Provide a standard FIXME tag, to mark areas that need help.
It is rather common in wiki use that a person runs across something that is wrong, out of date, or incomplete, but the person does not know exactly how to fix it. Consider this work model:
- Find a problem
- Figure out how to fix it
- Fix it
Often, the person who knows how to fix a problem is not necessarily going to find the problem. It would be great if the person who discovers the problem would take the time to research the answer, and fix it, but in most cases this is just not realistic. You could also just throw in a question or comment and hope that someone notices and will make the needed fix. Often this works, especially if there are people closely monitoring RecentChanges, but it's also common that these slip through the cracks. Then you have pages that look unprofessional and stay that way for a long time before they get fixed. But if the user that discovers the problem is not a rather experienced user, he or she will most likely be to shy to do anything at all.
Standardizing on a FIXME tag would help to close the gap between discovery and remedy. If there were a customary and approved way to point out these problems, it would be more likely to happen. And having it standardized would make it easy to search for. A periodic text search for "c:FIXME" (or whatever markup was chosen) would return a list of pages that need attention. This could allow all three of the steps in the above workflow to be done by a different person.
- A newbie discovers something wrong and tags it
- An experienced user adds a hint and leaves the FIXME tag in place. (they may not have the time to spare to make the full fix)
- An intermediate user (or the newbie who first placed the tag) siezes the opportunity to refactor the page so that it's more understandable.
Suggested Markup
I did a search for FIXME, and it doesn't hit many pages... so the bare word in all caps might be the easiest. If that's not acceptable, (FIXME) in parentheses would still be easy to type.
The markup would expand to an obvious-looking icon with the words "fix me" and some tool graphic (like a wrench).
Convention
The convention would be to place the tag as close to the problem area as possible, and you must always include an explanation of what's wrong.
Alternative Suggestions
Use a category like CategoryFixMe.
Or just FixMe - and use backlink search or search macro on that FixMe page. It is rather unlikely there will be special markup for this.
I vote for the FixMe with a search macro. It is equivalent to DeleteThisPage. But after some (more) thought I vote for FixThis, as it allows more detail (FixThis whatever), seems semantically more correct (FixMe is said but the page or issue, FixThis is said by us), allows for better readability (FixThis paragraph, or FixThis issue, or FixThis page) and is clearer in the backlink page.