One of the clear interests for the wiki community is use of the medium within corporations. Christian Wagner presented findings from a survey of 168 participants. This was part of a larger project, and this particular survey (from the Fall 2005) targeted corporate wiki users.
The motivations for participation in a corporate wiki are similar to other wikis in general, except that they are smaller and more often short-lived. Corporate wikis, though, do face two cultural hurdles. First, wikiness implies open authorship and sharing of information. But many corporations don’t want to give away their knowledge. Contributing to a wiki also isn’t considered “work” in the eyes of boss types.
A perceived problem is sustainability, although Christian’s findings indicated that corporate wikis have been around for a long time and therefore can be considered sustainable. There is also a high level of participation, owing greatly to developer motivation, utility and sometimes administrative demand. The recipe for building a wiki community in the corporate environment seems to echo the strategies everywhere else: get people to use it, make visible mistakes to entice simple correction, rely on it as a resource, include good search tools, and otherwise preach the Wiki Way.
Christian’s group found that the participants in the survey were failry experienced wiki users. The technologies used were, in order: Twiki (51), MediaWiki (33), Don’t Know (22), followed by many others that received no more than 6 votes each. The reason Twiki did so well is likely due to the fact that there is a user access rights scheme within that wiki engine that would be appealing to corporate administrators (also, the Twiki community was approached to help complete the survey, so it seems likely that led to an experience bias). 119 of the 168 respondants indicated that they felt a core group of wiki editors existed within their organization; 83 saw themselves in that core group.
Corporate wiki users see the wiki as just one of many tools, using it when new solutions are needed. It helps with organization and makes work easier. Wikis are also perceived as a way to enhance reputation. Regardless of stature within the hierarchical organization, an author with useful information published on the wiki can use that contribution to enhance reputation within the company.
For more information, see WikiSym abstract or download the paper.