Information Architecture: Organizing a Team Wiki by Department or by Task, and How to Test It
A common team-wiki argument is whether to organize by department or by task. The research is more cautious than you might expect: employees who know the org chart were actually faster on an intranet organized by department, and label quality mattered far more than the organizing scheme. A safer approach: give the main structure a scheme where every page has an owner, then add a few task-based entry pages that hold only links, and title pages with the words readers will search for. Before organizing, use card sorting to learn how readers think; afterwards, use tree testing to check whether they can find things.