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.
Regards,
Niki
Niki Mehrotra Enterprise Applications Deloitte Consulting LLP
Tel: +1 312 486 1746 Fax: +1 312 247 1746 Mobile: + 1 847 946 2225 nmehrotra@deloitte.com www.deloitte.com http://www.deloitte.com/
111 S Wacker Dr. Chicago, IL 60606 USA
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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
Mehrotra, Niki (US - Chicago) wrote:
What do you think motivates the average user to contribute as much as he or she does?
In very simple terms, wikis appeal to people who like to see their writing go live immediately.
What incentive do the individuals have to devote much of their time to monitor pages?
Maintenance of wikis appeals to a different class of people: those who care about things being tidy, accurate, well-linked and so on.
Charles
More generally, it feels good to contribute to a pool-of-knowledge-for-all-the-human-race. But I would be wary of generalizing too much from wikipedia down to your wiki; they'll be very different animals. Just make sure to keep things friendly and non-annoying. Also, check out wikipatterns -- http://www.wikipatterns.com/display/wikipatterns/Wikipatterns
On Fri, Jul 25, 2008 at 10:53 AM, Charles Matthews charles.r.matthews@ntlworld.com wrote:
Mehrotra, Niki (US - Chicago) wrote:
What do you think motivates the average user to contribute as much as he or she does?
In very simple terms, wikis appeal to people who like to see their writing go live immediately.
What incentive do the individuals have to devote much of their time to monitor pages?
Maintenance of wikis appeals to a different class of people: those who care about things being tidy, accurate, well-linked and so on.
Charles
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On Thu, Jul 24, 2008 at 3:29 PM, Mehrotra, Niki (US - Chicago) nmehrotra@deloitte.com 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.
Regards,
Niki
Niki Mehrotra Enterprise Applications Deloitte Consulting LLP
Tel: +1 312 486 1746 Fax: +1 312 247 1746 Mobile: + 1 847 946 2225 nmehrotra@deloitte.com www.deloitte.com http://www.deloitte.com/
111 S Wacker Dr. Chicago, IL 60606 USA
This message (including any attachments) contains confidential information intended for a specific individual and purpose, and is protected by law. If you are not the intended recipient, you should delete this message.
Any disclosure, copying, or distribution of this message, or the taking of any action based on it, is strictly prohibited. [v.E.1] _______________________________________________ WikiEN-l mailing list WikiEN-l@lists.wikimedia.org To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
A good base of content that's useful to your employees may also be helpful, especially if it can be placed into the wiki before it goes fully live. If the habit of "go to the wiki for the latest information" can be established, the habit of "post the latest information there" follows much more naturally. You'll also need training, as has been mentioned above, and don't forget to emphasize anything that should -not- be placed in the wiki, such as confidential information intended only for certain people or personal communications of little use to anyone but the recipient(s). Ideally, information placed in your wiki should be usable by multiple people who may also have need to update it.
As stated above, an internal wiki will be different from an all-volunteer project. Not all of these differences are negative-an internal wiki will suffer little or no malicious editing or vandalism, unlike one open to the public at large, and anyone in the organization who does do so can be easily held accountable. Also unlike Wikipedia, those suited to developing the wiki can be required to do so, as opposed to an all-volunteer project where one contributes when and where one decides.
On Thu, Jul 24, 2008 at 2:29 PM, Mehrotra, Niki (US - Chicago) nmehrotra@deloitte.com 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.
Regards,
Niki
Hi Niki,
As everyone else has said, there's a big difference between Wikipedia and corporate wikis, both in how they work and often in contributor motivation.
There's a book about how to start a wiki from scratch on Wikibooks: [1] http://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/Wiki_Science:How_to_start_a_Wiki
Other resources include "Wikipatterns," which is both a book and the website that Ben linked to, and the book "Wikis for dummies" (which I can't vouch for one way or another, but it does go into how to start your own wiki, including using software other than MediaWiki).
The site wikimatrix (www.wikimatrix.org) has a nice overview of the different wiki software options available as well, and their differences.
If you are interested in learning more about the motivations of Wikipedia contributors specifically, many academics have written about this topic (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Wikipedia_in_academic_studies). But the answers are as varied as the viewpoints of contributors themselves (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Wikipedia_essays).
best, Phoebe
[1] something the rest of us should contribute to! It's good but short, and could be substantially improved.
Well, for me, simply, I just found it addictive to write and do stuff. The addiction wore off over time though.
I hope your organization will fly off.
On Sat, Jul 26, 2008 at 9:00 AM, phoebe ayers phoebe.wiki@gmail.com wrote:
On Thu, Jul 24, 2008 at 2:29 PM, Mehrotra, Niki (US - Chicago) nmehrotra@deloitte.com 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.
Regards,
Niki
Hi Niki,
As everyone else has said, there's a big difference between Wikipedia and corporate wikis, both in how they work and often in contributor motivation.
There's a book about how to start a wiki from scratch on Wikibooks: [1] http://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/Wiki_Science:How_to_start_a_Wiki
Other resources include "Wikipatterns," which is both a book and the website that Ben linked to, and the book "Wikis for dummies" (which I can't vouch for one way or another, but it does go into how to start your own wiki, including using software other than MediaWiki).
The site wikimatrix (www.wikimatrix.org) has a nice overview of the different wiki software options available as well, and their differences.
If you are interested in learning more about the motivations of Wikipedia contributors specifically, many academics have written about this topic ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Wikipedia_in_academic_studies). But the answers are as varied as the viewpoints of contributors themselves (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Wikipedia_essays).
best, Phoebe
[1] something the rest of us should contribute to! It's good but short, and could be substantially improved.
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