Would be very interested in downloading this paper to share with information development co-workers but the link didn’t work!

Is there an alternate download service?

All the best

Triona

Are you thinking about localization from the perspective of hosting wiki content in multiple languages? Or edits to single-language wiki content by global community members?

The former can be addressed with the model where information assets are maintained in DITA, and published to the wiki as part of a continuous publishing process (i.e. when updates are avail, publish again). In a multi-language content environment, you just publish once for each language set. Obviously, with this model, you are overwriting any page edits made by users since last refresh (comments remain untouched, which is important to note). But a good wiki lets you have control over who edits what and how those edits get processed further.

If you are sourcing your content on the wiki in multiple languages, the solution gets trickier. I have not seen a wiki system in which you can target a set of wiki pages in one language, and then generate new wiki pages in other languages (presumably with a TM integration). The more structured your content model is, the more predictable are your results.

The latter represents a quality issue to me. When users make edits to “warrantied” content, you want to make sure the language, style, and technical accuracy are what you require them to be. To some extent, this is a general issue with any collaborative information development: you might have some set or users in a position of subject-matter expertise to “code-review” the edits. Another approach is to provide a space for “unwarrantied” content, which is consumed as-is and as such less constrained. If you’re interested, there’s more information about these models in my slideshare at http://www.slideshare.net/lisa.dyer/lombardi-wikis-model.

More than anything, it’s important to define the right *process* for your wiki solution. For the most part, with some tooling, you can make any wiki work for you in the way you need it to in a global environment – although some wikis are better than others.

Hope this helps,

- lisa

Does your paper cover localization costs at all?
The largest barrier for me to moving towards a wiki is the localization cost associated with allowing anyone access to change anything.

– Dave

And then of course, there’s the all-important area of user assistance. (That’s us, folks ) The paper describes how the structured wiki-plus-DITA setup facilitates the transfer of knowledge across the development phases and amongst the teams.

Highly recommended reading