Marc My Words: From Content Creation to Content Curation: Do You Have a “Decrapulation” Strategy?

The Internetis like the Bermuda Triangle. Content goes in but never comes out.

We’ve all had this happen. We search forsomething on the web, or on our organization’s intranet, only to find tons of outdated,irrelevant content. Old memos, outdated project information, past invitationsto retirement parties, corporate news that’s years old, specs from discontinuedproducts, budgets from the last millennium, personnel records for nonexistentpersonnel, training courses that haven’t been taught since who knows when, etc.You get the idea. It seems we find it too easy to publish content, and toobothersome to update or “unpublish” it. The result: a content curation mess.

It’s much easier to put content online than totake it off. I’m not talking about the technical side of this process, butrather the sense of urgency around doing it. Here are five reasons why this isso:

1. Motivation. Too often we find thatgetting content online is what we’re rewarded for. “Finish the project,” “getit out there,” and “deliver the material” are drivers for many of us. We’re farless worried about what happens to the content after that, when it gets old andwe’re off working on another project.
2. Sense of accomplishment. Publishingcontent is something you (and your bosses and peers) can see. It is tangibleand real. Taking something off the web may be valuable, but it feels more likesimple maintenance than a significant contribution.
3. The assumption that it will go away on itsown. We assume that new content will bury old content, or that it magicallydisappears into some web black hole that eats it all up.
4. The assumption that users will ignore badcontent and easily recognize good content. If users have good researchskills and good common sense, maybethey can discern good from bad content. But is this the case with everyone, allthe time? Do you want to take this chance?
5. No time or resources. Sure, we havepeople and money to create and publish content, but when it comes to reviewingand removing stale information, unfortunately it’s an uphill battle for theresources to get it done.

Content expiration

To combat this problem, you should considercontent expiration as part of your overall content curation strategy. Here are fourbasic tenets of such an approach:

1. Content ownership. Every content assetshould have an owner, who may or may not be the content author. In other words,there should always be someone, or some group, that takes responsibility forthe asset as long as it’s on the web, and their contact information should belinked to the asset. This person or group in charge makes decisions on theviability of the content and when to take it down. They can be subject matterexperts, or they can be good content administrators who have ties to theappropriate SMEs. If a content owner relinquishes that role, you must assign another,or the asset in question comes down as a matter of policy.
2. Shelf life. All content assets shouldhave a specific life span with a specific expiration date. The content ownercan set the shelf life at the time of initial publication and then revise it asneeded. You can set shelf life for a week, a month, a year, or you can assign aunique expiration date. Think of freshness dating for groceries—it’s the sameidea. When the content asset approaches its expiration, the content owners ofrecord receive automatic email reminders to make decisions about the future ofthe asset. If no action is taken, you can archive the asset so that no one canfind and improperly use it. Once the content is in the archive, the asset ownerwill have to make a decision on its future.
3. Unlimited shelf life. There is anargument that because some assets, by their very nature, might never go out ofdate and will remain useful for a very long time, you should assign them anunlimited shelf life. Obviously, this makes it easier for content owners andSMEs, who have fewer assets to manage, but equally obvious is the danger that attachingthis parameter to too many assets, or to inappropriate assets, will exacerbatethe problem that the expiration strategy was set up to solve. If you choose to offeran unlimited shelf life option, do so verycarefully.
4. Renewal. As expiration approaches, thecontent owner or other authorized person makes a decision on the future of theasset and assigns a new expiration parameter. The process repeats itself. Inthis way, no content asset will linger on the web without periodic review.

The best way to approach expiration is to incorporatethese tenets into a content and user metadata strategy so you can easily assignand track them through your knowledge management or content managementtechnology. (If your system doesn’t support this, consider different technologyor an upgrade.) Then, through the system’s analytics, you can evaluate andreward SMEs and content owners for how well they manage the knowledge undertheir care. Having a content expiration strategy as part of your overallcuration approach can result in a leaner, more useful web.

Think about this: If you’ve ever run low onspace on your personal computer’s hard drive, you’ve likely faced an expirationissue. You could get more storage hardware or move content to the cloud, but thenyou’ve just moved the problem elsewhere. Eventually, you will be overwhelmed. Solook for content you don’t need anymore and get rid of it, or move it to a deep,long-term archive. You may have a good plan for doing this, or it may behaphazard, which unfortunately is more likely. The same is true for yourorganization, only the problem is bigger and the consequences may be moresevere. In your personal life and in the life of your organization’s onlineknowledge assets, less may be more.

In the end, content curation is not just makingsure good content is out there, but also assuring that you flush away the badcontent on a regular basis. My wife, a librarian, calls it “decrapulation” (de-crap-ulation).Not a bad practice for how we manage the web.