Wiki success stories?

Hi everyone,

We're preparing a TechSoup article on Wikis: what the different types are, how to set one up, and how other nonprofits are using them succesfully.

There's already a lot of great information in these forums on this subject, but I'm just putting out the call for some stories about how different organizations have set up Wikis and how they feel this technology has made their lives easier.

So, if your organization has had success with Wikis, I'd like to hear about it and might want to include it in our upcoming article. Please feel free to reply to this post or email me and we can talk about it that way.

Thanks!

TechSoup has recently moved its Style Guide and other editorial information to a wiki. Having this information online (rather than scattered in files) allows several team members to access it at once, and the wiki format makes it easy to organize and navigate a lot of data. Since the wiki can be modified easily, we can reprioritize or move information quickly and on our own. The wiki also allows you to add links to other sites, expanding its value as a reference tool.

As someone with limited html experience, I found the wiki easy and fairly intuitive. Referencing other wikis (like Wikipedia) helped a lot. There is actually a lot of information on creating and desiging wikis on Wikipedia itself.

One lesson I learned from working on our Style Guide wiki is that a little planning can go a long way. Creating a general outline of how you want the navigation to work makes it easier to add information, and to organize it in a user-friendly way. One of the benefits of a wiki is that it is participatory -- so when designing one it's important to keep your fellow users in mind.

I would recommend that anyone interested in building a wiki start by looking at other wikis to get a sense of what they can do. Even if you're not currently interested in building your own wiki, you many find that there are wikis out there that can be a great resource for you.

Your first step in wiki participation might also be to add your organization's name to Wikipedia. Check out TechSoup's Wikipedia entry here.

You can find examples of organizations using wikis at http://www.netsquared.org/catlist/tid/60/flexinode-1

My personal favorite is the wiki at Never Again International ( http://neveragaininternational.org/wiki/ ), an "international network which aims to provoke ideas and actions for peace". They've done a fantastic job or making an engaging site that's full of important information (and looks good, too - which is not the most important thing, but is certainly not always the case with wikis).

When starting a wiki, I think the most important thing to remember is that people generally don't get excited about a blank piece of paper. Meaning, don't direct people to a wiki that has no content and expect them to use it. If you seed the wiki with information that's actually useful, people will use it, and once they realize how easy it is to add or update information, they'll start to do that. Once they've gotten their feet wet editing a page, they're more likely to create one.

Of course, not everyone will be interested in using a wiki, especially if you have information stored in places that are more familiar to them (traditional web sites, or if internal, shared files), but that's doesn't necessarily have to be a problem. Those that find it useful will build upon it and encourage others to use it, and those that aren't interested won't. At a certain point, if enough people are using it that it becomes a rich storehouse of content not otherwise avialable, it's more likely that people who were initially reluctant to try it out will start to visit or add to it.

Of course, some wikis are easier to use than others. Though MediaWiki (which is the basis for wikipedia) is a fabulous and very flexible tool, there's a bit more of a learning curve with this tool than other tools such as SocialText ( http://www.socialtext.net ) & EditMe ( http://www.editme.com ) which are about as straightforward as you can get.

One particular challenge I've found with wikis, and with MediaWiki in particular, is in making content easy to organize and navigate. If anyone has ideas for making a wiki more intuitive to newbies and easier to navigate, 'twould be much appreciated.

Hey Folks,

We at the CAISI Project (software that integrates agencies working on homeless issues) have a tonne of stuff on our Wiki. We've also started to enlist our volunteers in building their portfolios as a permanent reference, and hope to create a cross-referencing hub out of it (if it's possible, I'm not sure yet).

It's a heck of a resource, and our site is at:

http://www.caisi.ca/wiki/index.php/Main_Page

There's a million possibilities, and I'm looking forward to sharing ideas! :smile;

Cheers,
Vijay

_________________________


Vijay Sarma
Strategist
CAISI Project
Tel: (416) 864-5557
Email: vijay.sarma@gmail.com
Website: http://www.caisi.ca


The CAISI Project: Agencies integrating care to end chronic homelessness - www.caisi.ca Please join the CAISI mailing lists at - http://caisi.ca/mailman/listinfo