How to build an internal wiki (in one afternoon)
Build an internal wiki by starting from questions, not categories. List the ten questions your team asks most, write one page per question, group them into a space per team, then set one norm: any answer longer than two sentences becomes a page. Backlinks handle the index; you never build a taxonomy.
The method, step by step
- Collect the real questions. Scroll back through chat for a fortnight and write down every question that was answered more than once. That list is your first table of contents, and it is evidence rather than guesswork.
- Choose spaces, not categories. One space per team or domain — Engineering, People, Ops, Sales. Resist a taxonomy. Spaces are about who owns the knowledge, not about how it might one day be classified.
- Write the ten pages. One page per recurring question, answered in the first 60 words, details below. Use checklists for procedures, code blocks for commands, tables for anything with rows.
- Connect them with @mentions. As you write, @mention the pages you refer to. Each chip becomes a real edge, so the target page's Links panel lists everything that depends on it — the index builds itself.
- Set the writing norm. Agree one rule: if the answer is longer than two sentences, it becomes a page and the chat reply is a link. Norms beat tooling; this is the step that decides whether the wiki lives.
- Review monthly, not never. Once a month, open the activity stream, find pages untouched for a quarter that people still open, and fix or delete them. Ten minutes; it is what separates a wiki from an archive.
Frequently asked questions
How long does it take to set up an internal wiki?
An afternoon for the first ten pages if you start from real questions rather than designing a taxonomy. The structure that matters — spaces per team, backlinks between pages — is a byproduct of writing, not a prerequisite for it.
How many spaces should we start with?
As many as you have teams, usually three to five. More spaces than teams is a sign you are building a category system; fewer means someone will not know where their knowledge belongs.
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