What is a wiki and how can be useful for an organization?
A wiki refers to a website that allows users to add, modify or delete content through the web browser by use of mark-up language or text editors. Wikis are run by wiki software created by involving multiple users. Wikis support hyperlinks and uses simple text syntax for creating new pages and providing cross-linking between internal pages on the fly. Due to this open editing, it has promoted composition by non-technical users as well as encouraging the democratic use of web.
There are several reasons that an organization can accrue by adopting wikis. First of all wikis can be used as a central repository for information. This means that the organization can adopt intranet wikis that can serve as coherent information repository. An organization by gathering inputs from its users at different expertise levels they are guaranteed a central database that curbs information and knowledge gap. This has the advantage of facilitating information sharing culture.
Secondly by an organization adopting a wiki it stands an opportunity of collaborating between organizations. This has the advantage of allowing natural flow of conversation that would result in knowledge construction due to its asynchronous nature of collaborations that facilitates formal and informal communication. This will enable an organization develop collaborative projects with other regional organization as evidenced by the likes of Mapa and Ingenta.
Another reason that a wiki would be beneficial to an organization would be in solving information overload by e-mail. With emails becoming a challenge as a result of numerous drafts that renders versioning difficult, by publishing draft documents on wiki, users will be able to know which version is correct by establishing who has accessed it and what they have done and when.
Select one of the products that allow you to create a wiki and describe it in detail.
A great example of a wiki creating tool is Mindtouch core that is a wiki developed by Mindtouch Inc. Its front-page is developed by PHP and it backend is developed by C#. Mindtouch is open-source software distributed under the GNU General public license. One of the advantages of Mindtouch is its cross platform compatibility and its multi translation support. One high profile deployment is Mozilla’s developer wiki as well as WhoRunGov.com.
Identify one organizational goal that would be supported by this wiki.
Despite the fact that many organizational goals can be supported by wiki, one key goal would be information dissemination. This would be suitable if an organization provides plenty of services or in the case where they provide products that require large information base. In this case an organization will find it suitable to share information of the service or products they offer to the general public.
What features would you offer in the wiki to support that organizational goal?
In regard to the above organizational goal of disseminating information, one of the key features that a wiki would benefit the public would be an in-built search function. This would be important as it would help in easy access of information as users will have direct access to the content they specifically need. As for the organization, they would benefit greatly by use of easy editing of information. Hence it would be important for them to adopt a wiki that has an inbuilt easy editing feature that enables them to render content with ease in a way that would involve less understanding scripting language.
How this is related to the learning objectives of this module?
Anja Ebersbach, M. G. (2008). Wiki: Web collaboration. Heidelberg: Springer.
Grace, T. P. (2009). Wikis as a knowledge management tool. JOURNAL OF KNOWLEDGE MANAGEMENT , 13, 64-74.
James A. West, M. L. (2009). Using wikis for online collaboration: the power of the read-write Web. John Wiley and Sons.
Mindtouch. (n.d.). Retrieved 3 20, 2011, from http://www.mindtouch.com/about/
