Workshop+breakout+on+Barriers+to+Entry

Edmund Lee took skeleton notes of this workshop ‘in real time’ as it was running. These have been fleshed out later with reference to the audio recording. toc

Who took part?

 * Mike MacAuley (IDeA)
 * Terence Freedman (TNA)
 * Helen Hilton (Lewisham Council)
 * Edmund Lee (English Heritage)
 * Alex McLachlan (Indigoblue)
 * Colin Pearson
 * Graham Robertson (Bracken Associates)
 * Conrad Taylor
 * Fiona Boyd (Nottingham Trent University)
 * Matthew Brown (The National Archives)

Theme
The theme was '**barriers to entry**' – the things that can get in the way of making a success of an organisational wiki project. We met in the computer room, and some people used this as their chance to experiment further with this Wikispaces wiki. Thus we met some of the barriers to entry experientially, as people got stuck, tried to figure out how the wikis work, and asked for help. We even managed to get an edit clash that resulted in Ed’s notes being overwritten, though we managed to get them back. This did impede our workshop discussion, but also brought some of the issues to life.

Dealing with the technology
Conrad highlighted
 * people may not know what a wiki is
 * or how a particular wiki works (where things are, how to use the editing mark-up)

Helen Hilton (Lewisham Council) has been looking at various hosted wiki options – hosted, because of the unwillingness of IT staff to have alien software on a Council system. She finds the interfaces vary greatly – and if it has taken //her// some time to figure them out, how can she contemplate rolling them out to non-techie Council users? She has been experimenting with **Wikispaces** (this system), but wonders if there might be others that are easier to learn to use. Iain Brown mentioned **PBwiki**, another hosted solution, and the one he uses. The ‘PB’ stands for ‘peanut butter’, as its founder thought making a wiki should be as easy as making a peanut butter sandwich. Recently the name has changed to **[|PBworks]** as the company believes that having added document management and access controls, their offering is more than a wiki. Iain thinks you have to use the paid-for edition of PBwiki to get good functionality.

What is the primary source of confusion with wikis: the editing syntax, or the way in which the interface is organised? Helen thinks it’s the latter. For example she found **[|wikiDot]** confusing, particularly the way you make and edit the pages.

Conrad remarked that as a technology trainer, he knows that it is easy in training or explaining to forget that much of what one takes for granted could be completely mystifying to somebody else. He feels that the transition to using a wiki is easier for people who have a pre-existing understanding that documents can have a structure, that text can be turned into a heading by applying a Style – and a lot of people don’t have that understanding. He has been familiar with text mark-up languages for 20 years (SGML, HTML) so it is easy for him to understand how the editing works, at least. (//Note that for most people, a WYSIWYG editing interface, such as Wikispaces provides, is easier than one that requires the manual insertion of mark-up//.)

Fiona talked about producing training materials for wiki users: it can be useful to use 'Print Screen' to capture pages for use in showing people how it works. The screen-capture images can be dropped into most applications. One could also develop movies showing the operation of the wiki in action. //(A later thought from Conrad – training materials that aim to show ‘what is where’ to users will have to cope with the protean transformations that happen if you switch from one Theme to another. Best to do your documentation when your wiki page layout has stabilised; and if you change it, change the training materials too!)//

Is it a barrier to entry that people are unused to the idea of one person changing another person’s text? Fiona thought so, and related this to her experience of discussions on bulletin boards where a comment on a previous post might say, ‘That was a fantastic point, but…’ (when they really mean that they disagree). It’s as if you have to get beyond politeness if you are going to serious get stuck into replacing someone else’s words with your own.

Graham Robertson related how his professional work area has come up as a topic in Wikipedia. He felt tempted to contribute, but nervous about making an ass of himself in public. Such psychological barriers to making changes can be addressed by using a 'sandbox' – a safe area where you can get used to using the system without editing the 'real' content of the wiki. ‘You must learn to abandon shame’, says Terry Freedman; but that reluctance is a real enough feeling for many people.

There was a discussion started by a question from Colin Pearson about how one can find content on wikis, if you don’t know what the wiki is called. Conrad said that a search engine like Google can only index a site if its ‘crawlers’ can find it, which means that there have between the wiki and pages that Google already knows about. Colin pointed out that we don’t understand ‘what lurks beneath’ – how and if indexation works depends on whether the content (often stored in database tables) can actually be retrieved for indexation purposes.

Even technically savvy people can make mistakes in getting to grips with an unfamiliar system. Usability problems often occur because users are acting in accordance with their mental model of how the system works, which may not in fact accord with reality.

Organisational culture as a barrier
Helen raised the issue of organisational culture. People need to feel comfortable/supported in using wikis. People may fear criticism or even disciplinary action as a result of something they might write.

Graham Robertson drew attention to Liz Orna’s work on [|Practical Information Policies], and encouraged the group to consider creating an appropriate information policy for this WiKi. As an example, Graham described the information guidelines that were established for the Aslib IRM Network (now operating as [|NetIKX]), which came in to existence in 1992 and of which Liz was an early member. (For details, see our topic page on Information Policies.)

Helen Hilton said that thus far her work on guidelines has pointed to the existing code of conduct, for example what aspects of the Council’s work may or may not be commented on. Graham also thought it important to get through to people that – on a publicly-readable wiki like this KIDMM Wikispaces one – they are writing to the world, not just to a closed group, and should write with that awareness in mind. Of course, Conrad pointed out, it is perfectly possible to have a closed wiki. The American intelligence services have a shared wiki, but you’re not going to be able to read anything posted on that!

Wikipedia may be caricatured at times as a lawless space, but in fact it has over time developed quite elaborate guidelines and standards. You will therefore often see pages flagged with criticism for not using citations, reading like an advert, not being neutral. There are also sets of expectations about how each Wikipedia entry will be laid out: introductory paragraphy, table of contents, sections one after the other, ‘see also’, external site references and endnote citations.

Fiona thought it interesting that at an undergraduate level, they do not accept Wikipedia references from students. This reputational issue may blight acceptance of wikis in other contexts?

As we closed, Graham gave his opinion that when starting to explore how a wiki works, it does help to do so in a supportive group context, as we had just done. He had learned far more by working in this group than he could possibly have done on his own.