The idea of finding information by searching makes them feel uncomfortable, as they’re accustomed to tree-like content organization ( think shared drives) .

In some contexts you have to build strong strucure to gain wiki adoption, alongside with a tree-like navigation on the wiki.

But a too strong initial structure can inhibit contributions too.

You probably have to find a balance, and know your audience to find out which way is better.

Michel
- sorry for my approximative english

( I’m the one who started this thread of blog posts, here : http://michel.benard.info/webtic/Technologie/wikipatterns )

I’m curious about your approach of refactoring pages. As your wiki starts making some noise in the enterprise, it’s inevitable that people will start linking to it from their own blogs, social bookmarks or even in emails. If you keep refactoring the pages, how do you manage broken links? For large reference wikis similar to Wikipedia, a fairly flat and static structure, while boring, seems to make sense.

I think wikis _do_ need structure to be successful. What makes them better than other tools is that they let you build the structure that meets your unique needs, rather than forcing you to shoehorn your work into a rigid structure.

Your three points above are excellent!

Cheers,
Stewart