An interesting read on the front page of wordpress.com of all places. I enjoy random clicking, and this one came up with a great commentary on the difficulty of using a wiki to get how to information.
From Learning about Second Life from Google:
Over at SL, the main source of information is on the WIKI, which in my opinion has some great information but because Linden primarily lets the users run the show isn’t as helpful as some sort of information clearing house. Trying to sort out how to sculpt, for example, is an exercise in total frustration. There are some wonderful tutorials, but SL does nothing to properly aggregate and put these tutorials into context.
I wonder what Second Life could do to properly aggregate those tutorials to meet this user’s needs? I suppose long-time wiki writers would answer: use categories and encourage tagging, while looking out for orphans. Any other ideas?
I got a great question from Tom Johnson of I’d Rather Be Writing:
I’m just wondering if you have any thoughts on the WordPress Codex, http://codex.wordpress.org/Main_Page. Yesterday I was looking at this Codex wondering what to make of it all. I think I want to be a contributor, but there are so many topics. It’s chaotic. The organization is like a maize. I don’t know if I should go in there with a wrecking ball and rennovate, or not. Probably 25% of it is outdated. What happens to those outdated pages? Will I offend people if I just delete things that are outdated?
Can you recommend a book or strategy for making sense of massive wikis? Where should I start? I spent a good hour editing a page of it last night that I considered critical. It’s then that I realized this is a huge project and I have no sense of direction. Any insight you can give me would be much appreciated.
With the OLPC wiki, David Farning on the Library list went through the wiki and said he found these categories. It’s quite an accurate content analysis from what I’ve seen, so I was impressed. At the same time, it also helped explain my initial wonderment at how to wrap my arms around the entire wiki – and in fact, it is barely possible to do.
Content
1 Philosophy
2 Contributing
3 Creating
4 Curatoring
5 Projects
Deliverable
In progress
Ideas
6 Management
Once David came up with these categories, he then asked SJ Klein, director of community content and long-time Wikipedian, if he thought the wiki needed structure.
SJ said that the wiki is purposefully without hierarchy – flat, especially for projects, to not force a parent or sibling sense for projects. He also said, however, if you have a specific tree hierarchy in mind, feel free to develop the idea in some temporary space.
So, when working on a large wiki if you have good organization ideas, set them up, and then ask for community feedback. Seems like an appropriate approach to a large wiki.
Other ideas for starting out in a large wiki environment:
While it might seem like it’s a question similar to “how do I get started on a huge writing project?” in my experience, wiki editing has some subtleties due to the collaboration and community vibe already present behind the pages. You have to work harder to figure out that vibe, and then determine your course.
For new people, there’s the whole question of getting a feel for the community so you can start to answer “who am I going to potentially irritate by editing this” and “as a newbie do I have the confidence I’m right?”
So, knowing your role within the wiki community is a first step. You might take a while to get to know who’s there, what their roles are as well, and where you might best fit in. Introduce yourself with your profile page, following the WikiPattern, MySpace – see http://www.wikipatterns.com/display/wikipatterns/MySpace.
Just like a newbie on a writing team, find out if there’s some scut work that you can do to get your feet wet, if needed, to gain the community’s trust.
Deletions are going to bring much more wrath in a wiki situation, I would guess, so they seem risky to do to start out. If you do think something needs deletion, message or email the original author or the big contributors and ask if it’s okay to mark it for deletion. Then, mark it, and hope that someone else (a wiki admin) determines if it should be deleted.
Start small, like tagging, or applying templates. That’ll help you get a feel for the bigger picture.
Let us know your ideas for wrapping your head around a large wiki, we’d love to hear them.