Roadblocks
Roadblock FAQs
I've set up the wiki. Now what? How do I get people to use it?
That's what this site is for: to give you ideas (patterns) for how to spread adoption. Go to the home page , read a few different patterns, and try one with your team.
People don't want to use it because they're concerned about the accuracy of the information.
All wikis have built-in mechanisms for tracking changes and authors, as well as notifications that allow authors and administrators to be notified about changes. If there's a change that people don't like, they can edit it out or revert it back to the original version. In a benchmark study, Nature found that Wikipedia and Encyclopedia Brittanica both had errors. Some big differences though: there is much more content in Wikipedia and the content can be corrected anytime.
How do I get people to contribute more?
There are many good patterns to look at for help including the Invitation pattern , BarnRaising , and IntentionalError . Or find another one that might give you some ideas (or create one of your own and tell the Wikipatterns community by adding it to this site).
How do I get people to follow the team's conventions or structure?
Here are a few ideas:
- Try the Scaffold pattern . Similar to this is the Trellis pattern .
- Find some more WikiGnomes to help you make corrections and be sure to point out to people the corrections you've made.
How do I address people's questions about content ownership and territorial behavior?
It should be stressed that the power of wikis lays in community ownership. Everyone can participate, everyone has a voice. A wiki is more comprehensive because many authors can contribute to a page.
For those people who want more, most wikis have built-in mechanisms for identifying authorship. The original author can be identified along with all the other contributors and their respective changes. If your wiki supports permissions, you can restrict permission to edit a page.
For more ideas, read the Permission Granted , Community Write Position , or Selective Rollback pattern.