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Beating Social Media’s 90:9:1 Rule in the Enterprise

The 80/20 rule is out (so last century), 90:9:1 is in: the rule of participation in public communities, social networks, wikis:

  • 90% of users are lurkers (i.e., read or observe, but don’t contribute).
  • 9% of users contribute from time to time, but other priorities dominate their time.
  • 1% of users participate a lot and account for most contributions: it can seem as if they don’t have lives because they often post just minutes after whatever event they’re commenting on occurs.

90:9:1 is a pretty good fit for most public wikis, starting with Wikipedia. Ben Gardner observed very different numbers: 50:25:x (he does not specify “x”). The interesting number here is 25, or it’s relationship to 50, meaning:

When the same question was asked about our corporate wiki ~50% of those present had used it but about ~50% of those had edited it.

Active participation in a corporate environment is much higher than in the public domain – this is not really a surprise, since the corporate wiki is used by people of real identities and reputations, and most importantly, shared objectives. This is also why Prof. Andrew McAfee hasn’t seen vandalism – a plague of public wikis – in the corporate world at all.

I suspect that 25% can go a lot higher, depending on the purpose of the wiki. When after the initial “grassroots movement” management fully embraces the wiki not as an optional, after-the-fact knowledge-sharing tool, but the primary facility to conduct work, it becomes the fabric of everyday business, where people create, collaborate, and in the process capture information. When the wiki is the primary work / collaboration platform, participation is no longer optional. Not when the answer to almost any question is “it’s on the wiki.” smile_wink

My earlier posts on this subject:

(hat tip: Stewart Mader)

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Wikis are Not Knowledge Management Tools

No, this is not an anti-wiki pitch, that would be highly unlikely coming from me. But I am continually amazed how we tend to focus on features while missing the people factor. Knowledge Management is a prime example. KM projects typically do not fail due to software issues, but for human reasons: lack of input, or GIGO. Yet here’s an excerpt from a white paper by enterprise wiki vendor MindTouch::

Wikis provide a flexible alternative to the rigidity of conventional

knowledge management software.

Why wikis work for knowledge management

Based on the features described above, wikis are a powerful replacement for conventional

knowledge management software, because they make knowledge easier to

capture, find and consume:

a. Capturing information: The information is there. Somewhere. Maybe on

a PC, maybe in a file attached to an email, maybe in someone’s head

undocumented. With a wiki, all documents are stored in one central

repository, and files are uploaded rather than attached to emails. Therefore

information is more likely to be captured, stored and made available for reuse.

b. Finding information: When a user has to search a network file server,

he or she must know exactly where to look. A wiki lets a user search

contextually. In addition, because the structure is not required to be linear—

as with KM software—cross-linking of pages helps users not only find

information, but find relevant information.

c. Consuming information: In addition to finding information more easily with

a wiki, a user finds that information in context, meaning the information

is in a location that gives the user some background and perspective relative

to the data. That enables the user to more quickly comprehend the meaning,

significance and relevance of that piece of information. “

All of the above is true – yet it misses the Big Picture. The real story is not about a better tool, but being able to work differently. When wikis are truly embraced in the enterprise, they don’t just make KM easier; they put it out of it’s misery. Yes, that’s right, the wiki is the end of Knowledge Management as we know it: the after-the-fact collection, organization and redistribution of knowledge objects.

The wiki becomes the primary platform to conduct work, the fabric of everyday business, where people create, collaborate, and in the process capture information. While not a Knowledge Management tool, the wiki resolves the KM-problem as a by-product.

Update (6/15/08): Now we have pretty good terms to describe the above, instead of my clumsy explanation. See the discussion on In-the-Flow and Above-the-Flow wikis by Michael Idinopulos and Ross Mayfield.

Ross Mayfield talks about similar ideas in Manage Knowledgement (MK):

“Turns out, users resisted and the algorithms didn’t match reality. With MK, through blogs and wikis, the principle activity is sharing, driven by social incentives. Contribution is simple and unstructured, isn’t a side activity and there is permission to participate. Intelligence is provided by participants, both through the act of sharing and simply leaving behind breadcrumbs of attention.”

Update (5/1): What Happened to Knowledge Management? – by Stewart Mader

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Wired Wiki, Numbskulls and Collaboration in Business

The Wired Wiki experiment is over – the collective result of 25 ad-hoc “editors” is now published on Wired News: Veni, Vidi, Wiki

Was the experiment a success? I think the process itself was, but not necessarily the end result. After the LA Times Wikitorial fiasco the very fact that for a week civility reigned and no wiki-war broke out is a success, as both journalist Ryan Syngel and wiki-host Ross Mayfield confirm. But of course measuring success simply by the peaceful nature of the editing process means significantly lowering the bar… how about the result, the actual article? Ryan’s take:

Is it a better story than the one that would have emerged after a Wired News editor worked with it?
I think not.
The edits over the week lack some of the narrative flow that a Wired News piece usually contains. The transitions seem a bit choppy, there are too many mentions of companies, and too much dry explication of how wikis work.

In other words, it’s more an encyclopedia entry than an article, concludes Mathew Ingram: is has a lot of information (perhaps too much), but it lacks personality. Ironically, other than the different styles of the individuals editors, the desire for a successful experiment may have contributed to the outcome. After a few revisions you reach a point where the article can’t be improved by simply adding lines – some parts should be deleted, others my not feel correctly structured.

Personally I’ve been struggling with adding an idea on the organizational/human factor in a corporate environment, which logically would belong under the “Wiki while you work” heading, except that someone already started the thought under “When wikis fail”. Should I disturb what’s there, or stick my piece in the wrong place? I suppose most editors faced similar conflicts, and compromised in order to avoid starting a wiki-war – but that’s a compromise on the quality of the final article. (note: I ended up restructuring the two paragraphs).

Mike Cannon-Brookes hits the nail on the head pointing out the role of incentives:

I’d say simply that the interests of the parties are misaligned. Ryan wants the article to say something about the wiki world. Wiki vendors want a link from Wired.com. Certainly, wiki vendors want it to be an accurate piece – but they also want it to be an accurate piece with them in it. Amusingly, the recent changes page reads like a whose who of the wiki world.

This misalignment of incentives leads to bloated, long lists of links. The article trends towards becoming a directory of wiki vendors, not a piece of simple, insightful journalism.

Collaboration works best if there is a common purpose. Wikis shine when it’s not the discussion, individual comments that matter, but the synthesis of the collective wisdom.

Where else could the interest of all parties best aligned than in the workplace? As Jerry Bowles correctly points out, social media in a corporate environment is very different from social media in the public web. After the initial “grassroots movement”, if management fully embraces the wiki not as an optional, after-the-fact knowledge-sharing tool, but the primary facility to conduct work, it becomes the fabric of everyday business, is used by people of real identities and reputations, and most importantly shared objectives.

This is why Nick Carr is so wrong in Web 2.0’s numbskull factor. He supports Harvard Prof. Andrew McAfee‘s point of extrapolating the low contributor/reader ratio of Wikipedia into the corporate world and concluding that fractional participation will result in the failure of social tools. He goes a step further though:

“In fact, the quality of the product hinges not just, or even primarily, on the number of contributors. It also hinges on the talent of the contributors – or, more accurately, on the talent of every individual contributor. No matter how vast, a community of mediocrities will never be able to produce anything better than mediocre work. Indeed, I would argue that the talent of the contributors is in the end far more important to quality than is the number of contributors. Put 5,000 smart people to work on a wiki, and they’ll come up with something better than a wiki created by a million numbskulls.”

This is actually reasonably good logic, with one major flaw: it takes the Wikipedia example too far. A wiki in the Enterprise is not an encyclopedia; not even some esoteric Knowledge Management tool. In fact, even though wikis solve a Knowledge Management problem (lack of input and GIGO), they should not be considered KM tools at all at the workplace. Typical KM is concerned with the collection, organization and redistribution of knowledge after-the-fact, while the wiki becomes the primary platform to conduct everyday business tasks, and resolves the KM-problem as a by-product.

Update (6/15/08): Now we have pretty good terms to describe the above, instead of my lengthy explanation. See the discussion on In-the-Flow and Above-the-Flow wikis by Michael Idinopulos and Ross Mayfield.

I have news for Nick: not everyone can be in the top 20% of the corporate workforce – by definition *somebody* will have to belong to that *other* 80%. Are they all numbskulls? So be it.. that is your workforce, like it or not. With the elitist KM view Nick would actually be right:

“As earlier knowledge-management failures have shown, the elite often have the least incentive to get involved, and without them, the project’s doomed.”

True. Except when the wiki is the primary work / collaboration platform, participation is no longer optional. Not when the answer to almost any question is “it’s on the wiki.” A basic conclusion that even the numbskull-editors of the Wired article have recognized.

Update (9/7): I love Rod‘s cartoons: