Step Away from the Binders of Knowledge…and Do It Wiki

by Judith Harper

If knowledge is a company asset, it's about time we learned to manage it using more effective tools than Official Binders queued up in rows on Official Bookcase shelves. In our April 16 meeting at Indiana Wesleyan University, STC Director Nicky Bleiel led meeting attendees into the land of wikis, sharepoints, blogs, and intranets in a presentation about "Wikis and Knowledge Management." 

Nicky, who is currently a Senior Information Developer at ComponentOne in Pittsburgh. described her experiences implementing wikis as a knowledge management tool. Here are some highlights of her discussion.

• What is knowledge management (KM)?
  KM is "the way organizations gather, manage, and use the knowledge that they acquire." But it is an issue of business practices, not information technology. The technology tool you use to implement KM is just a tool; the tool is not knowledge management. 
• What is a wiki?
  According to Wikipedia.org (a free online encyclopedia), a wiki is "a type of website that allows the visitors themselves to easily add, remove and otherwise edit and change some available content, sometimes without the need for registration. This ease of interaction and operation makes a wiki an effective tool for collaborative authoring." 
• Are there many examples of wikis in use? Here are a few:
  • wikihow.com
  • Mozilla Wiki
  • Windows Mobile Developer Wiki
    
• How are wikis used?
  Wikis are useful for internal company knowledge sharing, for knowledge sharing with/among customers, and for general knowledge sharing on specific subjects (or almost anything). 
• What makes wikis powerful?
  They allow instant collaboration. You can add something as soon as you think of it, even it is not fully formed. Because of this, people are willing to generate relevant content and to become fully involved as content creators. 
• What contributes to wiki ease of use?
  Wikis are flexible, allowing users to add pages, hyperlinks, formatting, and (most importantly) information, on the fly. Information is easily searchable, and change alerts are easy to generate. 
• Do wikis have any drawbacks?
  The formatting rules are unusual and must be learned. Also, it is important to maintain a navigation system and organization that matches site growth, as the site grows. There is also the potential for malicious entries.

Nicky's List of Wiki Software