Community Win–Wiki Accelerates Quality Content Distribution
The wiki was just beginning when I joined Microsoft back in December of 2009. When I first heard about the wiki, when of my first thoughts was “in all the years that I ran www.isaserver.org no one ever mentioned that we should have a wiki. Indeed, I never thought about a wiki for site – and the site was very successful. So, when I was confronted with the idea of a wiki on the Microsoft TechNet site, I was a big naysayer and came up with a number of arguments for why the TechNet wiki would not be a success.
Well, I am here to say that most of the arguments and positions I took at the time are wrong – or at least not as right as I thought they were. Some of my concerns at the time included:
- Quality writers won’t contribute to the wiki because they cannot lock the content. Boy, was I wrong about that! My idea at the time was that only professional writers could provide high quality, useful content on the wiki. I’ve learned since then that you don’t need to be a professional writer to contribute useful content on the wiki, and that by not locking content, the wiki articles are getting better and better because readers can then edit the articles to increase the quality.
- Writers won’t contribute to the wiki because they will lose their brand equity. My concern here was that people would prefer to write on their own blogs so that their names would be well-known and they could build their brand as experts in a particular product or technology through their unique blogs or web sites. That turned out to not be a problem! For example, my reputation had been associated with ISA Server, Threat Management Gateway (TMG), Unified Access Gateway (UAG) and DirectAccess. I was then moved to a new team and my new focus was private cloud and private cloud architecture. Huh? What’s up with that? Then I learned about private cloud and architecture and together with other members of my team, started publishing articles on private cloud architecture in the TechNet wiki. The result? I’ve been invited to speak all over the would about private cloud and private cloud architecture! How’s that for the power of the wiki?
- Malicious writers will update the material and ruin the value of the content. Suppose you wrote a great article, spent hours and days working on it and making it perfect. Then somebody comes around and breaks it! Fills it up with the wrong information and ends up turning it into something you’d be embarrassed of. Can that happen? Sure. Does it happen? We haven’t seen much in terms of malicious edits. But suppose that did happen – all you need to do is revert to your “golden image” of the article using three clicks. It doesn’t get much easier than that!
So what are some examples of the high quality content you can find on the wiki and no where else?
Reference Architecture for Private Cloud
Forefront Threat Management Gateway (TMG) 2010 Troubleshooting Survival Guide
Recommendations for Installing, Sizing, Deploying, and Maintaining a BizTalk Server Solution
and many more!
If I read the tea leaves correctly and stare at the crystal ball long enough – I begin to see visions of the future in the TechNet wiki. Instead of the walled-off approach we take here at Microsoft to creating content and placing it into the TechNet Library, in the future we will begin creating our content on the TechNet wiki in partnership with the Microsoft writers, with the Product Groups and with the Microsoft customer community as a whole. From the very beginning, Microsoft’s customers and partners will be able to evaluate the information we plan to roll out and help us decide if its what they need. This will enable Microsoft to give you what you need from the very start – and not waste cycles on creating content that doesn’t help you meet your personal, professional and business objectives.
I also see a future where the community will work together with Microsoft to maintain and update the content. There are plenty of you who are very passionate about one or more Microsoft products and technologies. Wouldn’t be great if you and fellow devotees of that product or technology cloud work together to update the content as more information comes in? The community as a whole benefits from your on-the-job insights and free up time for Microsoft writers to work with the product groups to get even more information out there for you – information that Microsoft might not have been able to share with you in the past because there just wasn’t enough time.
Bottom line: I was wrong about the wiki and the fact is that the TechNet wiki is a BIG community win! I’m looking forward to working with many of you in the future and I know that many of my colleagues feel the same way. It’s a new world of openness and collaboration over here at Microsoft and the wiki is just one of the many initiatives where that openness shines though.
Thanks!
Tom
Tom Shinder
tomsh@microsoft.com
Principal Knowledge Engineer, SCD iX Solutions Group
Follow me on Twitter: https://twitter.com/tshinder
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/tshinder
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Comments
Anonymous
March 01, 2012
Thanks for sharing what you learned Tom. Heart of a teacher!Anonymous
March 01, 2012
I really like your "Writers won’t contribute to the wiki because they will lose their brand equity" section. It's so true. And establishing a following on your own blog is hard. Like really hard! So joining into an existing community can get you recognition a lot faster. It's pretty astonishing. Thanks Tom!Anonymous
March 02, 2012
The problem I have is that a Wiki page feels like a 1 person effort. For instance, I'm trying to get people involved in the wiki pages social.technet.microsoft.com/.../7884.sharepoint-2010-building-a-web-part-that-implements-the-mvp-pattern.aspx and social.technet.microsoft.com/.../7884.sharepoint-2010-building-a-web-part-that-implements-the-mvp-pattern.aspx. Do you have any tips about that, or do I just have a nose for choosing uninteresting topics :-(.Anonymous
March 02, 2012
Thanks for sharing your thoughts Tom!.I really like it,Anonymous
March 02, 2012
Thanks! Margriet - Sometimes its difficult to get people invovled. Reach out to people in your peer group and see if they're aware of the content. Once they know it's there, ask them to give it a read. Then encourage them to contribute - emphasize how easy it is!Anonymous
March 02, 2012
The "Tom Shinder eats crow again" tag only has one entry! I'd figure it would have at least 50. =^) Thanks Tom. Quite inspiring.Anonymous
March 02, 2012
@Ed - LOL! I need to add it to this article blogs.technet.com/.../clearing-the-air-on-isatap.aspx :) TomAnonymous
March 03, 2012
Margriet, to continue more thoughts on what Tom wrote to you...So to be honest, implementing the MVP pattern in SharePoint does sound like a niche topic. Don't get me wrong. It's very cool, but I don't think most SharePoint users would be interested. If your goal is to get a lot of participation and views on a Wiki article, then you probably want to go for a topic more people are passionate about (analytics on SharePoint, implementing popular SharePoint scenarios/configurations, etc.). But if your goal is to just write what you're passionate about, then I'd say keep going, and take Tom's advice... find people that share the same passion (even if it's a niche topic) and get them involved.Thanks!Anonymous
March 05, 2012
The comment has been removedAnonymous
March 05, 2012
Hi Lex, Thanks! Check out the survival guides and the Private Cloud Dojo - they are like portals to other information. TomAnonymous
March 23, 2012
Thomas, you are one of the people that know the key to knowledge is sharing. You are doing a wonderful job, keep it up! :-)Anonymous
July 13, 2014
So why should you create a TechNet Wiki article when you can just link to an existing forum thread?Anonymous
July 17, 2014
Congratulations