Heather James addresses the question that many wiki newbies have when they encounter a wiki, a question I too posed a little over a year ago: Once you get to a wiki, what do you do? How do you get around? James has a clear explanation supported by annotations of a couple of articles on usability. What she says makes sense: The usefulness of hierarchical navigation is being called into question because users often don't find the information they're looking for by following the navigation. (Come to think of it, I also mused about this once.) Users often find a given web site by using a search engine, and they don't actually start out by going to the main page and finding the information they want; the search engine takes them directly to the information. As more sites use databases and have their own search tools, it's becoming more common to use those rather than navigation menus. For those whose research interests include usability, this might be a good topic for a think-aloud protocol/non-participant observation usability study. Has anyone done such a usability study of wikis using participants?