There are many good reasons for a Company wiki: Business processes can be designed more agile, the content in the management system is more up-to-date, and team collaboration becomes easier. At the same time, the documentation effort is significantly reduced because all employees continuously contribute their knowledge and new experience to the company's own wiki. But in a management system where many heads are involved, it is also important to keep things in order! An internal wiki gardener systematically prevents uncontrolled growth in process descriptions and so on.
The theory up front: what is a wiki gardener?
To put it in a nutshell: A wiki gardener regularly pulls out the weeds in the company wiki so that the remaining plants can develop freely and concentrate fully on their growth. For your management system, this means: The wiki gardener regularly balances out formal weaknesses. In this way, he enables the other team members to concentrate fully on the valuable content. Basically, any employee can take on this task!
Weeding the company wiki - how does it work?
Your gardener systematically and continuously ensures order and structure on the individual wiki pages and in the entire management system. He specifically takes care of these 7 things:
1. Find and repair dead links
Links between related content in the wiki and to external systems make everyday work much easier. That's why the Wiki Gardener makes sure that all links in the management system work and removes or replaces so-called "dead" links.
Tip: In Q.wiki, all wiki pages with links that do not work can be retrieved via the "Wiki Integrity" tool.
2. Linking content and structuring processes
In addition to the existing links in the management system, the wiki gardener also takes care of new ones: Wherever it makes sense, he links content to each other. This includes assigning an upstream and a downstream process to all processes. In this way, the gardener creates hierarchically structured process overviews, making it possible to navigate quickly and easily through the processes.
3. Checking release workflow and resubmission
Where has a release been pending for a long time and where has a resubmission been missed? Is there perhaps outdated content? The wiki gardener tracks down all of these questions and reminds those responsible to update their content again if necessary.
4. Removing duplicate content and attachments
In an organically growing wiki, it can happen over time that content is duplicated or identical attachments are uploaded to the management system multiple times. Part of the wiki gardener's job is to find, check and finally merge or remove this content.
Tip: In Q.wiki, duplicate content can be easily tracked down using the overview of all attachments.
5. Design wiki pages in a consistent manner.
To do this, the wiki gardener works with a project team to develop and define suitable templates for different content and regularly checks that all content is in the right format.
6. Maintain glossary and role entries
The contents of a wiki can be excellently indexed with a glossary function and thus found particularly easily. The gardener is responsible for checking the glossary and adding new terms as needed. In addition, he regularly checks whether all roles in the system are still up to date and assigned to the responsible employee.
7. Correct spelling, typing and grammatical errors.
Finally, the final polish: The wiki gardener corrects formal errors in process descriptions, work instructions or on info pages and corrects incomprehensible wording.
For a clear management system based on wikis
Many companies still hesitate to commit internal resources to a wiki gardener - but the gardening work pays off in the long run! A gardener ensures that your management system is uniform, clear, and sensibly structured, thus facilitating the day-to-day work of your entire team.
Are you still looking for the right software for your wiki-based management system? Make your processes more efficient and your company more up-to-date - with the interactive management software Q.wiki!
