The aim of a corporate wiki is, instead of "oh,
Bob did that for two
years, but he left last week ... I wonder how he did it", to be able
to say "Bob did that for two years, he left how-to notes on the wiki."
I write up something on any process, procedure or in-house
application I have to use a lot, as notes to *myself* and others.
You know how a lot of people start a new job by getting a notebook and
writing everything in it? The wiki should be used for that. It's
EVERYONE'S COLLECTIVE NOTEPAD.
So your approach would be using the Wiki as a kind of knowledge base rather than a
collaboration tool?! (Although, of course, the one doesn't exclude the other.)
The problem I see there is that the individual employee usually doesn't really have
much of a stake in such a knowledge base (what does he care about a possible successor...
). So why should he contribute (if there's be no obligation to make use of the
wiki)?!
Therefore I'm trying to convey it as a tool that makes collaboration a lot easier -
after all, who ain't sick of sending MS Office documents back and forth...
How is your office culture? If you have a secretive
office culture -
where people guard knowledge through fear - a wiki won't fix that.
It's not secretive (for the most part), but people are quite busy with their regular
tasks and thus reluctant to take on new ones (like documenting their work - see above).
The actual wiki software hardly matters. MediaWiki is
very easy to use
and install, but a bit heavyweight for a small team; it also doesn't
even try to do access control. My work has various installations of
MoinMoin, TWiki, MediaWiki, UseMod, Trac ... my group uses MoinMoin
because it uses flat files rather than a database, and it's only used
by ten people, so MediaWiki was a bit fat for the job.
Well, I picked MediaWiki 'cause it's supposedly easy to set up - which, for the
basics at least, is true.
I might look into the ones you've mentioned though.
If there isn't a wiki on how to use corporate
wikis, you should start one
;-D
Hehe, maybe at a later time, when I actually do have some experience in this matter...
Thanks!
-- Frederik
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