Category: Work culture

Disclaimer: The purpose of this is not a criticism of anyone, but simply a reflection on the reality of things. Opinions written here are also my own and do not necessarily reflect the organization I work for, nor is it necessarily a reflection of what goes on in my organization as I have experience participating and managing numerous wikis. (This more or less applies to anything on my blog really…)

Normally, when you have a wiki, the idea is that the community collaborates to create and manage content. Others will not only suggest changes, but make them. There is little in terms of crossing lines or boundaries or stepping on someone’s toes beyond general netiquette, because what you begin, change, and read is created by a community of users whether that be a partner, team, organization, or the whole world (as is the case with large wiki sites such as wikipedia).

Nevertheless, because the wiki is a very open space, organization and managing content can become very unwieldy. Thus, in order to keep everything working and useful (i.e. not just a hodgepodge of pages), there is one or more wiki administrator and moderators.

So, what happens when a wiki is created within an organization? Hopefully people are educated about the purposes and the workings of a wiki. Then hopefully, as a result, if people start suggesting or changing things (especially moderators and admins), people do not ignore them or complain. However, in an organization where a set of content was traditionally created and managed by a single person who had complete control over what they do and how they do it without that really affecting anyone else, the idea of the wiki itself is hard to grasp for a lot of people, let alone the fact that it’s for community use and other people may come in and change things.

Many people also have a hard time grasping categories as it’s a different kind of organization and many people treat it like tags using their own personal organization without realizing that other people might change the hierarchy and/or use of the category as the wiki evolves. Most of all, because they use it as a personal tagging system, they don’t think about the larger use or organization of the wiki.

Because it’s obvious that some things are related to a specific unit’s or person’s project (but which will be used for greater use and public viewing), as one of the wiki moderators (and the one tasked with a specific area of it), I generally try to make suggestions instead of simply changing things in the hopes of not stepping on anyone’s toes. In some cases though, I simply get ignored or essentially get told “I/we don’t need your help, leave me/us alone”. Sometimes it’s all the harder because not only am I on a part-time contract, I’m also a student (which in some people’s view means I’m not fully qualified to do my job and/or make decisions for the organization without approval).

Perhaps the fact that I’m a student is an easy excuse or out, but whatever the reason, I think the real problem here is that our organization is changing the way we create and disseminate information. People will have much less control than they used to. This can mean more time for them to do other things, but as one who likes to have control over things, I can fully understand that people might not want to let go.

Getting people to understand the new system is one thing. Getting them to accept it is something altogether different. (And please don’t misunderstand, some people have been great about accepting and working with the changes that have been going on. I might even say the majority, but I don’t really know.)

What might be most interesting is that I will soon be passing this work onto someone else. Who that is, I don’t know, but I suspect it will be the next student to come along. It’ll be interesting to see how our wiki develops.