I chuckle at the idea of contributing my valuable knowledge to some public wiki for free. I'm all like, "Wiki? How about, paymi?"

I think other professional communicators have the same feeling, because every wiki I've seen anyone try to develop in this business has immediately begun to smell like the black mud at the bottom of a small pond.

But I may have come up with an idea for a wiki that communicators would be sufficiently motivated to maintain: It's called YesYouCanSayThatpedia.com, and it was inspired by this story, which was published in an employee publication recently and sent to me by the rightly proud correspondent who wrote it:

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Investigation into fatality at mill completed

Although many factors may have contributed to accident, no single one to blame

Our investigation into the accidental death of mill employee ______ revealed that it wasn’t caused by a single major breakdown or failure but rather a myriad of small contributing factors. In fact, none of the factors were a result of a blatant mistake or error in judgment. For example, this wasn’t a case in which the pedestrian had traveled to an unauthorized area, he was struck in a designated crosswalk. Nor was it a situation in which the forklift operator was driving erratically or at excessive speeds – the forklift slid a distance of two to three feet on wet pavement, after he slammed on his brakes.

So, what caused the accident to occur, and why didn’t the forklift operator see the victim before the colliding with him? First visibility was impaired due to the fact that it was close to midnight, dark and raining. Even thought the level of lighting was compliant with OSHA expectations, the rain compounded the problem by increasing the glare associated with the lift’s windshield. Another factor is that the victim was wearing very dark pants, a dark sweat shirt and a dark stocking cap, making it difficult to see him.

The forklift involved in the accident was an older model machine used exclusively as a spare. The regular forklift was traded out for the older model so that the truck shop could perform routine maintenance. However, the older forklift’s steering wheel and controls are off set to the far left side of the operator’s cab. This reduces visibility to the right front field of view, as the driver must look through the entire mast assembly. This factor becomes paramount due to the position of the pedestrian in reference to the forklift immediately prior to and at impact, the front right of the machine.

Witnesses to the event have reported that the victim failed to acknowledge the presence of the forklift, instead continuing to walk in a forward leaning posture, head tilted forward as if to keep the rain from his face.

In retrospect, our contribution to this tragedy is found in our failure to install a more satisfactory alternate route to eliminate the mix of pedestrians and lift trucks in this and a second intersection; ineffectual attempts to sell the route to our workforce; and finally holding all accountable for using that alternate route. As a result of the accident, an alternate route has been put in place at the mill.

This report is sharing the facts of the accident, but in no way diminishes the fact that this was a very sad occurrence for the mill and our company. But we want to do all that we can to prevent this from happening again. Our goal remains to see our employees go home safely to their family and friends each day.

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The idea for my YesYouCanSayThatpedia is, every time you manage to publish something you thought the lawyers might intercept—it doesn't have to be as amazingly candid as the piece above—you paste it into the searchable wiki. So that next time a lawyer tells an editor, "Oh, for heaven's sake, you can't publish results of a fatality report," you go straight to YesYouCanSayThatpedia.com for "safety" and "employee death" and come up with five stories to give to the lawyer with a Post-It that says, "Put that in your pipe and smoke it."

Whaddyathink?