Adoption & WYSIWYG Editors
So the argument that adoption hinges on the existence of a WYSIWYG editor is flawed - wiki markup can be easily explained and adding some coaching efforts to an implementation project doesn’t hurt, explaining the rationale behind wiki usage etc. I have had decent successes with 15 minute short introductions, followed by “train the (peer) trainer” coachings, after all editing wiki markup editing is neither programming nor rocket science.
People, for whatever reason, expect their wiki to work like Word or at least Outlook. This may be, as the comments suggest, a nice way of saying 'not interested', but I think that in the corporate world, where applications try to be all things to all people (see above graphic), that jamming a bunch of stuff into an application may in fact help adoption. It is well documented that people only use 10% of Word, but perhaps it is just more comforting to see this level of functionality. Instead of comparing wikis (or other WYSIWYG editors) to Word, perhaps it is time to start to compare them to Outlook. After all, isn't this the method of collaboration that we are trying to replace?
