[Mediawiki-l] Benefits of using wiki in a corporate environment-how to convience?

[Sullivan, James (NIH/CIT) [C]]

I have given out many a wiki in my organization and want to echo Dan's point that wikis do not do all the work alone.  You cannot put one up and expect it to self-organize all the information put into it, nor expect people, on their own, to put in the proper information and follow directions on how your wiki is to be organized (by categories, namespaces, etc).  

And its not just the corporate environment where dedicated people and a well thought out process are required.  Wikipedia has thousands of people, the majority volunteers, that manage the bots and policies.  I know a person who wrote an article in Wikipedia and was quickly challenged by one of the volunteers on their expertise in the subject.  The effort of those who manage Wikipedia has made Wikipedia successful, not the software alone.

So, for anything to be successful you must dedicate people to its success.  A wiki is like a garden where seeds are planted by some people and other people help it to grow, and like a garden it can be an ugly thing if not planned right or left alone for too long, but if managed properly can bring many benefits.  

And training is a must since this is a relatively new technology, which people will find difficult to use but once trained have few issues in our experience.

-Jim

-----Original Message-----
From: Daniel Barrett [mailto:danb at VistaPrint.com] 
Sent: Monday, October 18, 2010 10:00 AM
To: MediaWiki announcements and site admin list
Subject: Re: [Mediawiki-l] Benefits of using wiki in a corporate environment-how to convience?

Our successful, corporate MediaWiki site has been written up in various places. Here's one article:

  http://www.northeastexecutive.com/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=110&Itemid=198

and one book (we are one of the major case studies):

  http://www.amazon.com/Enterprise-2-0-Collaborative-Organizations-Challenges/dp/1422125874/

MediaWiki can make a HUGE, positive difference for a company, but not if you just throw up a wiki and assume people will see the benefits. The corporate environment is very different from the Web: everyone is "too busy" to learn new systems. Our rollout worked but it took dedicated personnel and a well-thought-out process.

DanB

-----Original Message-----
Recently I have being asked task to convience my executive management team
about benefits of using an internal corporate mediawiki in the organization
(say 60 to 80 people). What are some good pointers/resources that I can
point them to?

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