Knowledge Management
Done Right
Daren Welsh
Wikipedia and NASA
A brief history of the status quo
Folder Structures
What began as paper folders of typed documents ...
Grew to gigabytes of electronic folders
This led to problems
Directory trees are difficult to search
Multiple copies and versions of documents
- What if they have disagreeing information?
- Which one do I trust?
- Do I have to update all of them?
Files are easily moved or deleted
The word "wiki"
a website that allows collaborative editing of its content and structure by its users.
There is a double standard for wikis
The wiki makes info easier to access, edit, and share
- Initially this was viewed as a negative by management
- Can the wiki be trusted?
Why would you not want your community knowledge to be
- Easy to find
- Easy to correct
- Easy to integrate
To get management buy-in, we had to demonstrate
value
No other system can do what we do
- not Sharepoint
- not Teams
- not Confluence
How is the NASA Wiki different?
- The most accountable system we've seen
- The wiki provides a single source for information
- Promotes broad collaboration, not more silos
- Binding existing sources of data with the context missing from traditional search tools
- Powerful semantic relationships between data
- The wiki reveals gaps in our knowledge base
The "Wiki Way"
- Search, don't sort
- Search content, not just file names
- A single portal for information
- Automated revision control
- Semantic linking
- Quantifiable accountability
in 2011 we began with
one wiki
for a group of ~70 people
Year 1
building critical mass
but unlike Sharepoint this is
not just static text
An example
Missions have many associated details
- Title
- Start date
- Patch
These can be stored as semantic properties
{{#set: Commander = Peggy Whitson}}Mission History
We created a page for each ISS and Shuttle mission
with semantic properties
Mission History
We can then query for data ...
{{#ask: [[Category:Expedition]]
|? Commander
|sort = Mission start date
|order = asc
}}
Mission History
... and we can elegantly display this data on any page
Image Gallery of EVA Tools
{{#ask: [[Category:EV Tool]] [[Primary image::+]]
| ?Primary image
}}
Meeting Minutes
or ...
How we learned to stop emailing and love the wiki
Email!
Email is necessary but abused
Email is good for conversations but a terrible way of storing data
Eliminate email?
We can't completely get rid of email
but maybe we can reduce it
The Meeting Minutes Form
Meeting Topics
Meeting Minutes Output
Meeting Minutes
- Can be entered by anyone
- Are linkable
- Are accessible online
- Can link to wiki article pages
- Are searchable ... ?
Meeting Minutes
We can do better with one additional property:
Related article [[Has type::Page]]
Related Article
Add any relevant wiki page as a related article
Related Article
These show up in the Meeting Minutes output as links
It gets better ...
Related Article
This is the Retractable Equipment Tether page
Related Article
In the footer of every page, we list related Meeting Minutes
Related Article
This is done programmatically, not manually
Related Article
We use this same technique for hardware manifested on flights
Related Article
We can link hardware to EVAs
Related Article
We can link rules to hardware
Related Article
We can run compound queries
Related Article
We find rules we might have otherwise missed
This seems important
Should anyone really be allowed to edit it?
Data Currency
Without continuous contributions and qualified reviews from everyone in your community,
a wiki is just another dumpster
of outdated and unreliable information.
How is information curated?
Edit - Alert - Review Loop
- System provides method to edit content
- When edits are made the system sends an alert
- Users review changes
Edit - Alert - Revieeeeeeeeeeeew Loop
Blocked Loop
One user with a long review time
blocks other users from further edits
The Wiki Way
- Users don't have to wait for other reviewers
- When delayed reviewers return . . . easily review sum of all changes
What does this edit-alert-review loop look like in the wiki?
Watch a Page
Pending Reviews
Difference View
Watch Suggestions
How has Watch Suggestions helped?
What if we could measure how well our information is
reviewed?
We can!
Before Watch Analytics
After Watch Analytics (2015)
March 2018
Reliability
How can we make sure data isn't lost?
Page History
Word got out
We started handing out wikis to every group
Everyone gets a wiki!
Year 5
5 Year Wikiversary
Users per month across all wikis
but we didn't have a
Digital strategy
NASA Semantic Wikis
Wait ... I thought we were trying to reduce the data silos
Merging Wikis
Restructure based on vehicles/programs
(which should be our natural user group division)
Yes, fewer wikis is better!
NASA Integrations
- Imagery Online
- Inventory Management System
- Drawings Database
- Flight Rules
- Operational Constraints (+bot)
- MCC Gateway (+bot soon)
Slack bots
|
|
Action tracking
We have so much more
Page Scores
Comparing Timeliness of Reviewers
Comparing Contributions of Reviewers
Comparing Contributions of Reviewers
User Classification
User History
User Similarity Matching
Wiki Diversification
Evolution of a page
NASA ties to the MediaWiki Community
- Events
- Conferences
- Hackathon
- WMF Developer Summit
NASA ties to the MediaWiki Community
- Events
- People
- Developers
- New wikipedians
- WMF donors
NASA ties to the MediaWiki Community
- Events
- People
- Software
- Meza - wiki server installer/configurator
- Custom extensions
- Existing extensions
- NASA integrations
Meza
https://github.com/enterprisemediawiki/mezaMotivation
"Lessons learned databases and corporate knowledge information exist, but are not always easily accessible, often incomplete and are not being fully utilized."
"Unfortunately, departure of contractor and civil servant experts occurs faster than information is collected and passed on."
Motivation
"The Space Shuttle Program ha[d] a wealth of data tucked away in multiple databases without a convenient way to integrate and use the data for management, engineering, or safety decisions"