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How Can You Measure a Wiki's Worth?
moldar writes "I have been involved in a major project to migrate documentation from multiple sources to a wiki (Media Wiki, if you must know). Now, the PHBs are all asking questions about how organized the data is. I've already googled for various wiki metrics ideas, but mostly they focus on page counts, average page sizes, rates of edits, etc. Can anybody suggest better ways of measuring the quality of a wiki? Things like uncategorized pages, articles that are too small, etc? Any help or fresh ideas would be appreciated."
I was going to mod you insightful, but there's an easier and more positive way to apply those buzzwords...
A good PHB is mostly concerned about 3 things:
1. A decent ROI. ( From the business as a whole down to the paper-clip supplier and the birthday party commitee.)
2. Making the people above him/her look good.
3. Control. (So #1 and #2 above can be maintained over time and change. You have to stay organized when you delegate or it's impossible to manage anything)
If you concern yourself with the exact same things in the exact same order then it should be easy for you to figure out what to do and what buzzwords to say.
The doing might be hard, but the "what to do?" should become easily apparent.
In other words answer these questions as asked by your boss:
What's the ROI on your wiki project?
What's the weakest link to me (PHB) not worrying about this..meaning what person or machine or database do we need to protect and make redundant?
Who can I trust (to make me look good) when they say it's a success. I will keep asking dumb questions until I find a leader I can trust.
Who should I scold if the ROI on this project starts tanking?
In 2 or 3 short sentences, what does it do so I don't look stupid when people ask me. And when I ask "what does it do?" I do NOT mean how does it work. I mean what Return does it provide on what Investment?
Careful though, thinking like this will get you promoted FAST.
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