based on my personal experience most of the wiki project's seen in reality failing silent, means they start with more or less enthusiasm but end up in either
- content silos with outdated, bad findable information chunks
or - unused part of the companies intranet / IT infrastructure
or - derived by only a handful contributers and users
by the way there are wiki projects out there (internet -> wikipedia, intranet) which are successful.
what makes them successful?
in my personal point of view, each successful "information process" requires at least
- definition of common information lifecycle
- who has to create which kind of information?
- which criteries must be fulfilled to define a information object as usable?
- which kind of subject matter expert must a involved for which kind of information
.... - and common information taxonomie
- what kind of information must be maintained
- what kind of common classification do we use
- best practices for structuring the information
.... - and people who create, maintain and use the information
- training is required
- advantages and usage of information must be part of common understanding => people must see personal benefit in using and maintaining the information
....
the most successfull wiki project Wikipedia provides the mentioned guidlines all in an open and collaborative way (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:About#Contributing_to_Wikipedia)
one thing does not work is to setup a wiki platform and post a link to all potential users without any additional hard work.
always remember: providing information not more but not less than hard work. the more value a information must provide the more hard work is required to create them.
1 comment:
I don't know that if I totally agree with your assessment beyond Wikipedia. I think for a lot of it, you need a few individuals who will drive the wiki, push for the wiki, help to develop the community, create the organization for others to use as a framework to take things further.
I also think that Wikipedia has a number of large potential barriers to entry in terms of the organization, the taxonomy, the complexity of the coding. All of these things mean that a lot of people aren't willing to contribute... and they have a high ratio of views to edits. It makes Wikipedia feel less successful in some ways than other wikis because it isn't really collaborative with many users contributing.
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