So I was reading through Korby Parnell’s blog (VSS gurumon) and I noticed he mentioned a new Wiki that I hadn’t seen before…Jotspot. From the comparison page it looks very nice indeed — send emails to it, WYSIWYG editor, calendar, etc. Ofc it won’t be free, but it looks very nice!
As you may know, we just kicked up a FlexWiki here at work, and while it was easy to get started with, I can already see that less tech-savvy people will be reluctant to use it. New ASCII formatting codes, no drag & drop, no breadcrumbs, no WYSIWYG editor, no pretty layouts, etc. I’m okay with using it, but there are many people here who seem hesitant. And my formatting options were somewhat limited — fonts, H-tags, UL, OL, & simple tables.
I already hear the hordes crying, “you don’t need wysiwyg!” “breadcrumbs are not the wiki way!” “drag & drop is for wimps!” etc. etc. And they’re right — if our company were composed of Unix admins & tech-minded folks.
But it’s not.
Our company not only contains programmers and ascii-gurus, but marketing people, sales people, business people…people who are comfortable with Word and Office and email. In some way, wikis remind me of hand-coding HTML sites. Do you think you can convince your office manager to open up notepad & edit the HTML of the intranet? No way, sucker. And wikis, while much easier to edit than HTML, are still too close to the same track, IMO.
It’s important that a wiki — no, let’s call it an information portal — an information portal should be accessible & useable to anyone who has or needs information. And a lot of the company’s information is currently locked away in the heads of very un-technical people who, honestly, probably won’t edit the wiki that much. Maybe some of them will convert over, but I’ll bet a bunch won’t. Which means that information doesn’t get into the wiki … it instead lands in emails & word documents that litter the network, and someone else has to collect & wiki those.
Plus, people are now trained to use sites in a certain way. Amazon, Yahoo, & other sites have conditioned people to use breadcrumbs, to click links instead of the back button, etc. An information portal needs to be useable by people. You can argue that “hey, the wiki way is a better way” and maybe it is, but you won’t get enough converts to make it worthwhile. IMO you’re better off adapting your site to fit the patterns already built into people’s brains. I think Alan Cooper wrote a book (Maybe The Inmates are Running the Asylum?) urging that same point — that the software’s role is to adapt itself to the way people want to use it, not vice-versa.
Lastly, I wanted to mention that IMO formatting is not superfluous…that formatting often helps impart information more successfully. Sometimes formatting is even the information itself! Imagine a flowchart with boxes, colors, & arrows. Now get rid of the boxes, colors, & arrows, & see if you can put together something just as easy to read. Kinda tricky, eh? Now try it with a network diagram. Or an ERD diagram. Or an org chart. See how the formatting enhances and/or embodies the information?
I realize this is a debatable topic, which is why I mention it. Other things — blogging, running a web site, having an online photo gallery — are all taking off because they’re now much MUCH easier to use. Anyone remember that stuff 3-5 years ago? Yeah, no online photos from grandma. But now it’s easy. The technology enables us, and the interface becomes a tool instead of a maze.
And IMO that’s where wikis & other tools need to go in order to attain widespread adoption, and bring their advantages to everyone who needs them — not just techies like you & me. Jotspot seems like a step in the right direction. Too bad that step often involves a license fee. ;/
