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Wikipodium meeting Gent

“Wikis and Classification, or Water and Fire?” meeting notes.

Yesterday evening I attended the second Wikipodium meeting in Gent:

The Wikipodium group is an opportunity for people working with wikis in a professional [..] context to exchange experiences.

The theme of the meeting was “Wikis and Classification, or Water and Fire?” but the discussions went far beyond this topic. It was good to hear experiences from other wiki users in a professional context, I’ll try to list a few dos and don’ts I remember.

Classification

Can a wiki work without classification? Most participants felt the need for some form of classification and explained it would be hard to go back to a wiki without this feature. Classification is needed to make it easier to retrieve information. So far so good but what kind of classification would be advised? In the end it came down to context: classification can narrow down the search scope and provide context for the search terms used. The search term ‘security’ will return different results in the ‘administration’ or ‘technical’ categories (see faceted search).

On a related topic I’ll add something I learned at BarCamp Antwerp earlier this week: the company mentality must be open to adopt web2.0 tools. It's useless to implement a wiki and ask your employees to contribute with an open mind if the company information policy is rather protective or closed.

Special thanks to Bruno Peeters and Wouter Van daele for organizing and OuterThought for hosting the meeting.