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Barrier to Web 2.0 — IT Departments
Posted by
ScuttleMonkey
on Fri Sep 07, 2007 05:15 PM
from the bofh-gone-luddite-or-lazy dept.
from the bofh-gone-luddite-or-lazy dept.
jcatcw writes "Wikis, social networks, and other Web 2.0 technologies are finding resistance inside companies from the very people who should be rolling them out: the IT staff. The National Endowment for Science, Technology and the Arts (NESTA) in London had to bypass IT to get Web 2.0 technologies to end users. Both Morgan Stanley and Pfizer are rolling out Web 2.0 projects, but it took some grass roots organizing to get there."
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Possible Explanation (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Possible Explanation (Score:5, Informative)
Fuck Web 2.0, IT departments are slow to move on any project except those that somehow benefit IT itself. We have an extraordinarily difficult time getting IT to update broken links on our website (we used to have access via the shitty CMS they were running but they now took that away too) nevermind solutions such as chat, online appointment scheduling, or additional databases to store information captured from web forms.
We have had to go to third party outfits that specialize in hosting their own web application solutions and paying them yearly sums of money to do for us what IT will not. Not a single department has a decent relationship with IT at any of the last few places I have worked (especially the current) and we're all wasting money because of it.
So, while Web 2.0 is an example, I can name 100 other issues that are not Web 2.0 that are priority that they also will not support -- and it has nothing to do with those that work in IT not accepting the "fads" that others will.
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Re:Possible Explanation (Score:5, Insightful)
Web 2.0 is about 80% hype, 10% mature technologies and 10% immature technologies. Marketers are pushing hard for this (through their loyal minions the columnist and the tech reporter), but I still think when the guys who maintain all of this are saying "Whoah, let's think real hard about this", someone ought to listen. Blaming IT is simply shooting the messenger.
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Re:Possible Explanation (Score:4, Insightful)
As for why IT departments are slow to adopt Web 2.0, it's partly the realization that it's mostly hype; and I think a large part is the fact that this is yet another set of technologies which they need to get comfortable with before they consider supporting them. Also, they probably want to wait a bit and see what problems shake out. New technology is fun, having to implement and support new technology is scary, god only knows what is going to break and what is going to let in the next Nimda. Lastly, there is that whole support problem of, "I uploaded my video to my blog and it's not working. It's IT's fault and they had better fix it!" Thank you, no.
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Re:Possible Explanation (Score:5, Funny)
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Get with the times! (Score:5, Funny)
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Re:Possible Explanation (Score:5, Interesting)
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Re:Possible Explanation (Score:5, Insightful)
We try to be responsive to users, but there's only so much time in a day, and when a user refuses to read the online documentation on how to clean up their roaming profile for the 10th time, and just want's IT to do it then they need to be a little patient and lock their machine rather than logging out till we can do the cleanup.
When we discussed the major database + client update and whether we would do it for v2008 or v2009 and agreed on v2009 version, don't be suprised that we balk at a sudden "How much work would it really take to jump into the 2008 version?" with something like "We could get on that about when the 2009 version comes out".
Then you have the people who complain about being unable to install software when our policies are clear that they need to run it past their supervisor first and then submit a request to finance + IT for funding and install. (Not entirely our policy, money is an issue) No, we aren't going to make you a local admin. Bonus points for realizing the requested software is already installed on the machine anyway!
Then there's the set of users who don't understand Scope of Support, I.E. you can use your personal laptop if you want, but we can't put software on it for you and we will not fix it for you. Except for the special cases where management decides we can and we will...
Somewhere in here we actually need to look at Vista, EL5, Server 2003/2008, replacing edge netgear switches with HP managed switches oh and working in concert on some things with another unit plus about 50 things I don't know about.
Lastly, what were these "Side Projects"? How do you think IT figures out if a new product will help you or not (or were you looking for a "There's this product I'd like to read about and maybe play with for an hour. I don't rightly know if it's going to be useful or not as I haven't done anything yet but wanted to ask permission to find out if I need to ask permission to do a test run with it.")?
I'm not saying IT should not be a service group. I am saying that there is often more things going on then just the website and it might take a little while to update. Especially if we recommended a Wiki so *you* could do the updates and you decided that was a bad idea.
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Re:Possible Explanation (Score:4, Insightful)
Then you have the people who complain about being unable to install software when our policies are clear that they need to run it past their supervisor first and then submit a request to finance + IT for funding and install.
But this only breeds the inverse battle: "I'm looking for an app that does X and will save us money, but I need to install 4 or 5 different trials." Which is, of course, a perfectly justified use of time.
Lastly, what were these "Side Projects"? How do you think IT figures out if a new product will help you or not....
Hey that's a softball. You arrange for (and contract in) 2-4 hours/week of dedicated continuous/ongoing training time. You explain that the work you do is evolving so quickly that they can either send you to an expensive week-long seminar every year or that they can give you 2 hours/week to "study other stuff". If they don't understand this mentality and logic, then you are clearly working for the wrong people, it's time to find a new job.
Then there's the set of users who don't understand Scope of Support & When we discussed the major database + client update
Your point is well-heeded, yeah, users aren't always the greatest clients. And to make matters worse, you're supporting a setup that you are often incapable of testing (new acct. software?) and you're supporting software that you didn't write (e.g.: bad roaming profiles). And when nothing is going wrong and you're doing your job correctly, then nobody seems to notice and they wonder what you're doing.
What's actually going on here is that most bosses don't appreciate what's involved in good IT administration. This stems from the fact that they don't understand any of it, it's all just voodoo magic to them. Of course, basically every boss has dealt with voodoo charlatans, so they end up with very little trust in the actual magicians. The real problem here is two-fold, it's not just about mastering the details of IT, it's about PR work crossing with IT work. Good system admins must also be PR specialists, they have to be able to communicate correctly with the managers they encounter, they have to be able to breed trust and generate contracts of understanding with management.
And let's face it, the big problems you're talking about stem directly from that seed. Most IT admins yell and bitch about [l]users and shitty bosses and romp on the boards b/c "no one else gets them". But they're completely failing to acknowledge that the very source of their problems is their own inability to meaningfully communicate complexity to both users and management. If you can't do this, take a course from someone who can. You spent 2, 4 (6, 8?) years learning to operate/program/manage/debug/troubleshoot computers with hours of classroom and personal time spent on some of the most obscure pieces of knowledge. If you can't be bothered to take a few months to really learn how to communicate, then you deserve all of the shit flung your way.
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The other side (Score:5, Insightful)
It's really not that difficult a concept. Has anyone tried saying "please" and "thank you" to any of these folks? Or tried to find out what they do with their time? I'd bet you a paycheck that they're so busy putting out fires that idiot users or executives (but I repeat myself) are setting that they don't have TIME to do anything else. If you treat IT half as badly as it sounds, I think you're lucky they haven't dragged you from your car yet.
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Re:The other side (Score:5, Insightful)
What am I spending about 8-10 hours of my 40 hour work week on lately? The powers that be decided that they could fire the part-time student work-study that we used to have to do odd IT jobs, and now, I manage 30-odd card-swipe door locks, which a monkey could do, and which are a huge time sink, considering they're spread out across 3 buildings among 5 square miles, and everyone wants them updated at least three times a week. So, I have to cart one of two different laptops to each physical key card lock and update them.
If I don't get around to moving your Laserjet printer from computer A to computer B, configuring the cups server, and reconfiguring all other 9 computers in your project lab to print to the new server today, it's cause I'm freaking busy. If I can't figure out why your mouse doesn't refocus on matlab on your home linux box when you SSH into the cluster and display the graphical component locally, I'm sorry. If I can't get your bleeding-edge hot off the assembly line wireless card to work in any of [fedora core 5 | fedora core 6 | ubuntu | Centos 5.0] with several different kernels and everything from the stable to the nightly build of NDISwrapper, and the best I can do is that it works *most of the time*, and only causes a kernel panic *sometimes*, I'm sorry. If I can't find an unused room for your new multimedia lab, move 8 powermacs across campus, set them up, get the networking people to install and activate network ports (after getting the paperwork pushed through the financial people), and set up all your software by the time you teach class on Wednesday, when you tell me Monday afternoon, and especially when I had sent out emails in freaking JUNE asking what needed to be done for the upcoming fall semester, sorry - I'm only human.
Honestly, I know a lot of IT staff are lazy control freaks, but come on - some of us are spinning our wheels trying to move as fast as we can, while you all are pulling us in 40 different directions. We're expected to be master of all trades, and that takes time and effort. And I don't respond well to insults, questions of ability, yelling, or last-minute-emergencies-that-could-have-been-prev
~Will
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Re:The other side (Score:5, Funny)
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Re:Possible Explanation (Score:4, Insightful)
What if that refusal was due to the janitor having no broom and no budget to purchase one, or the secretary having no way of passing messages on or simply no time to answer the phone due to workload?
Rather than simply firing people who don't do what they're told when they're told, perhaps it would be better to work out *why* that is the case. Then of course if they're just be obstructive, then fire them.
Never forget, though, that IT departments in many cases are overworked, understaffed and under-resourced. Also never forget that as (supposedly) experts in a field, sometimes it is their duty to say "no, we can't do that/do it this way because of this, but how about this instead?".
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Re:Possible Explanation (Score:5, Insightful)
Its frankly laughable that you suggest the IT group shouldn't be running exterior services and suggest an external web group should work 'with them', web dev should be under the oversight of IT managers.
"IT" does not mean HELP DESK.
Cheers.
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Re:Possible Explanation (Score:4, Insightful)
Stop firing people and grow up a little bit. IT doesn't "think", it works on mandated processes so that the people who work there can be seen as easily replaceable cogs by the people who put them there. If you have ever had anything to do with a "mission critical" system in a large corporation you would know the "IT department" can be extremely cooperative when the board of directors are involved. Like I said I am a developer and see that as a different task to "the IT department", I have never worked in "the IT department" but IMHO it looks like an underpaid and thankless job.
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Pfizer? (Score:4, Interesting)
Something tells me that these guys need to be working more closely with their IT department, not less.
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Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Darn it, it's true. Even the best of the best can't always support every browser, and my absolute least-favorite thing in the world is account for esoteric browser inconsistencies in Javascript and CSS. I cannot see myself building a "Web 2.0" site for anyone for any reason.
For one, web pages that output HTML with little or no Javascript and which are built in such a way as to need very little browser-tweaking keep me sleeping well at night. Secondly, I don't see that it adds a ton of value in most places
Re:Possible Explanation (Score:4, Interesting)
Anyway, the [ostensible] reason? To save on bandwidth. This argument is obvious bullshit. In our local office, we have roughly 25% utilization of a 100Mbps fiber line. This was 50% cheaper than the ISDN connection we were contractually locked into for years! Having some familiarity with our budget, I can say that bandwidth is a very small cost for us.
So my opinion is: yeah, it's not surprising that IT departments are blocking web innovation. In my experience, they're generally lazy, worthless cretins. They're probably doing it to save themselves work, or having to think. At least the BOFH enjoyed his job. These guys are... just worthless.
And, FWIW, I, too am an IT worker. With some rare exceptions, most IT workers I have worked with have proven themselves to be a rather uninspiring lot. Those exceptional people, though, are what keep me around.
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Re:Possible Explanation (Score:4, Interesting)
A) per GB bandwidth charges
B) Supernodes/passthrough etc
C) EULA is untenable for us
D) enough doubt regarding just what it's doing at a low level over and over again. Maybe FUD but there's lots of stuff like Asterix gateways, EVO, standard SIP that don't have this so why risk it?
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Skype is corporate security enemy #1 (Score:5, Interesting)
I've been trying for the past year to get Skype/EBay to talk to us at all, to even begin to have a conversation about how to securely enable internal clients to make and receive Skype phone calls without also enabling any and all other encrypted peer-to-peer applications.
Because that is what Skype really is, on the wire -- an obfuscated, encrypted peer-to-peer tunnel in which anything can be exchanged between the internal PC running Skype and a random workstation in some former soviet block nation which it appears to be using as a supernode. Any network where you can reliably use Skype, you can use the same network and host security holes to run P2P filesharing, botnets, or anything else your dark little twisted heart desires.
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Re:Possible Explanation (Score:4, Insightful)
It's the kool aid, man.
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Re:Possible Explanation (Score:5, Insightful)
There's work, and then there's nightmares.
Years ago, the ISP I worked for was sold, and the new guy didn't like the web server we were using, and insisted on moving over to Windows and IIS. I strongly urged against it, at least right away, and not without properly assessing the issues.
Of course, tons of Perl scripts broke, pissing off our hosting customers. There were difficulties in just about every area, and I spent at least a couple of weeks of very long hours finally bringing everything together, only to have the most outrageous vulnerabilities surface, and a bunch of the sites we hosted being defaced.
You can call me lazy if you like, but you're damn right that I don't like jumping into things just because it's the kewl, sexy new way of doing things.
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Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Unfortunately, it happens every day. And i understand that Ajax/javascript might be in a lot of the apps th
Re:Possible Explanation (Score:5, Insightful)
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Re:Possible Explanation (Score:5, Insightful)
Our problem is that we're kept so busy because they've laid everyone off that we don't have time to get fluent in the specifics of every technology we'd like to implement.
And if we put something out there, since we're "Enteprise", it has to basically be perfect the first time out or whoever is in charge of us this week will end up torching the moving the project to another group to mis-run.
It's not "IT" that's your problem... its the executives and management.
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Re:Possible Explanation (Score:4, Insightful)
I think you just proved your parent's point: that other divisions generally do not have the same understanding of how much work is involved in a project like this, and thus cannot accurately allot time, money and manpower.
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Re:Possible Explanation (Score:5, Insightful)
Right, and the "profit" side is busy hiring drones to churn out more TPS reports and all their plans end with "and the consulants will build x y and z." In IT WE build xyz. There's a difference "work" and "getting shit done." A good IT department does the latter.
No matter though, these articles are just springboards for people to complain about their companies IT department. Enjoy the bitchfest.
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Duh.. (Score:5, Funny)
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
Spin (Score:5, Insightful)
"IT departments are wisely refusing to spend uneeded man hours and money on technological buzzwords that will not help, and will likely hurt, the business. Management foolishly decided to override them instead of listening."
Maybe I'm just jaded.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Spin (Score:4, Insightful)
Management is not somehow magically more competent than IT, just because their management. Read The Dilbert Principle for more details.
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Re:Spin (Score:4, Insightful)
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Question (Score:5, Insightful)
sPh
And why they shouldnt bar it ? (Score:4, Interesting)
and not even having the vision to realize that all those nitty gritty stuff like ajax with highly exploitable activex, javascript, xml components are going to be summarily blocked by security software in near future. (some already creating problems)and the it peoplew will have to redo the thing all over to suit the security software producers' tastes this time.
no sir, it doesnt matter if a decent menu opens when you click a webpage, or it opens by turning and flashing and banging in some corner of the webpage whilst you were doing some other flashing and banging in another corner. data is the same, service is the same, exploitable security potential and work involved in realizing them are NOT.
work-around services a new industry (Score:3, Informative)
Smoke and Mirrors ... (Score:3, Insightful)
If the MBA doggies had to clean up their own poop, the IT staff would be all in favor of the new projects. It's easy to be cavalier when you aren't paying the bills with YOUR time and effort.
Absolutely true (Score:5, Interesting)
1) the obvious, resistance from upper management. Upper management is afraid of being "bleeding edge". New stuff, and especially open source stuff, is scary. PHBs fail to realize that the F/OSS community operates on a different set of values than corporations. Corporations only offer free stuff if it gets them good PR or creates a bunch of indentured customers. There is much FOSS that is quite viable, but it usually gets turned down in favor of proprietary crap.
2) complacent IT staff. In many large companies, the people who make decisions have promoted to their level of incompetence. In turn, they just phone it in, just do the minimum they need to do to get by. This precludes their actually learning anything new. When the decision makers are victims of FUD, what do you want?
3) red tape. Where I work, if you want to use non-standard software you have submit an exception, which then has to get approved by the people in bullet point number 2 above. It also has to get sent to upper management. Some supervisors are afraid of that and so strongly discourage you from submitting these exceptions. So people just use the same old software in the same old ways and nobody actually keeps up with the industry.
Case in point: on my intranet, AJAX use is still pretty small scale. Maybe for certain internet sites, AJAX isn't always appropriate, but on the intranet, where you can ensure that everyone is using a somewhat modern browser, it's an obvious choice for certain things. Yet, you still have people developing sites the same way sites have been developed for ten years. I use AJAX heavily, and you'd be surprised how people are still amazed by it. But now there is a push to call libraries like prototype "software" and thus make them subject to regulation and corporate standards. Standards committees cannot keep up with the industry, so you have a situation where you cannot, by decree, use anything *too* new. I can see disallowing joe service rep from installing webshots on his PC, but disallowing a developer from using his software of choice is pretty shortsighted.
People are clueless... (Score:3, Insightful)
IT Dept and the cost-control mentality (Score:4, Insightful)
If the IT department in your company is an obstacle for your job, realize that it's because the people that control the purse strings for IT (e.g., the CEO, COO, CFO, et al) don't understand that IT can provide a huge opportunity to boost productivity, revenues, and profits. But until someone goes to them with a solid business case and demonstrable ROI for whatever tech du jour, the C-level suits and the IT dept will stay in cost-avoidance (vs. opportunity-seeking) mode of management.
Who works for whom? (Score:5, Insightful)
Support the elements of the company that make money.
That's it. That's our job. If the elements of whatever company we're working for wants a "Web 2.0" app, instead of immediately jumping on our pedestals and saying, "Whoa there, mister! That's insecure and NEW! Put that thing away," we should instead be asking ourselves, "Hey, what problem are they trying to solve with this, and can we find a better solution?" When the employees are using Gmail or Facebook for inter-office communication, it means we're not doing our jobs, not because we're not locking down outside communication paths but because the communication paths we're providing are inadequate. When our customers start firing up MSN Messenger without our permission, we should be asking ourselves what we can use that's better, more secure, and easier to manage in an enterprise. When our customers come up to us and say, "We're tired of chasing Word docs everywhere - we're getting a wiki to manage our information", we should be looking at their problems and figuring out if a wiki is the best solution, or if they really just need a document management system.
Get it? WE are at the disposal and discretion of our coworkers, NOT the other way around.
De-aggregate angsty tags to IT channel-partners. (Score:5, Interesting)
Perhaps IT staff aren't keen on implementing it because they don't buy into The Silliness. Call it "Capitalism Meets Social Engineering 2.0" and perhaps the guys in suits with MacBooks and artistic mohawks might have takers in IT.
As Mark Pilgrim so eloquently put it [diveintomark.org]: For those of you wanting to make a proverbial killing of this 'phenomenon' I refer you to a vital dictionary of terms [emptybottle.org].
Reading between the lines (Score:5, Insightful)
So, the IT department would have prefered to do their job (enterprise IT) instead of building something just to use the tools.
However, he said he worked closely with IT team members to convince them of the merits of Web 2.0, which led them to implement Asynchronous JavaScript and XML (AJAX) technologies, a key requirement for building and supporting Web 2.0 tools
He didn't stop nagging until they told an intern to cobble something together and paint the relevant acronyms in two feet letters on it.
Once IT was convinced of the value of Web 2.0, he said, the organization was "really good at making sure that [systems] worked really well and didn't break, but they weren't really good at making sure
So, people don't use the new-fangled stuff. Obviously this is the fault of IT, and not because they don't see the need.
Carson noted that the company now has about 80 Web 2.0 projects under way, including an effort to create social networks for its clients.
Now we have 80 unused projects. Even our customers refuse to use theirs so far.
During the education process, Carson said he also had to find a manager that would require the use of a Web 2.0 tool for a specific project.
He had an hammer and was looking for a nail. A screw would probably work as well.
That would help spur employees to use the new tools, he noted. The effort also faced cultural resistance from some users clinging to the use of e-mail and other traditional tools rather than switch to new Web 2.0 collaboration tools, he added.
So, with hard work he managed to have something implemented that nobody else thought necessary. Now he is looking for a way to make the users use it.
YOU CAN'T HANDLE THE TRUTH!!! (Score:5, Funny)
Eventually, they came on board (Score:4, Insightful)
- Hey, could you install some MediaWikis with capacity to five thousands access per minute by friday? I read it's super simple and light, just as Web 2.0 is supposed to be, so it should be very easy to do!
And the "boring IT guys" replied:
- You know we can't, we need to deal with all other emergency priorities you set last week about mail and the new Vista boxes. Besides, it's simple to install in one single machine for amateur use, it's complicated to prepare it for the security and load we'll need.
- You IT guys can't deal with changes. You complicate everything. I'll have a smart consultant friend to come over, install it for a few thousand bucks and hand the maintenance over to you.
- Gahhh...
Weeks later, she gave an interview boasting her boldness in "bypassing IT to get Web 2.0 technologies to the group's end users":
- IT started to realize it was happening without them anyway. They weren't interested until they started to get multiple requests from around the business. Eventually, they came on board.
The "boring IT guys" couldn't be interviewed. They were overwhelmed by client's support requests of system configurations, security alarms, the same old email problems and configuring tens of new servers with load balancing.
Next on "The Daily Buzzword Bugle", the folksonomy is being slowed down by the users.
I work in IT, we built a Wiki but nobody came. (Score:5, Interesting)
So earlier this year we had a conference call with the various remote site operations and networking and help desk We had a bunch of customers saying "Why doesn't the company use Web 2.0? Why is Instant Messaging discouraged? Why is there no Wiki on the Intranet?"
While this wasn't a priority, we had a small server sitting idle from a failed project. So we built a MediaWiki server, gave it a catchy DNS name, and configured it so anybody who can authenticate to the company LDAP server has an auto-created Wiki account. Even preloaded the server with the Help: namespace and some documents from IT's old file share. I also contacted the biggest site's help desk and inquired whether they would be interested in importing their "how to" documents, but only got a snarky "I know what a Wiki is, and we don't want any" reply.
After some testing internally, about two weeks ago we send out a preliminary announcement about the new Wiki to 100 "power users", including the specific individuals who were complaining about the lack of a Wiki. The response?
Deafening silence.
Perhaps fifty users bother to click on the link, a dozen of those logged in, and four go so far as to create a personal "User" page or make a test edit to one of the existing pages. You can lead users to a wiki, but you can't make them contribute.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
The end user tends to want shit like Webshots or Bonzi Buddy too. Just because they clamor and whine for something that looks flashy and easy, doesn't mean that they should get it.
Re:Too bad! (Score:5, Insightful)
I see two possible cases here:
1) The IT department is incompetent.
2) Some manager who wants to be able to write that he "synergized the business using new paradigms in a Web 2.0 world" in their resume.
I'm betting on the latter. But thats probably because I'm used to it.
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Re:Too bad! (Score:5, Insightful)
One example: wiki based support. I find that people are, for many reasons, willing to help others. Some may like showing how much they know. Some are altruistic. And so on. Now, let's say you have an application that gets used by 25000 people and a development team of 15 people. You probably don't have time to support the application to the extent it needs. Enter a wiki. If you have a wiki, that can at least minimize the questions / requests sent to your team, leaving you to focus on enhancements, future looking stuff, etc. Using a wiki, you can actually get your user base to at least partially support itself.
Sure, a social networking site *might* not be the right thing for you F500 company's intranet. But a wiki might be just what you need.
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They're looking for a free ride! (Score:4, Insightful)
What happens is these people think that there's some new miracle computer technology that magically solves their problems. When they find out that behind the shiny new Flash/JavaScript/ActiveX user interface they've really just got yet another information storage and retrieval system like their old one and making it useful requires real work by real people, they stop being interested because, heck, they could have done real work with the LAST system.
Where it gets really fun is when just enough work goes into the new thingy that the low-level office droids end up using it regularly and can't live without it BUT upgrading and maintaining it to sane levels doesn't get funded because the shiny exciting part that appeals to management is long gone.
It's *all* just another symptom of management's love of short-term/free-ride thinking. I'm surprised we don't hear more about these same people losing money to perpetual motion machines.
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