[WikiEN-l] Questions regarding Wikipedia users' motivation

[Tim Starling]

Mehrotra, Niki (US - Chicago) wrote:
> Hi all,
> 
>  
> 
> I am new to Wikipedia and am involved in an organization that wishes to
> incorporate wiki-style features into an existing internal collaboration
> tool.  I have looked into Wikipedia's structure and understand that all
> processes related to quality control are completely self-driven on the
> part of its contributors.  What do you think motivates the average user
> to contribute as much as he or she does?  What incentive do the
> individuals have to devote much of their time to monitor pages?  One of
> our challenges will be getting our organization's members to use the
> wiki once we roll it out. Thank you for your time and help.

Promoting a wiki within an organisation is a very different task to
promoting a public wiki, and people will have different motivations for
contributing. I haven't tried it myself, but I'm told that things that
help when promoting an internal corporate wiki are:

* Training -- brief introduction for all employees about how to use the
wiki and what should go in it
* A champion -- someone who gets excited, writes lots of content, and
helps everyone to organise and use the wiki
* Middle-management buy-in -- assuming your organisation is big enough to
have middle-managers, the managers need to promote the use of the wiki
within their own teams.

-- Tim Starling