Rather than collaborating on a cohesive document, contributors append their point of view to the page, signing their name to their contribution. There is no coherent expression of the page’s topic, instead readers have to dig through the whole thread and distill the valuable information out of it. The result is ThreadMess.

Symptoms

The page looks like a discussion thread, consisting of chronological submissions of responses. Valuable information is fragmented across the page within the responses and there isn’t consensus from the community about facts and opinions. It is difficult for a casual reader to discern any clear, useful information from the page.

Resolution

Reorganise the page into a single document, grouping related information together and replacing the signed, conversational remarks with unsigned objective prose.

One effective process for refactoring a ThreadMess into a cohesive narrative:

• Reorder related parts of the conversation into discrete topics
• Add section headings for each topic
• Rewrite each section to prose, removing all signatures and attribution
• If a clear consensus has emerged, describe the consensus view
• If there is no consensus, describe the alternative views objectively
• There is a danger in refactoring ThreadMess that the bias of the editor can (consciously or unconsciously) sneak into the resulting page. Often, the best person to refactor a ThreadMode discussion is someone who has no interest in, or opinion on the matter being discussed.
• Encourage contributors to the page to conduct discussion using the page’s comment or discussion feature, instead of conducting a discussion within the body of the page. Reserve the body of the page for the information itself to be written and refined.

Further Reading

• ThreadMess – Meatball Wiki
• ThreadMode – WikiWikiWeb
• ThreadMode – Meatball Wiki
• The wiki workplace – Wikinomics Playbook