One of the biggest reasons for implementing a wiki is that it is a shared editing environment; with that comes an expectation that the community will participate by adding, commenting on, or editing content. But beware, when you implement a wiki you must have realistic expectations of the level of user activity and contribution.
At the start of this chapter I mentioned the typical IT department response that “no one used it.” But, what exactly do they mean by “no one,” and what level of activity were they expecting? In most cases little thought is given to the expected level of participation before a project starts. This can doom the project to failure.
The truth is that participation levels vary considerably, and you should set your expectations accordingly. The more bounded the community, the more likely you are to see higher participation levels. This is especially true for wikis inside a corporate firewall. One small specialist software company reports that they have had at least one contribution for their internal wiki – a company intranet replacement – from 90% of their employees, and active participation is at around 50%. A company that used a wiki for one specific business project saw participation from around 35% of the staff.
Outside the firewall, numbers are lower; a large international non-profit I talked to saw participation from around 12% of their global staff and considered that a great success. With open public wikis, such as Wikipedia, or product documentation wikis, the participation figures can be orders of magnitude lower. In her book Conversation & Community: The Social Web for Documentation[Gentle09], Anne Gentle describes the 90-9-1 rule, which postulates that for every 100 visitors to a public wiki, 90 will be just readers, nine will contribute something, and just one will be an active contributor.
Setting an expectation on the level of participation based on industry experience can help determine realistic goals for any wiki implementation acceptance criteria.