Writing Wikily
(draft)
Wikis are social writing environments. They allow teams to craft pages of content that include useful links connecting those pages, as well as links to outside artifacts.
Writing in a wiki requires a few shifts of thinking, including:
- Deciding how much text constitutes a page, a process I call "Nuggetization"
- Writing for re-use, so each page/Nugget contributes to the broader web of ideas
- Writing that web of ideas, not one serial text
- Writing cooperatively, so what you add to the wiki enhances what others add
- Setting norms for the wiki, from tone and Nugget size to protocols for links, etc.
- Minding Wiki Name Spaces, to improve navigation and keep ideas separate but linked.
- Being okay with Working Openly, sharing your half-baked thoughts.
- Adding metadata in useful ways.
Some people think Writing Wikily requires too much mental overhead for most people, so instead they recommend a more "normal" mode of information sharing that involves individual essays published on separate platforms, such as Substack or LinkedIn posts. I'm mixed on this, but optimistic that the value of elegantly woven information will draw people in.
Writing Wikily is part of a broader process, Think Like a Wiki.