[Foundation-l] Meta:MetaProject to Overhaul Meta

Fri Mar 31 17:54:46 UTC 2006

> How are the historical documents actually hampering the
> usability of Meta? Point me to a page, category, template, image,

FWIW, I've found Meta to be useful to varying degrees, frustrating in 
others. It once lacked any historical tags, and that tripped me up 
sometimes. The information in a wiki can be organized to present historical 
and current sections, but the software isn't built for it in the same way 
that, say, a Blog is.

One of our business units (@ Intuit) is using a wiki for help documentation 
on multiple versions and platforms, and we created an information 
infrastructure to handle the differing versions and releases and all that. 
It took a while for us to work it out.

Overall, I generally hit Meta first when looking for something, or when 
pointing people to answers when they have wiki questions (I administer and 
host more than 80 wikis for Intuit). Sometimes I have to Google for the 
answer, but that's the nature of answers: theorize, experiment, measure, 
refine. "I think it's about this, so use these keywords. Hmm, didn't work, 
let me try this one."  Meta almost always helps me find the answer, even if 
it doesn't have the answer itself.

People need information in varying forms (sample code, overviews, 
historical) and in varying styles/lengths (tips, complete explanations, 
different contexts, e.g. Windows or Linux). That's the power of a wiki. We 
phrase the power as the ability to give the "Complete Answer". Not 
necessarily the "right" answer - that's different for different people. Nor 
even the "best" answer - that's also different. Rather the "most possible 
answers".

It's one reason that we hired a library science major and social software 
expert to work with us in the iLab: content organization "becomes" king in 
wikispace, especially as the amount of content increases. Some organization 
is fairly simple and can model the physical: wikipedia entries are 
essentially stand-alone within multiple categories. The same isn't true of a 
wiki that documents a project. More thought must be put into organization.

Anyway... my two cents - Meta, indeed all wikis, need a clear mission 
statement ("A website about/discussion" is a bit unclear, and a wiki isn't a 
great tool for discussion, imho) and a foundational organization for 
content. The organization can shift over time, but you need the foundation 
to recognize the shift as well as to adjust the foundation or bring it back 
into alignment.

I'm all for making Meta easier to use, but I'm for making everything easier 
to use. Easy for me might be difficult for you...

- Matt Hart
- Intuit Innovation Lab
- Waltham, Ma