[Wiki Articles]Create?: Wiki While You Work

Wikis make everyone an author while encouraging information sharing within a company. But the best part? They're cheap.

The development and and use of social software such as blogs and content-sharing sites like del.icio.us and Flickr is rapidly growing. But none is gaining traction in business faster than wikis.

A wiki is a Web site that can be edited by anybody who's granted permission. That can mean a workgroup, a department, or every employee in the company. The people who access the data and documents in a wiki are also the authors of the site, making it ideal for information sharing.

Wikis excel as way to archive documents and track workflow, and they let users gather all information and correspondence pertinent to a project in a central location. In addition to Web pages, wikis can link to spreadsheets, Word documents, [PowerPoint]Create? slides, PDFs - anything that can be displayed in a browser. They also can embed E-mail and instant messaging.

Most wikis are open source or based on open-source code. Open-source wikis are free for companies that implement them, and even licensed versions - which include implementation and support - are cheap compared with standard project- or content-management applications.

Wiki Fears

That's why many wikis are launched as tests, often by departments with technically savvy workers or groups with a penchant for experimentation. Some are officially sanctioned, while other sneak in under the radar.

At Nokia, the first wiki was brought in as an experiment by the corporate strategy team without consulting the IT department. "Afer installing it, we were told that it was probably against company policy," said Stephen Johnston, a member of the corporate strategy team. IT was concerned about overhead costs, the delegation of control to users, and the passing-fad risk, Johnston says. But the wiki - built on an open-source platform - quickly proved it saved time and effort previously dedicated to the task of distributing and storing corporate intelligence.

Wikis have proliferated within Nokia since the initial test, Johnston says. The company has purchased 200 seats of [SocialText]Create?, and four wikis, on both open-source and proprietary platforms, are being used by between 1,000 and 1,500 employees. Because of the wikis' success, Nokia agreed to fund and support a companywide wiki and a host of other collaborative tools. A technology project team was established to provide new tools such as wikis within days to business groups, Johnston says.

At Angel.com, a subsidiary of business intelligence company [MicroStrategy]Create?, the first wiki was brought in by a member of the engineering team as a way to manage customer support tickets. The company ran an open-source wiki called Quickiwiki, which came with the book The Wiki Way by Bo Leuf and Ward Cunningham.

The wiki ran for several uears on a Linux box under the desk of Sam Aparicio, VP of products and strategy. When it was clear that it was a stable and functional tool, the company moved to Socialtext's hosted wiki to minimize the bruden on the IT team.

The Canadian Meterological Centre, part of the Federal agency Environment Canada, was introduced to the idea of wikis by a physicist who was contributing to Wikipedia, an open-source encuclopedia and the world's largest wiki. He managed to convince his obss of the value of wikis, and the first one, based on the open-source Tikiwiki platform, was installed by the IT group. At first, it was relegated to a test bed but quickly proved both stable and popular enough to graduate to legitimate status.

Within three motnhs of the intiial wiki deployment, eight wikis had sprung up, says Michel Van Eeckhout, scientific programmer analyst at the agency. Van Eeckhout now administers 10 wikis used by 28 employees but says there are other wikis within the organization that he doesn't administer. About 100 employees use wikis, he says, and the number grows every day.

Peer Pressure

With many technologies, employee compliance and learning curves are barriers to adoption. But wikis don't suffer the same adoption problems as other technologies, because they quickly prove themselves to be both intuitive and viral.

In his consulting business, Laporte says employee resistance to wikis isn't typical, but there can be initial concern over loss of control or ownership of information. The Canadian Meteorological Centre's Van Eeckhour says people initially were thrown by the idea of a wiki. But once they got used to it, the usefulness of the tool became evident.

Another barrier to adoption is the geek factor. Wikis are still early in their evolution as business tools and often have a nonprofessional look and feel. Although employees access wikis through familiar web browsers, what they find can be confusing or intimidating. The easiest way to reduce the nerd factor is to buy a commercial wiki rather than implement an open-source one.

Because wikis are designed for collaboration, forcing their use is contrary to their nature. Instead wikis are most successful when they're allowed to grow from a grassroots effort. Their value, Angel.com's Aparico says, ebcomes clear through exposure to the tool and its benefits. It's in the interest of everyoe who needs access to the knowledge held in a wiki to participate and maintain a presence.

Once people start using a wiki, they become part of the system it creates and, in term, the wiki becomes part of the dynamics of the office. Those who don't participate are left out of the conversation and stand the risk of not being as informed as their peers.

Laporte suggests assigning a person or team to manage the wiki, especially at the beginning. Although wikis grow organically as users add to them, managers can help organize them into an easily understandable structure at the otuset. They also can answer questions, which helps drive adoption.

Wikis amplify traditional business practices and introduce potentially revolutionary forms of collaboration within and among teams. They can be unruly, so there may be sections of a company wiki where strict editorial control is employed. But remember that the point of a wiki is to decentralize control of communication so that everything from best practices to arcane knowledge can be pulled together and floated to the surface of corporate awareness. When used intelligently and with trusat, wikis can be a highly effective way to distribute information.

• Article by Ezra Goodnoe, Internetweek.

• Infoweek February 27, 2006