tekom-Jahrestagung 2012 - ActiveDoc

User Assistance
UA 5
Presentation
Chaotic Wiki versus Structured Authoring
Ulrike Parson, parson communication, Hamburg
Problems in Company Wikis
Many company wikis are set up with noble intentions, but many of them
get chaotic over time. There are several reasons for this:
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The content is unstructured.
The core function of a wiki is collaborative authoring. In the best
case, many people contribute to the company wiki. But these people
have different backgrounds and different fields of expertise. That is
why they write in different ways. In the end, every author structures
and formats the information as s/he thinks best instead of keeping
to a common layout. Task-oriented information is not separated from
reference or conceptual information making it hard for the reader to
understand the purpose of an article at first glance.
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Navigation and access to content is insufficient.
All wiki software products provide features such as categories, tags,
and linking. But defining tags and setting links is solely up to the authors.
What happens? When wikis grow larger over time, it is getting
increasingly difficult to find the right article. Duplicate articles are
created because authors cannot find existing articles.
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The workflow functions are insufficient.
Writing in a team requires defined workflows. In an unregulated wiki,
every article is visible at once. Workflows are often a matter of negotiation
rather than being enforced by controlled software processes.
This results in wiki pages of highly deviating quality, making it hard
for the users to rely on the content.
Why Should We Use a Wiki and Not DITA?
Technical writing in XML-based information structures, such as DITA,
has solved many of these issues. Structured authoring solutions provide
topic types (e.g. task, concept, reference), mechanisms for organizing
information products in maps, relations between topics, as well as metadata
for workflow status, target audience, product variant, etc. Content
management systems or transformations (as available in the DITA Open
ToolKit) generate well-navigable and searchable output formats. Many
of these functions are not available in standard wiki software.
Function comparison between CMS and wiki
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tekom-Jahrestagung 2012