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Posts Tagged ‘arbitration’
The “Quick Web” for Technical Documentation
I’m happy to report that my article about using wikis for technical documentation was published last week in the STC Intercom.
A PDF my article is available for anyone to download, STC member or STC non-members alike.
I’ll be giving a presentation about wikis for technical documentnation to the STC Austin community on Tuesday November 6th at the Commons Center, which is located at 10100 Burnet Road, Austin, TX 78758, near the southwest corner of Burnet Road and Braker Lane on the University of Texas J. J. Pickle Research Campus. Map
If you’d like to see what else I’ve written about wikis, take a look at the articles in my wiki category, or check out this list from my talk.bmc.com blog.
So many people helped me with the Intercom article. Kelly Holcomb is an excellent editor and helped me with it in her small amounts of spare time. Emily Kaplan read an early copy and also helped me sort through my notes. Michael Cote has sent me interesting items about wikis that he has found and also constantly tags useful information in del.icio.us. Diane Fleming was investigating wikis on her own, asked me about them, and then gave me great feedback on an early copy of the article. Tom Johnson was extremely positive when he first read it as well. I spoke with Dee Elling who had two excellent experiences to talk about in her interview with me. Harry Miller had a podcast interview with Molly Bostic, the PM on the MSDN wiki team, that was very informative.
It takes a community to write about online communities. Thanks, everyone!
Emerging wiki use - now and future wikis
As you might have seen on The Content Wrangler recently, I wrote a response to JoAnn Hackos’ article, Is there a wiki in your future? and Scott Abel chose the title for my special contribution to his site. I think the title of this blog post - Emerging wiki use - now and future wikis - would have been a better title than “Anne Gentle vs JoAnn Hackos” but unfortunately I learned that his blogging system would cause broken links if he changed the title after I requested a title change. Ah, content management systems, why do they break your heart? 
I do want to make sure that readers know that JoAnn and I are not at odds about wiki use at all - rather, we are both trying to find the best practices for building a wiki that will thrive. My thought on the “vs” in the title is that it is intended to show the polarization on the issues surrounding wikis and technical publications. JoAnn and I have emailed back and forth this week to continue to discuss and find that we are not on opposite sides of the issue.
I’ve happily read the blog entries from other writers that read both articles, with my favorite reference being Sarah O’Keefe’s “eponymous rebuttal” phrase. Subtle and clever, and sent me to m-w.com, so I love it.
A neat outcome so far from this article is that I had a discussion with someone who had experienced something similar to JoAnn’s scenario. One of my readers described a situation where he was creating and updating wiki pages, trying to extract and describe an exact algorithm for an online game. Apparently in gaming communities, the developers can be very tight-lipped about the exact way that game play works (weaponry or armor for example), and the challenge to the gamers is to figure out the best strategies based on their experiences with the game. Without arbitration on the wiki (or customer support forum), though, outright content wars ensue and the wiki content about the algorithm becomes untrustworthy.
It’s a fascinating example. I’d like to find more examples related to technical content to find out what arbitration policies would work well. Let me know your experiences in this area - have you had a need for arbitration on your favorite wiki yet?
