Got a massive campaign on your agenda? Lord knows, we've got some massive problems, so I'll be some massive campaigns are in the offing. And with such large scale collaborative challenges, we must consider how to scale the use of wiki's to accommodate them and engage a passel of users.
Atlassian, one of the two or three leading proponents, developers and implementers of wiki usage, shares what it learned helping to coordinate the latest Earth Hour where cities around the world doused their lights for an hour on the same day. Here are their four lessons as posted on NetSquared:
1. Show users how to jump into a wiki
- Users should have clear starting points on the dashboard for (1) information on starting a local campaign, (2) getting resources for an existing campaign, or (3) how to use a wiki.
- Dedicate a column to news and how to get involved with the wiki.
2. Create intuitive page structures
- Simplify the navigation by subject or department for easy browsing. By contrast, Earth Hour's wiki had become jumbled over time. Information was scattered and it was quite difficult to easily drill down into information. For Earth Hour, the information architecture was reorganized under new headings. Some information was pulled to the top to make it easier to drill down into.
3. Create user guides and faq's for non-technical users
- With a very broad base of volunteers around the world, the wiki needed information to help out new users. Atlassian created a one-page quick start guide with child pages for specific functions in the Earth Hour wiki (e.g. 'How do I find my Country page?'). It was written specifically for their non-technical audience and linked to the Confluence User Guide for advanced users.
4. Create a support system
- Create a page with the most commonly asked questions and responses and allow people to add to it.
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