d.SharePoint - KnowledgePedia

I recently wrote about how Wikipedia is changing how I search for information. If I'm seeking something topic-related, chances are I'll start with Wikipedia to get an initial overview plus a rich source of community-filtered links that will provide more information.

There's been all sorts of criticism levelled at Wikipedia, and comparisons made with the well-known encyclopedia Britannica. But to try and compare like-for-like is a ridiculous notion. Wikipedia may share a similar goal but is fundamentally different to Brittanica. If I've missed an episode of a TV show, I don't go to Britannica to find out what happened... Similarly, I don't expect Wikipedia to be the authoritative voice on any given subject. But, for me, the biggest plus points for Wikipedia are: its breadth of topics covered, the depth of skills and knowledge freely donated by contributors, and the freshness of the content.

These three plus points are what most business knowledge management systems are in desperate need of.

Whenever I visit a customer who has deployed Microsoft's SharePoint Server (any version, from 2001 through 2007), the first thing I do is click through the hierarchy of topics the implementer will almost certainly have created as part of the deployment. And, almost always, at least 80% of the topics are empty. Why? Usually the reasons are simple. Nobody told anybody what the topic hierarchy is there for; There is no incentive to add content (failure to satisfy 'what's in it for me?'); The topic hierarchy doesn't represent how people actually work or organise their content. A bit more delving into the deployment, and usually the content can all be found within SharePoint, stored and duplicated across a tangled-but-useful-mess of team and individual sites

SharePoint Server 2007 introduces wiki capabilities. That means, potentially, organisations can have their own little world of Wikipedia for sharing knowledge and expertise - let's call it the KnowledgePedia.

When you create a new site in SharePoint, there is a wiki template available out-of-the-box:

Hey presto, you now have a wiki! In the image below, I've entered the first topic in my wiki - Project Trinity.

The wiki page follows standard wiki conventions. You have an Edit button up in the top left to put the page in Edit mode. Once in Edit mode, you can enter content using an in-browser editor. To link to other wiki pages, you surround them with double square brackets.

In this image, you can see that Project Trinity is surrounded by double square brackets. I have also entered a new page - New Starters Guide, also surrounded by double square brackets. The page has an in-browser editor, you can see the toolbar above 'Welcome to Wikipedia2' with icons for changing formatting, adding images and so on.

Clicking OK returns us to the view of the wiki page, with the new content displayed:

The New Starter Guide link is underlined because I have referenced a page that does not yet exist. Clicking on the link automatically opens up a new page ready to be created, with the name already filled in:

I can enter content immediately, and when I click 'Create', the new page is published. It's as simple as that to start building a topic structure and sharing content. The pages also store version history so you can track changes made to the pages and who made them.

The technical piece is relatively straightforward, and really does require only a small amount of training to get people comfortable with editing the web pages. The harder part is getting people to contribute. Now, the Internet has proven that people are more than willing and able to share stuff without requiring either financial rewards or a cattle prod. As ably demonstrated by the likes of YouTube, Flickr and the various blogging platforms. How easy it is to create such an environment internally will depend on the culture of your organisation. Are people encouraged to talk, chat, share stories? If so, then encourage them to capture those thoughts in the wiki. If people are treated more like robots who are supposed to ask permission before taking a 'comfort' break, rewarded for task productivity, and where smiling is frowned upon, then building a useful knowledge repository will be a little more challenging... see previous posts - Seven productivity tips and Why is KM so difficult? for some more thoughts on that subject. But the main piece of advice is simple - let people decide what topics and content need to be included. Resist the temptation to create a managed hierarchy with formal look-and-feel and corporate standards. Let it be messy and organic and you will get a far closer representation of human knowledge being shared across the organisation.

...and never forget, we will always be only able to document a fraction of what we know in our heads. It's still easier to show someone how to tie a shoelace than point them to a manual.

Related blog posts:

• d.SharePoint - Gimme a widget
• d.SharePoint - OurSpace
• Let's make SharePoint Dirty
• Changing how I search
• Seven productivity tips
• Why is KM so difficult?
• Reading versus doing

Technorati tags: SharePoint, SharePoint 2007, MOSS 2007

Update: Knowledge@Wharton has a blog post describing how Internet-based collaboration, like Wikipedia, can change how we do business