Charming article on the use and benefits of wikis in corporate environments, including some considerations on whether to argue for open source or proprietary solutions.
What I did miss is the focus on implementation issues. Outside of very innovative environments it proves rather laborious to even overcome the second level digital divide (PDF). Too many users have no idea what a webpage is. Think about them clicking on the edit-button. Believe me - after implementing some wikis and blogs in such environments - we need to extend the ECDL (t d f) to Social Software applications. And we need to tell the human resource departments that computer literacy goes beyond sending emails and writing Word-docs on a Windows PC.
And: it is a change of horizons for those that never clicked on and edit-this-page-button.
Have you seen the fear in the eyes of those the clicked on a RSS-link. 98% of the people I observed thought the knocked out the server or at least their PC and called the IT-department - you can imagine their happy faces. Try to tell them - those that are likely to click an RSS-link without prior briefing - about the benefits of RSS and leave them alone in the room before going thru every step of a use-case. You shall see what you sowed.
After all we are talking about the web not the desktop. This is a - despite Ajax (t d f) - sea-change!
Wikis at work: “As at most fledgling companies, job descriptions at Angel.com rarely reflect the actual scope of employees’ responsibilities. “Multitasking” is a gross understatement, and follow-through can be neglected. Angel.com’s wiki has helped to reduce these problems by creating a central place for monitoring and recording tasks and progress. Aparicio describes the company’s wiki as “corporate memory.”
Angel.com uses its wiki in the expected ways – tracking internal documents and conversations, channeling information to the appropriate people, and so on. But the sales team also uses it some novel and innovative ways: Lead counts and partnerships, best-practice use of the company’s software, competitive intelligence, and internal business processes are all cataloged by the wiki, cradle to grave.”
[...]
Wikis both amplify traditional business practices and introduce potentially revolutionary forms of collaboration within and between teams. They can be unruly, so there may be several sections of a company wiki that have strict editorial control. But remember that the point of a wiki is to decentralize control of communication so that everything from best practices to arcane knowledge can be gathered and floated to the surface of the corporate awareness. When used intelligently and trustingly, wikis can be a highly effective means of facilitating information distribution.
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