Had a good discussion yesterday with a coworker regarding applications versus platforms. While the differences are apparent to technology workers, users can be left feeling ignored.
Applications can be designed to be user friendly. Most strive to be and many are usable. Platforms are, well, platforms; a foundation for building around and on top.
MediaWiki really falls into the latter category. It provides a basic interface for content creation and editing and then proceeds to provide an API and hooks for building on the platform. Is the platform usable by itself? Well, Wikipedia seems to be thriving.
Platforms can be extensible in many ways. One of those ways is from within. MediaWiki provides building blocks for users. A novice user can create a page, add some headings and sub-headings, throw in an ordered list and link to other pages using simple mark-up.
What is a user needs to insert a table? More learning must take place. Using templates, some features provided in a third-party extension? … more learning.
It is undeniable that the platform has a longer learning curve; however, the curve can be approached in many ways. Which method is best? I would suggest the desired outcome be considered before just picking a method.
If you do not encourage users to move along the learning curve will they do it on their own? If one ignores the learning opportunities to share with others, how do they learn? If folks only learn the first 30% of the functionality, can one or two people continually pick up the other 70%?
Wikipedia works because many people chose to learn on their own and with the feedback/assistance of others. Many folks have stories about failed wikis; i do myself. When you do the post-mortem you realize, the reason it failed wasn’t the software…it was the people.
Conversely, when a wiki succeeds, it’s not the software, it’s the people.
Have you hugged a wiki user today?
0 comments:
Post a Comment