I have recently written a short paper on using wikis in a corporate context (PDF, 500K) – and would like to solicit comments and ideas for how to make it better. It is very unfinished at this point – but any pointers will be appreciated and dutifully acknowledged!
Update, 10nov2004: Second edition added, much cleaned up, including suggestions from Håkon Styri. Added three more pages, took away footnotes, made structure more logical and discussion on technology architecture more coherent. The old version is still here.
Category Archives: Blogging
MT-Blacklist works
A brief look at my MT log shows that 76 attempts at blogspamming were stopped the last 24 hours. Of these, 4 (all with the same URL) made it through the filter and necessitated modification of the list.
So MT-Blacklist works. Time to step up and pay for it….
Two usage comments: There are some small errors with the software – it tends to abort if there are many comments or the server is slow, and the downloading and installation of the common list does not work for me, so I have developed my own. But I am not on the latest release, so that may have been fixed. Secondly, what works best are regexp strings with key words in them, most of the denials are for pretty obvious medication, pornography or card game terms.
One interesting exception: A spam comment with a link to Sun in it. An attempt to deliberately insert the URL into spam filters?
Wikis in new contexts
(Via Joi Ito) Interesting posting on how the Wikipedia, as it matures both in content and access technology, needs to address issues of systemic bias. I am currently fiddling with using a wiki in a corporate research context, and have quickly found that the technology may be more limited than I thought – for instance, it may be problematic in situations where the content you want to produce is linear in nature and not easily can be split into bits that can be easily named (and CamelCased…..).
However, while the easy internal linking of a wiki may be less useful in a corporate project setting than the many-versioned editing capability. We’ll see how things go as the project progresses.
As for Wikipedia, the fact that its content reflects its creators is not really, to me, a big concern. Rather than impose different behavior on the creators, why not just get more contributors from populations outside the white, male, online, and educated classes? After all, an organization should reflect the complexity of its environment.
Excellent discussion of Wikipedia authority
Corante.com has a great summary of The Importance of… > The Great Wikipedia Authority Debate” href=”http://www.corante.com/importance/archives/005925.php”>The Great Wikipedia Authority Debate. I have used the Wikipedia as a student excercise and found that it requires quite a bit of setup, in terms of communicating values and norms, to work. I certainly do not believe in setting up a Slashdot-like reputation system, if that is what is being contemplated. Wikipedia works now, and will work in the future, just the way it is. Thinks I.
The Economist on blogging
The Economist has an article on blogging and newspapers, concluding with InstaPundit’s Glenn Reynolds that “the threat to big media is not to its pocketbook but to its self-importance.”
Blogs and Wikis as Corporate Collaborative systems
Together with Jay Williams (who, incidentally, I have now worked with for three years and only seen in person once – I didn’t know what he looked like until April this year) I did a Concours Group CIO Staff Meeting on collaborative systems yesterday. One of the parts was a discussion of blogs and wikis in the corporate space – what can they be used for and how do you manage them? Some thoughts:
- To make shared self-publishing work within a corporation, you need a purpose (why are you doing it, aside from self-expression) and a shared set of norms and values. According to this article in Business Week, Microsoft now has let loose blogging within the company (made visible through Channel 9), but (at least as far as I can see) with no stated purpose and the only rule being “don’t be stupid”. Where is the purpose, and, though that may not be visible on the outside, where is the space for development of shared understanding of what is OK and what is not?
- Blogging and wikis (incidentally, the latter I think will be most important in the short run) is emerging as tools for corporate use very much like the Web did in 1994: As something that is first done for academic reasons, then by individuals, then by corporations. In the process, a number of expensive knowledge management and content management tools will disappear.
- The chief problem for IT shops will not be the technology (that is trivial, especially since much of the management is taken care of through simple forms of version control) but the softer parts of the equation: How do you establish a culture for sharing and for making your (half-baked) ideas visible? Unless IS has a voice (and I have seen a number of IS departments hiring communications people lately) it will have little power to manage the use of the tools. Shared spaces are managed through norms rather than rules, and the usual remedies of user access restrictions and various meta-data based automated rules will be counter-productive.
Redesigned and that’s it
Blogging is fun, but it is also a time sink, especially if your closet nerdiness takes over and you start fiddling with the design of the site, as I have done lately. It is now ready: Fairly conservative, with three columns, Google AdSense installed, comments and trackbacks and other details taken care of. Remaining: Adding some images and logos, with links. Downside: Fiddling with code takes time. Upside: I am now beginning to understand CSS, have established backup routines (which, incidentally, ought to be a part of MT) and the experience from that part can be used for my real home page, perhaps also for my courses. Definitely for my Norwegian blog. Time to ditch frames. And to get productive on other things…..
Incidentally: Minor irritation: The editing screens for MT have buttons for adding hyperlinks, images etc. – but these seem to only work in Microsoft IE, which is Not a Good Thing, especially given this article from Techdirt.
Incidentally II: MT Blacklist seems to be working – the amount of spam does not do down much, but at least it is a one-or-two-or-occasionally-three-click operation to get rid of them. Anklebiters.
Nigritude Ultramarine
Nigritude Ultramarine. Because bloggers beat search engine optimizers whenever they want to……
Blogspammers and other environmental hazards
I just installed MT-Blacklist to get rid of an increasing amount of blogspam – we’ll see if it helps. I think the MT-Blacklist approach should work, at least until the number of blogspams increase to regular spam levels and we have to shut down the comment feature, meaning that only people with blogs can discuss with each other (via trackback) or discussions have to move to the closed forum of email.
Spammers – and we are beginning to see these bozos (such as Multicontesta) even in small, overviewable Norway – are really an environmental problem, and should be treated as such. Hiding behind a misinterpretation of the right to free speech and pursuit of riches, they pollute common resources for shortsighted gain. Incidentally, in Norway you are rather well protected as a consumer against these creeps, but not if you run your own company. This has led many small companies, including mine, to forgo having a fax, since most faxes are offers for catalogue entries or display material or other “business services”, anyway.
I am beginning to think that the right governmental agencies to deal with the problem perhaps are those that regulate pollution. The problem is very similar in structure and consequences – and at least in Europe, the environmental authorities are pretty good. And nobody respects a gratuitous polluter.
(This entry was meant for my Norwegian blog, but I misposted. Easier to translate than to fiddle with trackback recalls. My own sort of pollution, perhaps. Apologies – it was inadvertent.)
First entry
Well, this is it, my first entry in what I hope will be a fun and useful communications medium. Though I have my personal website, the activities of Eirik Newth and other bloggers have convinced me that I definitely need this time sink into my life. Moveable Type downloading and installation worked well, no changes to the default setup yet, but that will come with time. Now, all I need to do is recruit an audience….
Applied Abstractions 