Written by David Tebbutt in August 2005

Does your organisation use wiki software? If that question makes sense to you, then you are in a small but growing minority. To clarify, a wiki facilitates collaboration between people who need no more than a web browser to participate. It is simple to use - easier than a word processor - and focuses on content more than appearance.

Some wikis are open and some are closed. Some reach beyond the organisation and some stay inside. Some are hosted externally and some run behind the firewall.

The best known example of an open wiki is Wikipedia, a volunteer-created and edited encyclopaedia. This lays it open to error and vandalism but the next visitor or a volunteer editor can just edit the page or roll it back to a pre-vandalised version.

The Los Angeles Times recently thought it would give its readers a chance to 'refine' an editorial by publishing it in wiki form. This probably wasn't such a smart idea because, even if everyone were well-behaved, it would have been tweaked into neutrality. Hardly what an editorial is for. In fact, it was swamped with obscenities and pornography and was taken offline within a couple of days.

By way of counterbalance, I have participated in three excellent public wikis in which most people behaved themselves and the odd polluted page was quickly removed. All three wikis were for industry events and participants were using them to register their interest, provide personal information and influence the agendas.

In other words, they were engaged in projects of mutual interest. The genuine participants had nothing to gain from muddying the water and, because they were open about their identity, the beginnings of mutual trust started to form long before the events. The wikis acted as ice-breakers, accelerating conversations and even friendships when we did meet.

These event wikis were much closer in spirit to those which are beginning to flourish inside organisations. Groups, usually fairly small, are finding that wikis provide a backdoor to collaboration. They can side-step the daunting formality of CMS, EDMS or Notes and just get on with sharing their ideas and knowledge with colleagues who are interested in the same things.

A wiki has a focus, whether it is the creation of a new product, the investigation of new materials, a specific project or creating documentation. It is an organic thing and will grow, and even split, to reflect the changing interests or focus of the group. It is ideal for exploratory situations when ideas are being formed and shaped within organisations where this sort of thing is beneath the interest of industry regulators. A drug company, for example, might find it difficult to countenance the use of wikis by research teams. However, they may find them acceptable in the sales or marketing departments.

Information which really shouldn't be altered, such as the minutes of meetings, can be uploaded to the wiki, perhaps as an Acrobat document. Going in the other direction, material from the wiki may become mature enough to be developed further as part of the content- or document-management systems. It all rather depends on the wiki's purpose. There's much to be said for keeping wikis and formal systems separate if at all possible. Users, especially creative people, seem to like the 'skunk works' atmosphere of a wiki.

You may feel that since a wiki is essentially HTML, it would lend itself well to closer integration with your organisation's more formal systems. However, technical feasibility is always a poor justification. The last thing you should do is sacrifice the community benefits on the altar of corporate conformance.