> ## Content Index
> Fetch the complete content index at: https://www.vjarmy.com/llms.txt
> Use this file to discover other available public pages before exploring further.

# What If There’s Bears?
- URL: https://www.vjarmy.com/what-if-theres-bears/
- Published: 2010-10-21T04:00:00.000Z
- Updated: 2026-02-07T19:18:00.000Z
- Description: Stop planning for doomsday.
- Author: Dan Dickinson
- Tags: Work

I am a huge, huge fan of [Atlassian’s tools](http://atlassian.com/?ref=vjarmy.com), and I’ve worked pretty hard to make them a part of culture at my office. They’ve just started a [series of blog posts](http://blogs.atlassian.com/news/2010/10/technical-writing-enterprise-wiki.html?ref=vjarmy.com) on using a wiki for technical writing, and I loved this bit:

> Do you feel nervous at the thought of customers adding angry comments on your documentation wiki? Spammers running riot? Here’s the flipside for you to consider: customers answering other customers’ questions in the wiki, external developers adding code samples to help flesh out your document, partners volunteering to write new documentation.

I think that when it comes to implementing any new technology (especially from being inside IT), there’s a lot of fear and belief that someone, somewhere, is going to misuse/abuse it. But we often lose site of the advantages that will come from the tool and clever use by your community.

“But what if…?” is the common thing I hear when talking about new technology, and my tongue-in-cheek response is now going to be “What if there’s bears?”, in due deference to this old Will Hines video:

Stop planning for doomsday. Pre-empt the obvious abuses, and handle the subtleties as they come.