Wikis ...

I had run a poll, on twtpoll, posted on this blog, about the way wikis are used in organizations. The results, i think, havent been too unexpected. What i see from the results is what i have seen with the organizations that i interact with. So, what are the results? Lets first look at the question:

What are wikis primarily used for in your organization?

There were three options to choose from: Team Wiki, Corporate Wiki, and Others. What comes from the poll is that 67% of the people who polled, say that wikis are used as team wikis in their organization, while 11% say that their organization has deployed wikis both as a corporate tool, as well as a team collaboration tool. This means that 77% of the people say that wikis are used as team wikis, while 11% say that they are used as a corporate wiki. What wasnt asked here was what the wikis were used for. Maybe that could go on another poll?

The answers, as i said, are not unexpected. More organizations i see today either have, or are deploying wikis as a team collaboration tool. Even some of the organizations which have deployed wikis as a corporate-wide tool, tend to find that usage of wikis within teams is far more. One of the reasons could be that within the team, people are more free to write what they feel like, and interactions tend to be more open. This makes this somewhat on the lines of a knol. As i have written before, this is a tool i believe could be the way forward. I dont believe i know why knol hasnt really taken off the way i had expected it to (i dont use it too much, nor do i see too many people using it, either), but having said that, what i am writing is within the organizational context, so maybe we are talking apples and oranges here. As i have written before here, and here, the completely open form of wikis may not be the option best meeting the requriements of organizations, and a model with limited authoring of wikis widely read, commented and discussed across the organization is probably the way wikis are going to be more and more deployed.

This also goes with the way i think E 2.0 could go forward ... as a blend of community and hierarchy ... as i have written before here, and here, since this model is one where there is the form of community, with some level of control over specific aspects of the community being built up in the organization hierarchy. Whether this hierarchy is in terms of reporting structures, or in terms of technical expertise is not really relevant, probably.

Wikis ...

One of the blogs i follow is Grow Your Wiki, by Stewart Mader. Stewart has some wonderful ideas about wikis, the role they play in organizations, and the way they could deliver value in organizations. In his latest post, Stewart talks about specific problems which can be solved with wikis. Here, he refers to the post by Andrew McAfee where he discusses Enterprise 2.0, looking at specific scenarios where social computing tools can be used to meet specific business requirements.

One of the things Andrew talks about is:

Problem: How can we bring new hires up to speed as quickly as possible so that they become effective employees and stop bugging people with all their questions?

Use a wiki. Office supply company VistaPrint initiated a wiki in an attempt to capture what a new engineering hire needed to know. Because this knowledge base changed so quickly, the company felt that any peper-based solution would quickly become obsolete. Within 18 months the wiki grew to contain over 11,000 pages placed into 600 categories, all of them generated by employees themselves rather than a professional knowledge management staff. It became a dynamic and up-to-date repository of the company's engineering knowledge.

A question which comes up from here, though, is whether the company is letting all employees write on the wiki. Or whether only people with a specific level of experience, and coming from a specific technical background are allowed to write on this wiki. One would probably think latter. Few of the organizations i interact with have a scenario where wikis are written by a set of people, for use by all. From this, one can see that the benefit of a wiki is that it is dynamic, that unlike a document, it doesnt become obsolete (thats assuming participation levels are appropriate).

What this means is that maybe a true wiki is not the appropriate solution, for a large number of scenarios. Something i have blogged about before. The idea is that authorship for these wikis may not necessarily be with all. A specific set of people write, and anyone can read. This seems to be the model which finds more acceptance within the organization. Somewhat like the knol. So where does the participation come from? Usually, team wikis could have everyone from the team participating, but not so corporate wikis. Collaboration, here, could follow the path of the discussion forum, which is why, i guess, some software providers give functionality for discussion forums attached to wiki pages.

This brings to the question of which are finding greater acceptance ... corporate wikis, or team wikis? Could you please participate on the poll you see?

The Wiki Conundrum

This is something which is debated in a lot of organizations, and this is something which wikipedia has also adopted ... some amount of editorial supervision, on articles about living people. This is something which comes back to a question which has been asked before, about how reliable a source like wikipedia is. Having written about this before, the question comes up again. And i am talking about this question from the organizational perspective. The question is, how reliable is information which is written on a wiki application which may be deployed within the organization.

For example, what if someone writes an incorrect solution to a problem on a wiki which is meant as a Knowledge Database, and using this solution leads to further problems? Or, if someone writes something irrelevant or incorrect on the HR policy page? One could say that within the organizational context, everything written can be identified by author, but even so, this means that incorrect information could make its way to what is considered a reliable source of information. This could be more important if this source of information is required for some critical applications.

Does this mean one needs to ask what applications a wiki is ideal for, within the organization? If that is the question which one asks, the answer is maybe ... or then, maybe not. The answer would depend on who is answering the question, actually. But, some people believe it isnt. There are certain applications for which a wiki is ideal, and some for which it isnt. Or, a solution, which is a hybrid. Hybrid would be a solution which is a wiki, but not open to authorship by all. For example, a software company, maintaining a bug-fix database using a wiki may want to have only specific teams writing to this wiki. Something like a knol? As i have written before, this seems to be a solution which could be useful in the organizational context.

Does this mean that a team wiki finds more utility than a corporate wiki? Please do post your comments.