[Mediawiki-l] corporate wiki: success factors?

[Frederik Dohr]

> 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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