From WikiSym 2008

Contents 1 Summary 2 Introduction 3 Goals 4 Tasks 5 People 6 Threats 7 Ideas from the practitioners

Summary

• The wiki-gardening is very interesting and valuable if done correctly.
• There is a threat, that helping people can make them stay away from the wiki.
• We collected goals, tasks and profiles for wiki gardeners.

Introduction

The basic concept is described here: http://www.wikipatterns.com/display/wikipatterns/WikiGnome, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:WikiGnome, http://www.jspwiki.org/wiki/WikiGnome

Goals

• Broken window - syndrom: If people see, that the wiki is not presentable it loses credibility.
• Helping with fulfilling tasks that take a very long time without a big thinking challenge ("grunt work").
• Keeping up a consistent appearance of the wiki content to prevent from being distracted to the content.
• Helping others to better contribute and focus on the content: increase the activity
• The wiki gardener is really involved in the process and the company.

Tasks

• Preparing conditions in organization for adoption and succesful use of wiki (similar to real gardener: preparing soil :-) )
• Send out emails to people who do not really get it.
• Cosmetic editing to keep the wiki from being overrun with "weeds" (typos, misspellings, poorly structured sentences and paragraphs)
• Add or fix links to make sure relevant content is navigable within the wiki
• Improve the flow and clarity of content improve the readability of the page
• Setting an example for other users of how and when to use the wiki
• The gardener should not necessarily global.
• The gardener can create lists of tasks for the wiki.
• The gardener can identify stale content.

People

• Part-time jobs
• Secretary people / receptionist
• The profile should be rather a more junior person.

Threats

• The wiki gardener should not prevent others from wiki-usage.
• Done wrong the gardener can annoy other wiki users easily.
• The gardener should not put his nose in spaces, he is not responsible for or people do not want them for.

Ideas from the practitioners

• At Chevron there is a dedicated Gardener. She will look at the wiki every day. It is a part-time person. She is responsible for the whole wiki.
• They have a Wiki-Gardening party. They bring in food. They make it fun to be there. Then they get a link list. Everybody will have a link list and go through the pages.