Subscribing others to a page on a wiki
Transitioning a group into using a wiki is vital to its adoption. Some features can ease this transition.
Most people use email for communication and tracking, with all its foibles for duplicating and fragmenting content.
In a recent case I responded by email to a dozen or so individuals interested in looking at our Wiki Consulting offerings and to put up the responses under the wiki page on which I was tracking status. No problem there. My mistake was to CC someone in my organisation on all the emails I sent out. She then sent me a an email with a comment for each and every reply I’d sent out.
While I appreciate the comments, they don’t belong in my email box. The comments belong under the tracking status for each respondant.
That way, every one is on the same page. Even other staff members my colleague did not want to bother in her responses.
The problem was my fault. I CC’d her. I should have sent the emails and then sent a summary note to my colleagues asking them to intersperse their comments on the right page. Now I’m faced with doing the reconcile.
But the software didn’t make it easier for me either. The wiki we are using, Confluence, does not provide users with the ability to subscribe others to a page, and doesn’t provide the means to forward a page by email. This means I am forced to go to my email program to send the message which in turn creates more work and gets people back in the environment everyone’s behaviour is ingrained in.
Organizations such as Ziff Davis that have weaned most of their internal communications off email don’t have the problem. They don’t need to notify because their team is already looking at the wiki as the default means to share information. Other organizations (like ours) are in transition (I’ve been wiki centric since 2001, but some of our team are new to it) and yet more have not started.
In MBA-talk, this is an example of a “whole solution” issue: new products that have rough edges that people don’t want to deal with. It’s also a classic example of a feature that vendors may forget about as experienced users of the software won’t fuss for it. Yet not providing it creates tension between the novices and experts as experts don’t appreciate being asked to deal with trivial matters and the novices haven’t seen the light as to why a complete change of paradigm is worth it.
And therein lays the systems dynamic: you need experts to pull through novices yet they are not going to do that unless its a smooth journey.
So please, all wiki vendors: I need a subscribe/invite others to notifications for a page and also a send this page via email. 
