Corporate Wikipedia

If you’ve got a question, Wikipedia probably has an answer. Wikipedia is an online encyclopedia assembled by users around the world. This innovative method of centralizing information and eliminating the need for the space of reference books is mainstream. Wikipedia has fostered new corporate internal Wikipedia websites that draws on the input of employee’s companywide.

Although centralizing employee reference material is efficient, some employees don't like being edited by colleagues, especially those further down the org chart. I would imagine employees would get pretty frustrated that somebody else edited their work. The sites that make it easy for people to add and edit information have revolutionized encyclopedia creation, evidenced by the growth of Wikipedia. A range of enterprise wiki software from Atlassian, Socialtext, CustomerVision, MindTouch, Traction, and others gives companies much-needed security and access control features.

Companies use Wikis for wide-ranging activities such as tracking industry news, setting meeting agendas, posting corporate policies, and even creating strategy documents. Because there are several freely available open-source software packages like MediaWiki and TWiki, it's easy for employees to start one without even alerting the IT department.

Even employees convinced of the usefulness of Wikis aren't necessarily comfortable with them, especially when their work may be seen and tinkered with by colleagues from across the company. Some companies let employees take a more passive role, for instance with Wikis that track industry news or update employees on quickly changing rules and regulations.

In my opinion, Wikipedia for the office makes sense and with a few controls in place, employees have a way to feel in the know (which is always an employee relations issue) and they feel empowered to ensure that information is updated as methods and processes change. In addition, Wikipedia centralizes knowledge at a low cost which I’m going to assume reduces training time, as well. Despite its funny name, Wikipedia is great!