Army Asks Its Personnel to Wikify Field Manuals

Hugh Pickens writes "The NY Times reports that the Army began encouraging its personnel — from the privates to the generals — to go online and collaboratively rewrite seven of the field manuals that give instructions on all aspects of Army life, using the same software behind Wikipedia. The goal, say the officers behind the effort, is to tap more experience and advice from battle-tested soldiers rather than relying on the specialists within the Army's array of colleges and research centers, who have traditionally written the manuals. 'For a couple hundred years, the Army has been writing doctrine in a particular way, and for a couple months, we have been doing it online in this wiki,' said Col. Charles J. Burnett, the director of the Army's Battle Command Knowledge System. 'The only ones who could write doctrine were the select few. Now, imagine the challenge in accepting that anybody can go on the wiki and make a change — that is a big challenge, culturally.' Under the three-month pilot program, the current version of each guide can be edited by anyone around the world who has been issued an ID card that allows access to the Army Internet system. Reaction so far from the rank and file has been tepid, but the brass is optimistic; even in an open-source world, soldiers still know how to take an order."

Comments

Hoo hah this is fun!

[A nonymous Coward]

I would have prefered not to write this anonymously, but because what I have to say is not very "pro soldiers"[There's a new phrase!]. Its not anti-soldier either, its[apostrophe missing] an observation from having been in the armed forces myself.

I have worked on a deployment as an intelligence analyst in the Balkans. My job was to read "patrol reports"[unnecessary quotes] squad leaders / platoon leaders would write up after their patrols. I can say this with experience that most of the grunts I have worked with have a reading / writing level of less an 8th grade student. Their ability to translate experience into the written word is often very poor, and hard to translate. A lot of the work was shoddy at best, and required additional "questioning"[unnecessary quotes] of the patrol leader and its members in order to find out any information of value. Probably 20% of the time, the additional questioning[dropped the unnecessary quotes, I see] yielded actual useful information.

This lack of literacy does not entail[This verb fits not the situation] that these individuals are stupid or incapable. That is a very dangerous assumption to make, and is often not true at all. Its[apostrophe] very simple, most of the infantrymen learn by doing, and not by reading. They are experts at executing breaches and urban combat operations once instructed, and can adapt very well. But I wouldnt[apostrophe] trust them to write a document I'm going to hand to fresh recruits. Thats[apostrophe] work best left for the officers.

For some of the listed field manuals (in particular Army Unmanned Aircraft Systems Operations) this will probably work, for others, it will probably end up being white washed[it's a single word, not two] by field experienced officers. I expect most soldiers will also expect[I expect you are overusing this word] the white wash[it's still a single word] to occur, but I think this is a very good compromise[this seems to end the sentence] and positive adaptation[without an "a" before the noun, it seems to start a new sentence or clause requiring its own verb] of technology to shape doctrine and benefit[then this shows up like a noun without a verb or a verb without a subject] from collective experiences.

My question for the slashdot crowd is this: Is there better technology than a wiki to organize collective experience?

You might start with some individual expertise of that which you denigrate.