on how they will work.

Some may, as you suggest, just hop in and make changes directly to the document.

Some may use this methid and then use the discussion area to leave a note about changes they have mead - and perhaps what they were thinking.

Some may use the discussion area to enter suggestions and assign a single "scribe" to actually move the document forward.

In any of these cases the advantage over a Word doc and an eMail or a List is that in the wiki model there is a central document always available that everyone can view as the process goes forward and the document evolves.


Peace,


Bob Leming
Rock River Star
Philadelphia

Hi Adam,

Can you address some of the versioning and roll-back features that a wiki can provide?

Are all wiki platforms created equal on in this regard?


Thanks!


Bob Lem
Rock River Star
Philadelphia

You mention you use wikis and a handful of tools within your intranet. Is your intranet capable of organizing these tools or does it just link to them? We're looking at buying a new intranet portal and we're wondering if we should find one with blogs, wikis, etc. incorporated or; if that is irrelevant now because of the multiple unlinked options that currently exist. Most traditional inntranets have become no more than information clearinghouses because or the unfriendly nature of their collaboration tools. Are there new options that combine the clearinghouse function with the new Web 2.0 user friendly technologies? Thanks.

Sasha, Leanne Bergey recently wrote a techsoup article on how to promote a site. The same principles apply to building interest in your wiki. As to increasing participation, I think the methods Fandey employs are solid, and could work for you as well.

One approach we're taking is to roll community building, promotion, and training all into one. We’re using meetup.com to organize people in our corner of San Jose who’d want to help us develop a free collaborative (wiki-based) online magazine to tell the extraordinary stories of people in non-profits who serve the Silicon Valley. Wiki training is part of the meetup.

You might want to look at "Building and leading FOSS communities," at

http://www.linux.com/article.pl?sid=06/10/05/2054209


I think it important to have a core group committed to substantial seeding of the site. And then someone committed enough to do whatever pruning or reorgainzation of material that might be required.

Also, Drucker has a book on non-profit management. It does not deal with technology, but it has good stories.

One of the facinating ones, to me, was the pastor, rabbi, imam, priest, or whatever who had a waiting list of volunteers. The factor that I remember was that every six months the volunteers had to write a letter to themselves (with a copy to the pastor, rabbi, imam, priest, or whoever) stating what they were getting out of their work. I do not know that there was any necessary connection between the letter requirement and the waiting list.

Bob

We're interested in the possibility of a wiki as an intranet option for a network of management support organizations. It's important for us to be able to include email communication with the wiki and archive responses. Are there any available wikis that can accomodate these 2 requirements?

I was wondering what is Project Forum, and how do we gain access to it?
Thank you, Janie

Fandey, If your HR wiki isn't private, would you mind linking to it from here?

Alison,

Think of a blog as a journal and a wiki as a whiteboard.

A blog is about communication. Every day (or week or whatever) you post news and information for your audience.

A wiki is about getting work done together. So you post an essay or a plan or a list and everyong starts making changes, updating it as neccessary. Over time the essay or plan or list changes and evolves and stays fresh. So like a whiteboard its constantly changing and remaining relevant.

Wikis and blogs are great side by side. One for working, one for talking.

Let me know if that's clear.

Sasha,

The key thing, in my experience is to get people over that initial fear of the new. Wikis are sometimes hard to explain but they are easy to use once you try. So step one is convincing someone to try.

However, it also helps if you give them a small task to do. Don't just say "participate in our wiki" say, "Go to this specific page, and update your contact details" or "Go to this page, and add a paragraph about what you will do at the conference." That way it's about the work, not the tool and people have a purpose.

LeoRomero,

Wiki spam can be a big problem but fortunately some of the wiki providers have got good solutions in place.

We have good mechanisms in place to stop wikispam and we really haven't had any problems with it in the last year or so. We do our best to keep updating our tools as the spammers evolve. It basically involves understanding what kinds of posts spammers like to post (links mostly), detecting those, and then putting in place mechanisms that prevent those posts from being automated.

If you don't have these kinds of mechanisms in place though it can be a really killer.

Fandey,

Great points about wiki adoption.

One thing I read from your post is that some people aren't afraid of the technology, they are afraid to contribute. It's important to explain to people that it's ok to make a mistake on a wiki. Making lots of small changes is good, it helps the wiki evolve. And it's better to allow people to make mistakes and then correct them than to prevent them from participating. It's a change in mindset.

Bob,

Versioning and roll-back are core to most wikis.

What generally happens is that every time a page is edited on a wiki, the page is saved as a new version. At any time you can take a look at a list of every version ever made of a page. You can see what changed in each version and "roll back" or revert to each version.

All wikis have this functionality, each one implements it a little differently.

Have a look at our test wiki to see how wikispaces displays this information:

http://nonprofit-wikis.wikispaces.com/page/history/home