Josh’s Design Philosophy Rule #356323: When a design philosophy (yours or another’s) stands counter to what would help a system work better for people, side with the people.

I had a brief discussion with an unnamed colleague last night about making Wikis a little more usable. “Why can’t they just implement a WYSIWYG Editor for editing pages?” I asked. My colleague said that it has something to do with the “Wiki Philosophy” of putting the focus on content over other things.

Well IMO, philosophies are all well and good, but when people have to learn and relearn how to input clearly formatted information on each Wiki they visit, then the Wikis are doomed for failure. If each site made it really easy for people to add content, there will be more content! How can that be bad?

Now, an easy response is that more content does not mean better content. That’s true. But if we’re trying to build democratic communities, then everybody should have opportunity to be heard, not just the people who speak the wiki language.

If Wikis were easier to use, perhaps they would not have to so overtly ask for money, since more people would be contributing, in the form of content and dollars.

Finally, why the heck did they call it a Wiki? How un-user-centered is that? What the heck does it mean? Ugh…

Don’t get me wrong, Wikis are good for a number of reasons, but they’re problematic for many reasons as well.