Evan Williams doesn't like Wikis
I notice that Elizabeth Lane Lawley (posting on Evan William's blog doesn't think much of Wikis. Her basic complaints are in the presentation area:
You can spot a wiki page a mile a way. They all look exactly like the pages that my students used to turn out in basic HTML classes back in 1995. All they're missing are the rainbow-colored bars to replace the ubiquitous horizontal rules.
She doesn't get it. There is a problem with wikis, but this most assuredly isn't it. The problem with wikis is the lack of actual collaboration. In my experience, not that many people are willing to add content to a WIki. This is curious in a way, given that the markup is generally simple (regardless of implemementation)- but that's how it turns out. If you set up a Wiki for developers, a small percentage will go out and edit pages. A smaller percentage will create pages. You'll generally find 1 or 2 people willing to devote any time at all to maintenance of the Wiki page space. Now add non-technical people. Those numbers get even smaller. On a regular basis, I'll get email telling me that there's a problem on a Wiki page, along with the fix (for instance, a bad link). This is interesting. Someone went out of their way to send me an email about a problem page. It would have taken less time to fix the page.
Why is this? It's hard to say. It might be an ownership thing - people generally consider web pages to be content for consumption, not documents for editing - i.e., it's not their content, so they don't feel comfortable editing it. That's part of it, I think. There's also the scared by confusing markup crowd - what we (developers) think of as simple markup, non-developers see as confusing notation. Thus email reports - email clients are tools that people feel far more confortable with.
Which takes me back to Elizabeth's post. She seems to think that presentation is the problem, and I'm here to tell her that it's not. I think the population of willing posters to a hypothetical gorgeous Wiki would still be small. It's not the presentation that's the issue here. There's something simpler afoot here, and it's something that plagues web software in general. People like rich client software. People tend to not like basic editing tools - which is what Wikis use. Combine a Wiki with decent posting tools, and I bet you would see more collaboration. Combine it with more pleasant layouts, and I bet nothing much would change
Comments
The Problem with Wikis
[Distractions] April 27, 2003 15:24:09.715
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The Problem with Wikis
James A. Robertson tries to explain the problem with Wikis : bq.(http://www.cincomsmalltalk.com/blog/blogView?showComments=true&entry=3228889836) People like rich client software*. People tend to......
Re: Evan Williams doesn't like Wikis
[denisj] April 28, 2003 23:53:23.328
Comment on Evan Williams doesn't like Wikis by denisj
I can confirm your WIKI observations. We setup a WIKI to not only be a developer collaboration tool with standards and frameworks documentation, but also to have highly visible XP style iterations, test result progress, team productivity and project charts, you name it, for a distributed development team. Only a handful of developers will edit and even less create, even if it is to simply create a contact details page. The non technical project manager gets someone else to post iteration and minutes updates (so delayed that the content is rarely useful ) and by the time you get to the client or actual sponsor and say "Have you seen latest project progress stats and charts on the Wiki ?" they say "Wiki ? What's a.."....sigh
I agree that it is less looks, however I have observed that any sophisticated dynamic table based or similar content is a pain to maintain and users feel more at home with the office tools or the like and although many provide HTML export, this itself is not easy and requires many steps to update a page. We have also setup another non technical WIKI aimed at the wider populace in the company and are using Tikiwiki (http://tikiwiki.sourceforge.net/) which tries to address some approachability issues, but time will tell.