So the Great Wiki Reorg continues, with many highs and lows and in general, just a lot of work. This week was progressing nicely for me, as I corralled two of the longest-standing members of my department to sort through the content on my department’s pages on the existing wiki. I figured it would be easier for me if I had to move a smaller number of pages over than just dumping the entire lot on the new wiki (the whole problem of our current wiki is that it’s a dog’s breakfast of pages, with no organization, review or updating.) That went pretty quickly and was very productive as well, as the three of us were able to sort through about 60 pages and assign them into one of three categories:
- Keep as-is.
- Keep but it needs to be reviewed.
- Delete/Deprecate/Say bye-bye.
That made life pretty easy, and was the last major hurdle I had to jump over before the heavy lifting began for me: exporting and importing the pages to the new wiki. I had decided the number of categories to use, how to organize project information that crosses multiple departments, and had gotten the wikis configured as I needed them to be.
Then the Big Cheese came into the picture, and blew everything up.
Sidebar: I work for a private company, so whenever the Big Cheese comes into any meetings, he has the last word and last decision on anything. Makes sense of course, since it is his name on the side of the building, however it can sometimes be counterproductive. For example, about 5 people spent a total of 10 business days planning a project and getting it all ready for design, and with one question, the Big Cheese just tossed all that work out the window. So it can be very challenging working for and with him. His suggestions and questions are often helpful, they just don’t usually come at the “right” time in the process, so that it blows everything up.
Back to the wiki: the Project Management team is in the process of reorganizing the way they display project information on the wiki, and I’ve been involved peripherally since I’ll be using those as templates on the new wiki. I had already spoken to the main PM to get her opinion on things about a month ago, and had agreed on a format. Unfortunately she forgot to tell me that the Big Cheese also looks at the main page we had discussed, so when he mentioned last week that he didn’t like the format (it was still in the old one), we had a meeting with all the appropriate people to sort through it. And we ended up redesigning the page. *sigh* The worst part of this entire thing was that the PM then expected me to redo the page for her on the current wiki, which is not my responsibility. It is her and her department’s page, so while I have no problems assisting her in changing the page, it is not up to me to do so. (One of the other thorns in my side is trying to determine what I do there as a technical writer, and how to explain to people that I am not their secretary, the web master or wiki girl.)
In an effort to speed up the time it would take me to recreate the new format on the new wiki, and create a template from it, I simply told the PM I’d redo it for her, but that this was a one-time thing. After I am finished with it, the page goes back to her and whoever else, and I wash my hands of it.
After all this meddling and tangent running, what is the end result? A new project page, a new project page template I can import into the new wiki(s), and a clearly established set of rules with Project Management. Small steps everyone, small steps.
