Comments on: Successful Wikis Need a Purpose and a Strong Core Group http://www.ikiw.org/2007/09/13/successful-wikis-need-a-purpose-and-a-strong-core-group/ Tue, 09 Mar 2010 16:51:55 -0800 http://wordpress.org/?v=2.9.2 hourly 1 By: Alec http://www.ikiw.org/2007/09/13/successful-wikis-need-a-purpose-and-a-strong-core-group/comment-page-1/#comment-120982 Alec Wed, 12 Mar 2008 23:56:42 +0000 http://www.ikiw.org/2007/09/13/successful-wikis-need-a-purpose-and-a-strong-core-group/#comment-120982 Being new to wikis this may be blindingly obvious but it seems to me the "garden" analogy can shed a little light on this post. A wiki can be thought of as a seed that needs to land in fertile ground before it can germinate and flourish. Or looking at it another way, the most successful wiki is one that's more like a weed than a flower: it pops up by itself and grows like crazy without any outside help. Forcing a wiki to grow (as it seems they're doing at Intuit) might work for a while, but as soon as you stop lavishing love and care on the thing it just withers and dies. But as the folks at Intel have found, drop a seed into fertile ground and it'll just grow and grow. Stretching the analogy further, here (in NZ) we have a very prickly plant called gorse. As I understand it the thing was initially introduced as a hedge plant from England, where it was a fairly ordinary grower, but here it flourishes and threatens to take over the countryside but for strenuous efforts to control it. This is a case of a plant being dropped into an ideal ecological niche. Maybe, in kicking off wiki usage in an organisation, the first thing to do is find that ideal niche. Being new to wikis this may be blindingly obvious but it seems to me the “garden” analogy can shed a little light on this post. A wiki can be thought of as a seed that needs to land in fertile ground before it can germinate and flourish. Or looking at it another way, the most successful wiki is one that’s more like a weed than a flower: it pops up by itself and grows like crazy without any outside help.

Forcing a wiki to grow (as it seems they’re doing at Intuit) might work for a while, but as soon as you stop lavishing love and care on the thing it just withers and dies.

But as the folks at Intel have found, drop a seed into fertile ground and it’ll just grow and grow.

Stretching the analogy further, here (in NZ) we have a very prickly plant called gorse. As I understand it the thing was initially introduced as a hedge plant from England, where it was a fairly ordinary grower, but here it flourishes and threatens to take over the countryside but for strenuous efforts to control it.

This is a case of a plant being dropped into an ideal ecological niche. Maybe, in kicking off wiki usage in an organisation, the first thing to do is find that ideal niche.

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