Wiki Patterns

Spending time and resources to produce training materials for an unresponsive prospective user community will actually impede the adoption and long-term success of your knowledge base.

Wiki contributions are down or stagnant. You recognize an abundance of Do It All , Leech , Wikiphobia , and possibly ContributorForHire people anti-patterns. People complain that it's too difficult to get their ideas into the shared knowledge base. You (or your established IT infrastructure) responds by addressing their apparent demands for more training , simpler examples, and more technical documentation.

• wiki Champion resources are spent making training pages, duplicating or simplifying application documentation, and making walkthrough videos or presentations (especially in 3rd party tools rather than the wiki itself)
• users attend training sessions, but this does not translate to contributions
• users don't even attend training sessions but complain that the application is 'non-intuitive' or 'complicated'
• despite training, users panic when asked to add an attachment or comment to an ongoing discussion, and revert to email / fax / smoke-signals

• it's too early in the adoption process for widespread training
• training addresses technical questions of interface and application (the How), but does not demonstrate philosophical differences or encourage cultural change (the Why)
• armed with temporary and unmotivated technical knowledge, users will fail to practise
• eventually, users will lose interest and conclude the system is not useful for them or does not 'work' in their local 'culture'
• some IT solutions are about technical training rather than 'teaching'. 'learning' happens when the student has the triad of motivation , information , practice . You are lacking motivation and perhaps practice . These can't be mandated easily, but rather encouraged.

• Use peer tutoring, encourage (wiki Champion s)
• Use wiki Magnet , wiki Scaffold or other [adoption patterns] to demonstrate utility and encourage use.
• Be patient.
• Encourage resource spending on training in response to user demand only, not as a means to promote usage.
• Consider targetting 'philosophy' campaigns directed at problematic trend-setters rather than technical training

• This pattern could be part of a new [PuttingTheCartBeforeTheHorse] super-anti-pattern (which combines a number of similar timing-related patters)

• Could also be a [HowBeforeWhy] super-anti-pattern, or a [WhatThenWhyThenHow] super-pro-pattern, which promotes a progression from Scaffold / Magnet patterns encouraging participation, → continued participation demonstrates philosophy/cultural change → training and documentation support and enable the first two).