Chapter 7. Landscaping

No matter how well you think you have modeled the initial design of your wiki, the simple truth is that you will need to redesign it, perhaps several times, before you settle on a configuration that meets most of your needs. In fact, you may never actually reach an optimum wiki configuration; like any well tended garden, your wiki may never be complete. There will always be something you want to do, and you just have to balance the level of effort with the perceived benefit of the work.

In Chapter 6, Maintaining the Garden, we discussed the need for a wiki-gardener; someone who will maintain the wiki and keep it tidy. By definition, tasks such as upgrades, merging duplicate pages, and tracking orphaned pages are more akin to the regular weeding we all do (or to be strictly accurate, that my wife does) in our gardens. However, just like a regular garden, there will be times when to keep a wiki growing and appealing you need to undertake a landscaping project.

Not only will user behavior determine new navigation paths, it will also determine structure. As the wiki continues to develop it will change to reflect the wishes and the behavior patterns of the community. Where people place content may not align with the original ideas and plans of the implementers. The structure of a wiki will never remain fixed. As different contributors and users join the community, a structure that reflects their interests and ways of working will emerge and continue to evolve. There is really no point at which you can declare that an active wiki is “finished” or “frozen.”

Even the most open and flat wikis have some basic structure when they are first implemented. Even when you strive for an environment driven through folksonomy, there will inevitably be a degree of applied taxonomy at various stages during a wiki’s growth and development.

When a wiki has been established for a while, the users will begin to develop their own structure and navigation paths, and distinct patterns of behavior will emerge. It would be very rare indeed if these behavior patterns matched the original design.

It is like laying an aesthetically pleasing garden path and then watching all the kids take a short cut across your manicured lawn, you know that at some point the best thing to do will be to give up and move the path to match the route that people naturally use to get from one side of the lawn to the other. It is the same with a wiki – there will be a time when you have to face a landscaping project.

A wiki landscaping project may include things like:

  • redefining the structure
  • moving pages around
  • creating tagging categories
  • building a navigation pane
  • rearranging pages and links

7.1. When to Start Landscaping

Undertaking any type of redesign work on a wiki is not a project to be undertaken lightly, and deciding when it is due is an imprecise art. Recognizing when to redesign is, like so many aspects of wiki management, as much a function of social observation as it is of technology and metrics. The only true indication that a redesign is necessary is increasing frustration of the wiki users. But if you leave the decision until that stage is reached, it may be too late.

Some of the signs to look for include the following:

While these are good indicators of increased user frustration, you should never wait for things to reach this level before taking action. From the first day of implementation watch what your users are doing, see how they interact with the wiki, and look at how they search for and find information. Monitor the ways that they contribute. Watch how they navigate.

You don’t need expensive formal usability tests, although in larger implementation projects this may be useful, but you can watch informally, listen to comments about people’s experience, and ask for feedback. By establishing your own constant feedback channel you can spot trends and potential roadblocks before they appear.

Web analytics tools can also be used to spot trends in usage. These tools can show you which pages are the most popular, and just as importantly which pages never get looked at. Web analytics can also help track traffic patterns through the wiki.

Planning and making the necessary changes to the wiki before minor inconveniences grow to high levels of frustration will help ensure continued growth and use of the wiki. If you wait for the frustration level to grow to critical levels, you can enter a cycle of rebuilding that will only deliver diminishing returns and an increasing workload.