I love wikis. It seems however, that I'm in the minority, at least with the people I know. I often feel like a failed wiki evangelist. I go around, telling others of the power of the wiki, share the excitement of how it can be used, and leave them telling me it sounds interesting or like a good idea. Follow up, however, is the killer. The wiki is dead, dead before it began, or what is a wiki again are the responses.

My own experiences with wikis are actually more well wishing then sucess stories. I've just started using a personal tiddlywiki, but it is too ealier to discuss the success or failure of this endeavour. My team at work uses a wiki for documentation. Initially, the move was a good thing. Our small team put notes, ideas, and documentation in and it actually began to be used by our business partners on our projects. Everything was great except that most people by nature hate to document and over time activity slowed and adoption by our business partners stopped. We have re-started our push again, but it is just not taking off beyond the developers.

This is what I was thinking about this afternoon when the words of my co-worker (and head of Network Operations) came to mind. He was he thinks his guys would use the wiki if it was a Microsoft product. I know that Windows guys (MCSEs and the like) love the Microsoft software, but I pushed back on my friend to understand what he meant. It seems he thinks it is not intuitive enough, not easy enough, and just not like their familiar Microsoft software.

I realize this is all true to a point and I've always known this. Ignoring the Microsoftness issue, being intuitive and easy to use are requirements for popular appications. (ok, ok, should be requirements...) Maybe, the lack of simplicity is just more exceptable to developers, because we better understand the restraints of software. To be honest, usage does seem simple enough for me, but I understand exactly what the software is doing. Non-techies I've talked with do not find it simple yet.

Issue #1: Existing work habits - "You mean I make changes to the web page? Isn't that a bad idea? I wouldn't want anyone to change document X."

The whole printed words are golden thing seems to apply. We are used to printed versions of things and static web pages fit this mold very well.

Also, people are so used to having everything in their inbox. Can a get a copy of every change via email is a common question I hear. Or maybe they just want the "final" version of the page. :) The average person is used to sending Word docs back and forth and finding it in their email. While it seems like more effort to me, it is what people are used to.

Sure, maybe we don't want to store everything in a wiki, but is it a bad thing if someone fills details in a training manual or adds information about an issue in the project notes?

Issue #2: Software issues - "How do you make this look nice?" or "Why are all these other charcters around the text.?"

Wiki text formatting, in the software I've used, is less than ideal. Text markup is something the average person just doesn't embrace. I'm sure there is software that handles this better than what I've seen, but I haven't ran across it yet. Links to other pages are not as simple as they ought to be. Inserting documents and other attchments should be a breeze, not a chore.

Formatting, printing, document rollback, and security should all just work and it just doesn't for me, yet.

I'm very hopeful that wikis will take the next step for me in the next year or so. I'll continue to use and promote them, but I'm looking for brighter days.