Developing Governance for Wikis

Trust is the most essential element in the success of a wiki on your intranet or extranet.

© 2009 David Shaw

Trust and transparency are absolutely necessary

Social networking applications like wikis, socialware, blogs and groups are sometimes implemented in the simple expectation that they will yield magical results. No thought is given to governance, and its role in driving success. Instead, social apps are driven by hype and expectations set by the fantastical growth numbers in public applications like FaceBook and Twitter, or the marketing around applications like SharePoint.

(Every organization with a SharePoint installation thinks it’s doing social networking. The reality is that if they have SharePoint they don’t have a clue about it: they most likely have a multitude of virtual webs that are defying unification in any sensible way.)

Let’s take blogs as an example of hype. Reading about blogs it’s tempting to think they are easy money spinners. The reality is that most blogs are never ever read, and those that are read need tens of thousands of hits per day to generate significant revenue.

Figuring out how to generate those hits is a big challenge, and this is no less true for your intranet or extranet wiki. Simply installing a wiki in the belief that it’s a better mousetrap won’t change anything. You might as well order a blue one or a yellow one, depending on your taste. Making a wiki work takes planning and effort. Self-organization, a key tenet of social networking, will only do so much.

To appreciate this, take a look at almost any group on FaceBook and figure out what are the tangible outcomes. Mind you, it’s not as bad as the narcissism in the wittering that goes on Twitter. Frankly it’s more interesting watching a pigeon toe-walk across an intersection. There’s more thought going on, and an identifiable context.

Governance Models

A successful wiki needs a governance model. There are three types of governance model:

• Prescriptive


• Descriptive


• Reflexive

A prescriptive governance model is rule driven. Usually the rules are proscriptions with severe consequences specified: “Thou shalt never do such and such…severe infraction…full force of…including dismissal.” This is the first preference of most bureaucracies. By nature bureaucracies are driven by fear, not trust, and thus not open to innovation or to re-inventing their purpose. All organizations seeking to survive in a constantly changing world must periodically re-invent themselves.

A descriptive governance model is interpretive. It is based on guidelines. The organization trusts that its employees are mature enough to understand the guidelines, and to interpret them from day to day. The interpretations are usually context-specific. Sometimes the employees may make mistakes, and this is critical. Mistakes must be accepted (fear must be driven out), but this is where many organizations start to fail.

For example, a magazine publisher once derived great pleasure by finding typographical errors when the presses rolled, and calling the editor to complain. Many employees working in similar environments become fearful of what the CEO might think, and self-censor. This defeats the purpose of social-networking tools like wikis.

Governance has to be internally consistent. For example, if it claims to be a participatory democracy then no aspects of governance or content should be excluded from discussion and decision. Administrators at any level cannot suddenly declare fiat.

A reflexive governance model does not rely on outside authority for legitimacy. Governance is managed by the members of the social network. This model is entirely dependent on self-organization. It is not suited to business or government because it cannot be aligned with corporate business objectives.

Similarly, a prescriptive model cannot be aligned with corporate business objectives. The rules become barriers to achieving the innovation that defines social networking. Simply, if you need to be prescriptive, don’t plan to implement social-networking tools except in very narrow task-oriented ways.

A descriptive model based on trust is the best way forward for most organizations.

Developing Trust

Governance has to be based on mutual trust. Trust is a two-way street. Show trust and you will receive trust. Many people think that trust must be earned; whereas trust relationships develop when you first extend trust, inviting the other parties to reciprocate.

As shown in the opening graph, the trust effect is vitally important in a social network. The more open an organization, the more the participation rate increases. If the degree of trust is too low, the participation rate doesn’t reach an inflection point and the wiki stagnates.

This is best illustrated with the issue of moderation. Most wikis can be set so that content can be moderated or not. This goes to the heart of the trust issue. Managers worry inordinately about “what if someone posts some terrible thing?” The knee-jerk response is to require that all content be scrutinized by a moderator before it is released publicly. This is the old Web 1.0 publishing model.

If you don’t want to be as open as Sun Microsystems (see below), there is a middle ground. Don’t censor content but let other users flag questionable content. Flagged content can then be hidden by the wiki application and referred to a moderator for review and re-publishing.

This lets the members of the wiki exercise a form of peer review independent of management.

Building Trust

In a descriptive governance model, the discussion is steered so that it has an outcome that is aligned with a business objective. In effect, when people know the objective they can (and will) self-organize. Trust is built by:

• Formalizing online deliberation


• Becoming a trusted venue for controversial discussions


• Being consistent

Be very focused. The narrower the purpose of a wiki, the more successful it will be. The obvious exception is a horizontal application like an encyclopedia such as Wikipedia. Most wikis are vertical applications in a specific domain.

Structure collaboration so that it has momentum toward an identified outcome. People should know the answers to questions like “what are we trying to do” and “why are we doing this”. Synchronize the collaboration with phases of workflow, so that in a sense it is gated. Recognize that gating decisions do not require 100% knowledge.

Encourage consensus building and accurately reflect dissent & minority positions.

Sun Microsystems shows trust by being very open. It allows any employee to create a public blog. Sun has only three governance directives:

• Don’t do anything stupid


• Write about something you know about


• Make it interesting

NRCan also shows trust. Its wiki principles are:

• Collaborative work environment
  
• Free & open access


• Code of conduct


• No firm rules


• Guidelines & procedures

Developing Governance

So how do we develop governance? The starting point is to strike a governance committee consisting of key stakeholders. This committee’s first task is to develop a clear understanding of the purpose of the wiki. The purpose should be expressed as part of a written charter that establishes the scope of the wiki.
Some of the issues that the governance committee needs to address are:

• Decide basic values guiding organization & governance committee


• Define success & cost-benefit


• • Establish performance measurement


• Establish operating budget


• Set expectations of participation committee members


• Set expectations about attendance at committee meetings


• Establish accountability framework for:


• Committee


• Committee members


• Establish evaluation criteria for committee


• Establish recruiting criteria & means for committee members


• Define subcommittees


• Establish training resources for committee members


• Establish conflict resolution


• How do members of the wiki committee deal with decisions when we disagree


• Are committee meetings open


• Should committee members promote the wiki