We’re currently working on a knowledge project with a client, part of which involves setting up a collaborative environment for managing and editing content – in this instance a wiki.

As part of the initial setup, I’ve been looking at ‘best practices’ for wiki implementation and adoption and I quickly came across wiki patterns , which is such a fantastic resource.

But that in itself is not all that I find interesting about the site. For me, it was the observation of the structure and language of ‘patterns’ used on the site and my association of that with the process of sense-making that I find intriguing.

Now, being the new guy here at Anecdote, I’m still immersing myself in the use of narrative and complexity theory, but my current understanding using the Cynefin framework — is that ‘best practices’ belong in the known domain … when things are prescriptive, can be reduced to binary decisions; black and white, yes and no answers. There is a known solution.

On the other hand navigating complexity requires us to detect new and emerging patterns. Humans are good at seeing patterns, making sense from them and then acting on them. Deciding on courses of action or ‘solutions’ in this domain are about influencing these patterns and behaviours, reinforcing the positives and discouraging the negatives.

The wikipatterns site is doing exactly this – putting wiki adoption squarely into the complex camp, and using patterns to help people make sense of what to do and not what to do, rather than trying to lay out prescriptive answers on how-to implement wikis, because it’s just not that simple when humans are involved!!