As technical communications industry blogger, Tom Johnson, points out (I’d Rather be Writing: Organizing Content, 6/3/2010), part of the problem of organizing content on wikis is a perceived lack of control. Johnson says, “as soon as a wiki becomes a collaborative effort, with multiple authors, the organization becomes much more challenging and is likely to suffer from inconsistency and chaos.” He cites the WordPress Codex, a wiki for users and developers of the WordPress blogging software, as an example where some information is grouped together under logical headings, while other information is not.
Johnson then goes on to discuss the use of categories and subcategories as a way of marking information within wikis. This can be a very useful technique, but, as Johnson cautions, you need to define what a category is and how it should be used, because mislabeling can lead to a taxonomy that is just as confusing as the wiki structure problems you were trying to solve.
To avoid such instances you may need to develop labeling guidelines. Sun Microsystems has published specific guidelines for labels and categories in Writing in the Open: Using Wikis to Create Documentation[Sun09].
To quote Ben Allums of Quadralay again (Scenes from the Engine Room: How to keep your Wiki Growing, 4/2/2009), there are three pillars that can be used to support any sustainable wiki: ownership, tagging, and permalinks. If you are missing any of these, consider adding them as part of your redesign.
While tagging and permalinks are to some extent technical solutions, the idea of ownership is more of a sociological one. By definition, with a corporate wiki, contributions will come from people in different departments or functional groups. It’s a matter of human nature that departments and teams will “protect their turf” to demonstrate how they are adding value to the organization. Therefore, departmental ownership encourages teams to create barriers to knowledge sharing and build hierarchical structures.
The key is to move ownership of wiki pages from a functional or departmental level to a personal level. If a subject matter expert contributes on a regular basis to certain pages, ask that person to take ownership of those pages. You may find that people have interests and skills outside their functional responsibilities and will be willing to take ownership of other areas of the wiki that interest them. For instance, if you use the WikiMatrix site, you will notice that the data page for each wiki type gives you the name of the person who “owns” that page, with a link to his or her profile page. Using this technique makes the wiki more personal.