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25 other users, suggesting that most wikis are used
within groups rather than across organizations.
Older wikis tend to have more accesses and more
participants, suggesting that wikis are sustainable
beyond short-term projects. For contributors,
the wiki makes their own work easier; improves
knowledge reuse, collaboration, and process im-
provement; and enhances their reputation.
KM can benefit from other features and capa-
bilities, which can be provided by wikis or other
tools (see Figallo & Rhine, 2002, ch 7; Wagner,
2004). In some cases a wiki platform may provide
enough functionality to obviate the need for other
tools, simplifying the environment for users and IT
staff. In other situations, a wiki can be the portal
that accesses other tools which provide benefits
that justify additional integration and learning.
For example, the Trac project management system
includes a wiki component which can automati-
cally link to tasks in the task tracking component
and to files in the source code control system
component. More structured information can be
stored in traditional databases or in appropriate
wiki pages; for example, TWiki enables users to
define specific fields in a form, which can then
be associated with pages; this is used in workflow
applications such as document management and
tracking tasks, defects, and features, including
TWiki's own defect tracking system. Blogging
can be useful for unstructured KM (Cayzer, 2000),
particularly if supported by tagging and search ca-
pabilities. Threaded discussion forums are useful
for archiving conversations; for example, every
article in Wikipedia has a corresponding “talk”
page for discussion about the article. Blogs and
discussion forums make it easy to share thoughts
and best practices, but they tend to focus on the
process of collaboration rather than the result,
and so they may be less effective at summarizing
best practices and other knowledge in ways that
facilitate reuse.
The design and implementation of a system
and its underlying platform, and the resulting user
experience, can also facilitate (or discourage)
participation and collaboration. Wikis allow users
to focus more on content and less on the overall
appearance of a page, which can be customized
by a graphic designer. The wiki's version history
makes it easy to view or restore previous versions
of a page, so that fewer security restrictions are
necessary. Many wiki platforms allow users to
create and continually refine templates for new
pages. Increasingly, wikis provide ways to define
and use more structured data, allowing further
customization by users.
Thus, the net effect of these wiki features
(templates, structured data, ease of search and
navigation) is that non-technical users can quickly
prototype and iteratively refine customized user
interfaces for their KM tasks, without special-
ized tools and with limited support. As specific
areas or tasks within the system become popular
or important, they can be refined and improved
incrementally.
ChAllenges
Using wikis for collaboration and KM presents
a number of challenges, which can be grouped
into three categories, discussed in the following
sections: organizational issues, tool and platform
tradeoffs, and larger trends.
organizational issues
A first set of challenges involve organizational
issues, including barriers to the spread of best
practices, and incentives for participation.
KM systems are usually intended to help
share best practices. However, Szulanski (1994)
reports that best practices can take over two years
to spread across an organization, and identifies
several barriers. People might not know that
needed information is available within the or-
ganization, or might not appreciate its benefits.
Furthermore, they might lack the time, resources,
or existing relationships needed to utilize available
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