Facilitators

Context:

A recent survey of members regarding the RIBA’s plans for creating knowledge communities reported that: ‘… the Institute needs to own and get involved, not just coordinate inputs from the membership.’

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The facilitator needs to understand the technical aspects of the wiki as well as the processes it supports - this person also needs to be able to work well with people.

The wiki facilitator is likely to undertake the role of wiki administrator – the person with the highest levels of privileges needed to manage the various controls of the web site.  There are many routine, administrative aspects to the job of managing and regulating a wiki; for example, ensuring there is sufficient disc space and bandwidth for the site to work efficiently, tracking access logs which show how the wiki is being used, overseeing the general settings for the web site (including page and site security), dealing with registration requests, and ensuring that wiki policies are up to date and being implemented.  The wiki administrator is usually the person who fixes problems and seeks to continually improve the wiki; for example, working with developers to add new functions to the web site, and generally supervising its overall look and feel.
 
In addition to this technical role, the wiki facilitator will need to work well with people; for example, organising events to promote the wiki, arranging and chairing meetings with user groups, capturing ideas for improving the wiki, designing training course and providing guidance when necessary.  A wiki facilitator should understand the operational needs of the wiki community so they can assess the relevance and value of information on the web site, organise content so that it is easy to find, and create links between related parts of the site.

Clearly, the wiki facilitator is a busy person, and it is unrealistic to expect this job to be carried out in somebody’s spare time - at the moment Anna Gagliano (Research and Knowledge Manager, RIBA R&D Department) is the wiki facilitator.  

Therefore:

The current arrangements for the administration of the wiki are working well; however, these arrangements should be kept under review.

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If the traffic on the wiki increases dramatically, there is a risk that the facilitator could become a bottleneck in the system.  There are a number of solutions to this problem, such as the creation of a support desk and splitting the technical and customer-focused aspects of the job.  However, the priority for an over-worked facilitator should be to delegate tasks to the wiki community – see patterns Champion and Maintainer.