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."

Comments

Turn it off.

[zonky]

See how many phone calls/emails you get complaining.

Re:Here's some advice

[thegrassyknowl]

I suggest a new strategy, let the Wiki win!

I've done this one a hundred times

[CorporateSuit]

Many Moons (I apologize for the hosting company in advance, the site is not mine) is a childrens' story everyone in IT, Sales, and Marketing should familiarize themselves with.

The truth of the matter is: You're asking the wrong people. You should be asking the suits what they would imagine in a report and what kinds of numbers they're looking for. If they're general and obtuse, tell them straight up they'll get a general report, or just make up numbers to keep them happy. Create a widget they can access from their desk that shows them numbers generated from the database that hardly matter. Does it matter what you deliver if they don't know what they want?

They're trying to imagine some great power-point presentation you'll be showing with pie charts and red/green/yellow/blue graphs popping out and wowing them? Make it so. They're trying to imagine a spreadsheet? Easier and more concise. They just want a status report at the end of the day on what percentage of the documentation has been migrated? You can probably get away with a few page count written on a napkin.

Remember the Alice's conversation with the Cheshire cat:
"Would you tell me, please, which way I ought to go from here?"
"That depends a good deal on where you want to get to," said the Cat.
"I don't much care where -" said Alice.
"Then it doesn't matter which way you go," said the Cat.