Weblogs as Base for Knowledge Management Systems?

cpfeifer asks: "I'm joining a small startup that needs a knowledge management solution. I know that 'knowledge management' is seen an empty buzzword, but after working at a company where the communication is very poor, I see the value of allowing folks to post their own news instead of having it filtered through some sort of corporate newsletter. I've seen the commercial portals (Plumtree & others), but after seeing a couple of OSS publication systems (phpNuke, Slash), I think these would fit the bill quite nicely." Aside from some of the basic features found in weblogs (posting, archival, sorting and searching), what else is necessary for the proper maintenance and use of such a system? How hard would it be to adapt existing weblog-ware to this task?

Comments

Reduce turnover

[ObviousGuy]

The most important and accessible location of information is in your experienced employees' heads. It's great to have things written down and all and it should certainly be encouraged, but even with such knowledge, it is much easier to interpret the writings if the person is still on staff.

So bottom line: Pay the engineers a lot. Don't let them leave the company.

Wiki

[King of the World]

Weblog software is based around entries for a time period (posts from last week, etc.). Most Knowledge Bases aren't time-based, they're topic based, so there's no immediate fit. Also, weblog software isn't really about editing someone else's posts to improve the information like most KB's are.

Go for a Wiki. I can recommend MoinMoin

(sorry if there are any spelling mistakes, My goddamn fonts are broken and I can only read this back in this bizarre roman/metropolis thingy)

Re:Wiki

[cpfeifer]

I initially thought of a wiki, but there's navigational issues. Folks get lost navigating though a big hypertext without some sort of visual user cues about where they are, where they've been. Can you put attachments in wikis e.g. binary documents?

Choices

[McCarrum]

I havent seen any blogs really do that good a job at some like Content Management, but writing a plugin for such wouldn't be so hard.

A blog can be a good choice to start with though, as they'll handle the whole user authentification, security (if your blog of choice DOES security), templates, etc etc etc.

As a developer of Geeklog, we do have a security system, based on the typical *nix model of users and groups, along with the ability to use these through a quasi-friendly plugin api ... i say quasi friendly as I've yet to meet an api which IS friendly.

If it's a fairly open staffing/documentation setup over there, I'd recommend a wiki. PHPWiki is pretty good from experience, and now does handle user logins.

PostNuke

[Thalinor]

try PostNuke.

it does all phpnuke does plus

• is more secure (see bugtraq)
  
• allows posting from the desktop (Blogger API)
  
• has a wiki module
  
• has a clean architecture
  
• has a roadmap
  
• has dozens of able developers (phpnuke is a one man show)
  
• has live support over IRC
  

there is more, but i think you get the idea.

Re:PostNuke

[MadAhab]

Security alone is a good reason. Having a clean architecture probably helps that. PHP makes things "easy": query string variables can be used naively as they are "magically" initialized variables. That's good for novice programmers and bad for security because if you forget to initialize a variable, someone else can do it for you. PHPNuke has had, IIRC, a number of problems like that, including query string injection attacks.

Re:PostNuke

[JabberWokky]

PHP makes things "easy": query string variables can be used naively as they are "magically" initialized variables.

FWIW, the first thing I do is turn off that behaviour - PHP can quickly be tightened down at the master configuration level, and loosened for 3rd party scripts that were written with the less secure model in mind.

For any script longer than a few dozen lines, you should lock down PHP, an easy task, but one that really needs to be done *before* you start coding.

--
Evan

The trick is getting them to use it

[Kris_J]

I designed an event-logging database a few years back, ideal for core staff to keep track of phone calls, marketing or whatever in relation to each item in their portfolios. At the suggestion of one staff member I added a feature or two and created a "knowledge-base" journal-like thing where staff could post their current problems and/or solutions. The idea was to save time by each staff member not having to duplicate prior work. Thing was, the staff were only interesting in getting stuff out of it and not putting things into it. In no time at all it collapsed.

Ultimately the major barrier was typing speed. When it takes 10 times longer to type something in than to mention it at the next department lunch, they tend not to bother. I left that place before I ever implemented a solution. We tried providing a touch-typing tutorial CD, but few staff could be bothered running it.

The second most major barrier is that people value their knowledge and wish to keep it to themselves. These sorts of automated, souless information repositories don't help -- specifically, thinking that some big tech-oriented buzzword will allow turnover to stay at 50%pa without the company eventually being full only of people that don't know what they're doing does tend to re-enforce the belief that staff are not considered valuable as individuals.

If you find a solution, let me know.

You want Everything

[Wonko42]

You don't want a weblog, you want Everything. I think it would suit your purposes perfectly.

Re:You want Everything

[Hard_Code]

Hmm, I didn't know the Everything2 "engine" was open source. I've been hunting for a while now for something weblog-ish that I can use partly as a chronological diary, but also partly, as the poster says, as a "knowledge base". I come accross so much stuff on the net, it is way too inefficient to simply store links (which after all might go dead, and are non-searcheable). What would be ideal is a weblog in which there was a special "type" of post, which basically mirrored a page/site I visited that day...so if I *knew* I read something about a topic, I could search my weblog for some keywords, and find, sure enough, I ran into it a few months ago, and there is the copy of the page for me to read.

General KM functionality

[Twylite]

I've put a lot of time into investigating KM and how people can derive benefit from it. Here are some things you should look out for:

• Accept that people are knowledge, stuff on disks and screens is data (unfiltered) or information (filtered).
• The most important criteria for benefitting from KM is getting people to use it - both to retrieve AND to store information that they know. If you don't get buy-in, forget it.
• The value of KM is best realised when people know what sort of information they can find in the knowledgebase, and how to find it. This means structure and education/buy-in.
• Hierarchical contents (book-style ToC) and cross-references (Wiki style) are orthogonal, and BOTH are required for successful KM. Information should also be able to appear in multiple places in the ToC.
• Make templates, and use them. Template structure individual pieces of information and make it easier to determine if they are relevant, as well as to absorb them. The template can be a simple text document with headings and "(add your info here)" statements.
• Related to the last point, try to have a title, summary, and list of references / similar information for every piece of information. An author, date/time and keyword list are also good ideas.
• You MUST have the ability to do a free-text search, giving preference to matches in keywords, titles and summaries.

Take a look at KeyNote, its a free note manager, and unfortunately not networked, but has many of the requirements for a really good knowledge manager.

Re:around here

[cpfeifer]

I agree. Email works too, but email isn't centrally archived and isn't searchable by everyone (except for the email admin, ideally).

The whole point of a KM solution is to act as a central repository for "stuff" (project status, project documents, FAQs, internal processes...) so that nothing gets lost, nothing goes floating off into space. I know it's not a silver bullet, but every little bit helps.

Wiki Absolutely!

[Big Sean O]

A Wiki would be preferable to a weblog for a couple of reasons:

1. Knowledge changes over time.
   
2. Connections between topics are central to understanding.
   
3. Each person has something to contribute. It's important to keep the participation threshold low.
   

A Wiki has these benefits over a Weblog.

Most wikis support a RecentChanges page. This allows you to see what topics have been modified recently. Therefore you can track those projects/clients/topics that interest you.

The participation threshold is very low. You don't have to learn any formatting codes. Links to other topics are created by smashing words together LikeSo or putting them in brackets [LikeThis]. (No bothersome href's to type).

I'd recommend UseMod Wiki because it's simple to setup (it's perl-based and doesn't rely on a fancy DBMS on the backend) and it is fairly free of 'creeping featuritis' which plague some of the other Wiki products.

Re:Wiki Absolutely!

[metacosm]

I agree entirely with the above post, and, our IT department uses a wiki every single day, it has brought our group together and has become the knowledge center.

Features you really want in a Wiki/Weblog

• Revision History
  
• Login
  
• Upload
  
• Data/Article Connections
  
• Everyone can participate
  

Recommendations for getting it in use

• Seed the database with the data you control
  
• Create some good "general" pages like PhoneBook, SoftWare, Documents, ToDo, ScratchBoard, SandBox
  
• Put software and shared apps in it
  
• Put backgrounds or other goofy stuff related to your company up
  
• Let it be known it is an open-forum and EVERYONE is welcome to edit EVERYTHING.
  

My company personally uses OpenWiki backed by Microsoft SQL 2000 (you can leave it with the default of a Jet 4.0 database).

What I did to jumpstart usage is started a few good wiki pages, such as PhoneBook and SoftWare. Places where we could keep track of phone numbers, and upload all the software we deploy around.

That was about 2 months ago, and it started with around 10 pages, it is now well above 500 pages, and growing everyday. And many of the pages are long (50+ pages printed out) full of great documentation.

The real problem is forcing people to use it.

[cyberkreiger]

I installed Bugzilla at work, because i was tired of people putting post-its on my screen and mentioning bugs at coffee-break.

To get people to use it, i had to turn into a bitchy hard-ass.
Whenever someone had a bug they wanted fixed i went "Have you entered it in the Bugzilla? No? Then i don't know anything about it."
In short, i refused to fix any bug unless it was entered into the bugzilla.

Now, i was in a position where i was able to do this without the risk of getting fired. (Although i felt a little uncertain about this at times... especially when my boss claimed it was too much work for him to be bothered to use the bugzilla, when he could just talk directly to me. )

Of course, once people got used to Bugzilla, they started liking it.
After all, in the end it's about making it easier for everyone to obtain information and do useful work.
You just have to get over the acceptance threshold.
Unfortunately, a bit of forcing is required to change the ways people work, and not everyone is in the position to do this.

Re:around here

[tzanger]

I agree. Email works too, but email isn't centrally archived and isn't searchable by everyone (except for the email admin, ideally).

So set up a mailing list instead. It's still email, and it's archived, threaded and searchable.

PostNuke

[reddog1]

In your search for content management systems check out www.postnuke.com. It is a fork of the PHP-Nuke project. It is run much better. It is more secure, as seen in buqtrac, and they have rewritten the entire core. It is truly much nicer then phpnuke. Not to mention the fact that phpnuke is a one man show and postnuke has dozens of developers. With a little enginuity you should be able to get your weblog written as a module but it will require some coding :-) Good Luck!

TWiki

[DamienMcKenna]

Try TWiki, a perl-based system that adds version control, user accounts and a range of other useful features. The UI is a bit icky, but you can edit the templates to fix that.

Re:around here

[JabberWokky]

So set up a mailing list instead. It's still email, and it's archived, threaded and searchable.

Or a shared IMAP directory... something I need to do this week for managing tasks. :)

--
Evan

Re:tsop tsrif

[unitron]

When you tried to spell "our" backwards, it came out "rou" (which is "uor" frontwards), instead of "ruo". Does this mean that you are dyslexic? Does this mean that you are cixelsyd?