Wikis For Dummies®

Chapter 12. Managing Wikis

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Reorganizing and updating your wiki’s content

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Rolling back unwanted changes

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Standardizing the wiki with templates

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Building a wiki community

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Scheduling wiki housekeeping tasks

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Congratulations! If you’re reading this chapter, you probably already have a successful wiki. Like a weekend gardener going pro, or a home cook applying to gourmet school, you’re ready to start thinking about managing your pet project in ways that go against — but actually work with — the loosey-goosey way you’ve been doing things thus far. You’re ready to bring that nasty business term management to the organic beauty of your wiki. This doesn’t mean that you’ve sold out to The Man or that you’re no longer an indie wiki-creator. It simply means that your wiki has grown from a simple page to a complex ecosystem of competing interests and multifaceted concepts. And that’s good news, right?

Mostly. The bad news is that problems can arise because, like any project, wikis tend to take on a life of their own as they grow. New people add content willy-nilly. And their contributions, albeit valuable, are filling up corners of the wiki you never expected to become populated. Old users resent the new users and vice versa. You might have multiple users who just plain disagree and are changing pages back and forth like a ping-pong ...