Since we started using the Confluence enterprise wiki platform at my current job, I’ve come to a better appreciation for the use of fields in wikis, particularly as I’ve worked more with wiki templates.  With hundreds of projects deployed on multiple tiers, it’s very important to have the information about the servers, infrastructure tools, and applications organized in a standard way, so we can find and share information more easily (especially when getting a 3 am page and troubleshooting a system).   Templates and field structures can certainly help with that.  For example, one could have a drop-down list of approved operating system versions to pick from on a server information page template.

I still think fields should be used judiciously (if at all) when trying to encourage wiki use.  When just trying to add some data, it can be very frustating to encounter a field mechanism that seems poorly designed, such as incomplete dropdowns or incorrect-seeming unalterable items (though sometimes these may be due to fundamental disagreements about the intended use of pages/information).   Some people will not have the time or patience to try to contact wiki admininistrators or other users to work out a fix to the field or a common understanding of the page; they may just give up and not make the contribution they were planning. I was happy to notice recently that LibraryThing had fixed the dropdown that had so annoyed me before.  There was a long stretch of time before that where I just wasn’t as enthusiastic about them.

Where there are wikis with multiple users and audiences, sometimes compromises will have to be made, or one path or another chosen in structuring input mechanisms.  Sometimes this just doesn’t happen fast enough to keep up with changes going on in the world.  Where possible, I recommend having some kind of an open notes section in addition to fields, so that there’s at least a hope of keeping the contributions flowing and finding the (up-to-date) info one needs.  Also, anyone with ownership of the page (or at least some feeling of responsibility towards its contents) should probably set up a notification so they’ll know if the contents change, and perhaps be able to address problems/disagreements in good time.

One can always try to influence the culture (storytelling, glory boards, begging). One can give individual incentives (rewards for best contributors, points systems). One can send out reminders … or put reminders right into the interface itself, so the people who are already using the system (and may already be contributing to it at least on some level) will see them every time they use it. One can try to get people to send each other reminders. One can even try to make a game of it. Each of these approaches may meet with some success, but also has drawbacks.

Culture influence is hard without a critical mass of enthusiasts. Incentives may be difficult to distribute appropriately if tracking information/access is poorly set up, and incentives may get people into a mindset where one has to *keep* giving incentives to keep the contributions coming. Emailed reminders are all too easy to ignore (or filter straight to trash). Reminders inserted into the system’s interface may take up valuable real estate onscreen, which can make users unhappy (see previous comments exchange with Tim Spalding following my entry about LibraryThing’s fielded wiki “Common Knowledge” insertion onto each main page for books). LiveJournal’s “nudge” feature has annoyed users who don’t want to be guilted into blogging (it might be more appropriate for task-oriented communities). Games such as CMU’s The Name Game (picked up by Google for their Image Labeler game) may have a high start-up cost.

I really like LinkedIn’s graphic reminder approach. LinkedIn is a professional networking site; profiles have more value (to the business, not just to its users) when they have more than just a person’s name and connections. At the top of my profile on LinkedIn, my view shows a little “Profile Completeness” graphic, with a green bar showing my progress, and a suggestion of what to add next. It’s given me satisfaction to see that green bar grow toward completion (I’m at 95%).

I think Wikipedia and other online information sources could profit by a similar approach — Wikipedia, for instance, could have a little globe on each page showing fill-in for completeness, perhaps with different colors indicating different needs (more references? more category links?). As with my profile or any kind of knowledge garden, “complete” need not indicate “set in stone”; it can just be an indicator of whether the sorts of info one might expect to find on a given page is there yet.

Not that most of them are quick to identify them as knowledge management issues, but many of the recent organization-community conflicts I’m aware of have a lot to do with knowledge management, as affected by ownership.

• EVE online (game): How is sensitive information secured/accessed? How is information about controversies managed? Who has the ultimate say on what topics are allowed on the community boards?
• Wikipedia: What information is appropriate for Wikipedia? Is it a good venue for knowledge development (semantics: is organizing references knowledge development, or only when new analyses are allowed is that knowledge work (as opposed to information management))? What happens when the neutrality of editors/judges is called into question? Are links to sites critical of Wikipedia going to be allowed?
• LibraryThing: What information should be on a work page or an author page? What if there’s disagreement about the legitimacy/accuracy of including/excluding certain types of information (see previous LibraryThing entry)? Does “Common Knowledge” imply truth, or truthiness? Which should it imply? What if one workflow is better for adding books from the user point of view, but another is better at generating accurate book data?
• One Laptop Per Child: Is “go explore” a reasonable response to a new Give One Get One XO laptop owner’s question about the laptop? What if the US user base gets way ahead of OLPC in generating information about it, but, impatient with the official wiki, puts most of that information over on discussion forums on OLPC News (not associated with OLPC; in fact, sometimes highly critical, though often enthusiastic about the technology and mission) instead?
• For any of these, who owns the information users contribute, and how portable is it?

An obvious answer from the organization’s point of view is “we sponsor the site/project; someone has to decide, and we’re the ones who’ll make the final decision.” A vulnerability of this approach is when they depend on a large user community for contributions for their reason for being (Wikipedia) or for profit (LibraryThing). If their community grows disenchanted, they’re in trouble (especially if/when the Next Big Thing comes along). If the organization depends more directly on ads for survival (e.g., LiveJournal) than its users, it’s not such an immediate issue.

I think most flourishing communities have growing pains from time to time. Some resolve the conflict and move on, some paper it over and move on, and some splinter or go out with a whimper. I’m not sure what the sociology is of which direction a community is likely to go depending on whether it’s a mission-oriented community (e.g., an open source project) or a community of proximity (geographic, or common interests without a strong mission, e.g., people who like to chat about movies). I’d be interested in any studies about how the financial angle (e.g., non- versus for-profits) plays in, too.

I started using LibraryThing because I liked its tagging power (for browsing and searching). I also liked its less-commercial book pages, fondness for and willingness to work with libraries, and above-average books reviews from LT members, and book-based discussions (easy to find and see updates on discussions of one’s favorite books/authors). But mainly, I liked their approach to tagging. View one’s own tag cloud, author cloud, tag mirror, and community tags for books! Play with tag combinations to find very specific books! This last feature I especially like, because it combines the metadata from individual taggers to allow searches they might never have thought of trying to foster. One person might tag a book by what interests them about the author, another by something about the characters, another by the locale; the sky’s the limit. If enough people are tagging, useful and interesting information will bubble up, and the noise won’t matter — and what’s noise to one person might still be useful to another, and it’s all there.

Now, however, LibraryThing is rolling out its new Common Knowledge feature which uses fielded wiki technology. I don’t know how much effort this will take away from tagging by LT members; I intend to ignore this as much as possible (not easy, considering it’s on the book and author pages). Other people have written about issues with specific fields (e.g., binary thinking above does not work for some authors/collaborations). I know some people like it, and I know some of the issues may be smoothed out. However, the idea of one person at LibraryThing getting to decide what are valid values to allow people to put in for some of these fields seems like a step back to me. I’m afraid it will combine the worst of both worlds: rigid (“expert” knowledge determining categories/values, not necessarily so expert/authoritative in all cases, and prone to being outdated/inflexible) and error-prone (at least Wikipedia facilitates footnotes/cites/references for factual claims, and makes it easy to discuss potential changes with a discussion page per article … and offers RSS for both articles and discussion pages).

[Edit: removed scare quotes (see comments) and an unconstructive aside]

[Update!  I was happy to notice in 2009 that LibraryThing had fixed the dropdown depicted above.]

But wait, there’s more! Having that URL allowed me to finally get John Udell’s LibraryLookup bookmarklet generator (search from an Amazon book for a copy at your local library) to work. I had to tweak the URL a bit, but here’s the bookmarklet: MCPL (MD). Left-click the link and drag it to your Bookmarks Toolbar in Firefox, go to any Amazon book (specific book/ISBN number, not the search results page with multiple books), and click on the MCPL-MD link to see if the library has it and place a hold.

[Update:  "Find At" is now called Buy, Borrow or Swap, and it's now at the top right of a book's Work page]

LibraryThing MAGICNUMBER URL: http://webcat.montgomerylibrary.org/uhtbin/cgisirsi/x/x/x/57/5?user_id=webserver&password=ibistro&searchdata1=MAGICNUMBER

Library Lookup URL for bookmarklet to search from Amazon: http://webcat.montgomerylibrary.org/uhtbin/cgisirsi/x/x/x/57/5?user_id=webserver&password=ibistro&searchdata

Vendor: sirsi

Bookmarklet text: javascript:var%20re=/([\/-]|is[bs]n=)(\d{7,9}[\dX])/i;if(re.test(location.href)==true){var%20isbn=RegExp.$2;void(win=window.open(‘http://webcat.montgomerylibrary.org/uhtbin/cgisirsi/x/x/x/57/5?user_id=webserver&password=ibistro&searchdata’+'/uhtbin/cgisirsi/x/0/0/5/?searchdata1=’+isbn,’LibraryLookup’,’scrollbars=1,resizable=1,location=1,width=575,height=500′))}