Roles People Play in a Wiki

To understand how publishing wikis and structured wikis are used, it is helpful to point out the different roles people play. Starting at the source, one can identify these roles:

1. Sponsors
2. Wiki vendors
3. Extension builders
4. Wiki administrators
5. Wiki champions
6. Contributors - aka writers
7. Consumers - aka readers

Sponsors approve and support the deployment of the wiki. In a grassroots wiki, the team lead typically plays this role. In a departmental wiki it can be at the VP level, for a corporate wiki it can be at the executive level. Historically, wikis are deployed in grassroots, but nowadays they often get attention at the executive level because of awareness Wikipedia brought to the wiki space. Support by management is essential for a wiki deployed across the whole organization.

Vendors provide open source or closed source software; they also provide essential support for wiki administrators.

Extension builders are programmers who enhance the functionality of the wiki by creating plugins, add-ons and skins. Extensions may be provided by the wiki vendor, by a third party (such as system integrators and consultants), or may be built by an engineering team in-house. Extensions create value for the whole project. For example, TWiki has over 400 extensions. Extensions scale a wiki into vertical markets that one would never anticipate. Extensions are canned applications; wiki administrators need to install them for its user base.

A Wiki administrator installs, configures and manages the wiki. Teams typically deploy their own wiki in a grassroots. One person in the team plays the wiki administrator role. Once grassroots wikis get at the radar screen of the CTO or CIO they tend to get consolidated into a central wiki, typically managed by the IT department. The administrator is concerned about the dial tone of the wiki, e.g. software updates, backups and system availability, but does not manage the content.

A wiki champion is a person who both understands the process of the work for a given project or business (the domain), and how to use a wiki (best practices in collaboration). The wiki champion is primarily concerned about training and content: how to structure the content to make it easy for the users to navigate and find relevant content. In a structured wiki, this champion also creates lightweight wiki applications. TWiki is a structured wiki; it has a database within the wiki where users can create wiki application simply by using wiki markup, e.g. no programming skills are required to create customized trackers, inventory lists and vertical applications of all sorts. Structured wikis are in the long tail of implementing business processes, that is, users create many smaller applications tailored to their needs. The wiki champions help automate business processes.

Contributors - or writers - use the wiki as a white board. A wiki is by definition a very collaborative environment, e.g. a wiki mainly thrives because of its contributors – or dies because of lack thereof. Wikis are very organic – the unstructured and free form way of sharing content brings a lot of effectiveness, transparency and accountability to the organization. Contributors also use applications, which can be canned applications or in the case of a structured wiki, tailored wiki applications. A white board or a blank sheet of paper can be intimidating; an application reduces the choices, e.g. it makes it easier to participate. Both, free form white board use and structured application use of a wiki is valuable. It is important to start as a white board, and to add structure only as needed (iteratively, in bazaar-style.)

Consumers - or readers - are primarily concerned about finding content they need for their daily work. The contributor/consumer relationship can be among peers (such as documenting how-to's), up the hierarchy (such as managers looking at status reports), or across departments or teams (such as product marketing creating material for the sales teams). It is good practice to keep the consumer needs in mind when creating content in the wiki. One type of consumers are the lurkers – often people who do not yet "get it" how wikis can bring a lot of valuable to the organization. Bulletin boards and wikis at the workplace have a typical write/read ratio of between 1/10 and 1/20. On public sites, the ratio can be much larger. For example, TWiki.org has a ratio of 1/150.

Naturally a person can take more than one role in a wiki:

• In open source wikis such as TWiki and MediaWiki, vendor and extension builder can be one and the same.
• In a grassroots wiki, one and the same person plays the role of administrator and wiki champion.
• A wiki champion is also a contributor and a consumer.
• Contributors are typically also consumers.
• Consumers might just be readers. People not familiar with wikis use web pages as reference material; even though there is an edit button, it can be intimidating to click that button. The wiki champion plays an important role in converting the readers into writers. A writable web comes with a paradigm shift, people need to get used to the idea that it is OK to edit content written by other people.

2007-07-11 | Peter Thoeny | Category Best Practices