---
title: "SharePoint Wikis: Both Liberating and Frustrating"
date: 2008-05-17
description: "$( document ).ready(function() { // Handler for .ready() called. $("
canonical_url: https://idratherbewriting.com/2008/05/17/sharepoint-wikis-both-liberating-and-frustrating/
---
# SharePoint Wikis: Both Liberating and Frustrating
## Liberating

Here's what I find liberating. Most wikis can easily degenerate into a chaotic disaster, with links nested on pages pointing to other links on other pages, with no clear sense of where you are or how deep the wiki goes. One writer at Doc Train told me her company's wiki was an "unmitigated disaster."

With SharePoint, you can get around this chaos by adding columns on wiki pages. The columns are similar to metadata fields for the page. You can add a drop-down box requiring the user to select a category for the wiki page, and the role, and any other ways you want to classify the wiki page.

Then you use SharePoint's sorting and grouping functions to create various views for your wiki. These views use the columns/metadata fields to sort your pages by category, by role, or other methods. This is liberating because it allows you to impose order on what might otherwise become chaotic.