The Wiki Learning Curve (2)

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My company has replaced our Intranet with a Wiki. In a previous post, I wrote that the Wiki Learning Curve – the need for users raised on MS Word to adopt a new mindset suited to the Wiki interface – is impeding use of our Wiki by our team.

We’ve taken two measures which we hope will help users make the transition to the new model of collaborative software.

  • First, we’ve rearranged the main page of our wiki to include a traditional hierarchical table of contents to enable new users to easily see what’s already posted.
  • Second, we’ve added custom FAQs to the existing Help files. These FAQs address the most basic questions about adding content, editing existing pages and formatting in a way that should enable each user to quickly and easily make the most common changes. Links are provided at the bottom of each FAQ to the Wikipedia help file for that topic. In effect these FAQs are like trainer wheels for the Wiki.

    Simple measures that we hope will increase the use of our Wiki by our team. We’ll be listening closely to our user feedback and watching usage patterns in the coming weeks to see if these measures prove to be what is really required.

    And, we’ll also be looking forward to the WYSIWYG editor which I understand will soon be added to MediaWiki, the software we use for our Wiki.