---
title: "From Help Authoring Tools to Web Tools, Especially Wikis [Organizing Content 12]"
date: 2010-06-03
description: "Findability / organizing content   1.0 New Series: Organizing Content [Organizing Content 1]   1.2 Introducing Project..."
canonical_url: https://idratherbewriting.com/2010/06/03/from-help-authoring-tools-to-web-tools-especially-wikis-organizing-content-12/
---
# From Help Authoring Tools to Web Tools, Especially Wikis [Organizing Content 12]
### An Electricity Fast

First, a brief bit of news. All the lights in my house are off because Shannon wants to do [an electricity fast](https://seagullfountainblog.wordpress.com/2010/05/31/this-would-be-a-good-place-for-something-profound/). It's a Thoreauvian experiment to see what you gain when you give something up. For the past couple of days I've been moving about with a candle, or staring at a computer screen in total darkness. I can't cut off all electricity because that would be a little too extreme -- food in the refrigerator would go bad, my side job with WordPress consulting would tank, my blog would slow to a halt. We made agreements about certain allowances. But by merely turning off the lights, it's amazing how this puts you into a rhythm (or would if I were to turn the computer off).

### Time to Take the HAT Off

Back to the topic at hand. In my last post, as I diligently looked into SEO and the importance of help's visibility in Google, I found that help authoring tools have poor SEO. This is partly due to frames, partly due to the fact that few users will link to help content, and also because HAT code isn't architected in an optimal way for the web.

If we plan to keep step with the web, we have to use a web platform. As a general trend, I think help authoring tools are going to fade because (a) they do a terrible job at SEO, (b) help authoring tools are poor at collaborative authoring, (c) help authoring tools fail at social media and interactivity, (d) help authoring tools don't leverage the plugins and extensions of web platforms such as WordPress, Drupal, and Mediawiki, and (e) help authoring tools are expensive compared to web tools.

Additionally, the importance of single sourcing the long print manual is becoming less of a demand (have you handed someone a 100+page manual lately that someone accepted with eagerness? ) I predict that in several years time, we'll see a major shift towards web-based tools in tech comm, especially wikis.

As a final nail in the coffin, check out this video on social media. It argues that social media presents the biggest shift since the Industrial Revolution.

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After watching this video, it seems unlikely that the traditional HAT will be the default tool for software user instruction in a few years.

### On to Wikis

Until now, I've explored ways to organize content with the assumption that we're using a help authoring tool. Now I would like to shift to the same discussion but with a web-based platform in mind: the wiki.

Wikis pose serious challenges when it comes to content organization, because all you have are essentially links. In describing different information architecture patterns, [Donna Spencer calls](http://2010.iasummit.org/talks/9698) wikis a flat model. With wikis, you often don't have a table of contents feature to organize your topics. You have a page that links to another page that links to another page *ad nauseum*.