Build a wiki that stays current

Most wikis die the same way: a deep folder taxonomy nobody agrees on, pages nobody owns, and a capture habit that never formed. This page is Orbit’s opinionated countermeasure — seven working rules.

Keep folders shallow

Create folders for stable, boring categories — Projects, Runbooks, Meetings, People — and stop at one or two levels. Before adding a third level, ask whether a wiki link would do the job; it almost always does. A note that could live in two folders is a sign you need a link, not another folder.

Link instead of filing deeper

Every time you mention a project, a system, or a decision that has its own note, make it a [[wiki link]]. Hub notes — a project overview linking to its specs, meetings, and decisions — replace the deep hierarchy you were tempted to build. Links survive renames, so connect aggressively. See Wiki links.

Capture first, promote later

Don’t make people choose a filing location while they’re thinking. Capture meeting fragments, ideas, and follow-ups in your personal workspace, with wiki links to the topics involved. Once a topic accumulates three or four mentions, promote it to its own note in the team workspace and link back.

Template the recurring documents

Any document you write more than twice — meeting notes, decision records, postmortems, onboarding checklists — gets a template. Templates standardize the headings, which keeps search and skimming predictable across authors.

Let backlinks and the graph resurface old pages

You don’t need to remember what exists. When you link to a note, its backlinks section accumulates every context that mentions it — open backlinks or the graph view before writing a new page, and extend the existing one if it’s already there. Orphan nodes in the graph (no links in or out) are your review queue: link them in or delete them.

Use tags sparingly

Tags are for cross-cutting states, not categories: #draft, #needs-review, #deprecated. If a tag names a topic, it should be a wiki link to a topic note instead. A tag vocabulary you can’t list from memory is too big.

Give every page an owner

Put a [[person]] link or an owner line at the top of every runbook and reference page. When a reader finds it stale, the owner is one mention away — and a page nobody will claim is a page you should delete. Schedule nothing; ownership plus backlink traffic is what keeps pages honest.

Up next: the Workspaces section, starting with Personal and team workspaces — where all of this lives.