Comments for Wikis for knowledge acquisition

Comment from Euan Semple on 2006-01-04

2006-01-04T07:33:16Z

I very much agree with your last paragraph on the background conversations Jack. This has certainly been our experience in a couple of ways.

Firstly there have been a number of occasions when something that has come up on our forums but struggled to reach resolution or move towards action has been shifted to the wikis with great effect. Also our wiki tool (Confluence) makes it really easy to have a conversation in comments at the bottom of each wiki page so that users can discuss what they are writing as they are writing it.

Comment from Andy Roberts on 2006-01-06

2006-01-06T12:42:39Z

I'm thinking of the role that a wiki can play within an existing COP as a shared artifact, which can benefit community in ways which include but are not limited to knowlege aquisition.

Using mediawiki (the open source software which powers wikipedia) there is potential for creating a discussion page parallel to each content page, but I find that people often seem to prefer to bring up issues related to the wiki on the original mailing list, although I think the trend is drifting towards the discussion pages on the wiki itself as time goes on and more people get the hang of it.

Comment from Nancy White on 2006-01-06

2006-01-06T14:38:06Z

Nodding in agreement. Euan, I love the name of your wiki tool. It says what I was thinking. Convergence can be tricky - online or off. The "annealling" factor of wikis (as Denham Grey calls it) seems to help. The trick for me has been for people to be able to cognatively track the evolution of a page.

Comment from Christina Pikas on 2006-01-09

2006-01-09T18:59:59Z

Wagner co-authored a nice, concise article that really clarifies the best uses of and differences between wikis, blogs, and fora: Wagner, Christian and Narasimha Bolloju. 2005. Supporting knowledge management in organizations with conversational technologies: Discussion forums, weblogs, and wikis. Journal of Database Management 16, no. 2: i-viii. (appears to be avail. here: http://wagnernet.com/tiki/tiki-download_file.php?fileId=7)