Re-Offender

The word wiki always reminds me of that Will Smith song: Wild Wild West. The song is good, but the film is bad.



My experience of wikis is pretty extensive as I’ve used them in practically every job I’ve had, except for my paper round, retail jobs and when I processed cheques for a bank. My typing skills come from that job, but it felt like I was working in a stereotypical movie office with the cubicles, alienation and looking at the back of someone’s head all the time, only without Steve Carell, less people going berserk and no water cooler moments. We even had a David Brent-alike boss, a Mackenzie Crook weirdo and an office romance.

Anyway, each of my workplaces used wikis in different ways. I’m going to have to remember them chronologically, which may also highlight how the use of wikis progressed. When I first left university, I had a temporary job doing data entry at the police station. I managed to make myself indispensable which lead me to become an admin assistant. I helped out in all different departments, had my own paper round and everything. I also got to meet criminals, process stop and search forms, see the things they seize/save in the property office including the armoury, cycle and drugs store, experience the darker side of life and discover that policemen are only human which is actually quite scary, unsurprising and altered the way I looked at life. The wiki was used so we could all access the databases, update the website and share documents. It was one of the best jobs I've ever had; the people, the varied work and the atmosphere of the place was so gratifying. I had real job satisfaction, which I know I'll never have on the same level again. Cambridge 2000

My next position was as a content editor for a hotel reservations company. There was a wiki as part of the website, which included a content editing section and a customer review section. We used the former to publish our hotel descriptions, edit profiles and process change requests, sending the proposed text to each other and to the hotels themselves. The latter we used to translate customer reviews into different languages, alter mistakes, though never changing the score or text of the actual review, and deleting any obscene remarks. I could tell you some stories, not as dramatic as the ones from the police station though, but I'm sworn to secrecy.

Lastly, I was a researcher. Here's where I worked, a lovely location, but not a lovely job:

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Now we didn’t use a wiki in that place, but we should’ve done as it would’ve made our jobs so much easier. It would’ve meant less work, less misunderstandings and a more efficient system. We received a lot of similar research requests and there wasn’t a search function in place showing what we’d already done; it meant hunting through folders which we often gave up on. There were also several requests from different people for the same project; the lack of communication was soul-destroying. A wiki would not only have meant less emails shooting around the office, but also have made it a more sociable and nicer environment. That’s one of the reasons why I left that place; there was a very intense sense of isolation, even within our small team, let alone the wider office. People even sent each other emails and instant messages, even when they were sitting next to each other. It really got to me and I felt like a deaf mute by the end! Idiotically, I changed jobs at the height of the financial crisis, I don't know how I got away with that; it could've gone horribly wrong.

That leads me to now. In our library, there is a wiki on our website; our internet portal where you can access our eBook library, electronic resources, book sale list, guides and tutorials, as well as lots of other information. The wiki ensures the whole team can update the website, add files and post announcements. The entire Judge Business School uses the platform and each course has its own website and therefore wiki. We are actually changing this platform soon to use Microsoft’s SharePoint software, thanks to a lot of hard work from our superb IT team, which means everything will be integrated, searchable and hopefully lead to better interdepartmental communication within the whole building. That last photo is mine