Uses for a Wiki
Top 10 Uses for a Wiki
Wikis are a great way to quickly build and share knowledge within an organization. The ability to conform to a rapidly changing work environment by providing a secured medium for sharing information is what makes wikis a “Web 2.0” application and what advances them beyond traditional mediums for informal learning and knowledge sharing.
10 Ways to Make Effective Use of a Wiki:
- Disseminate information quickly; roll out a new process, update documentation, change a current procedure.
- Create a Resource Center for on-boarding new employees; reduce and support on-boarding efforts.
- Help experts make better use of their time and knowledge by helping them avoid answering the same question over and over. Capture that valuable intellectual capital within the wiki and allow your employees to work on more valuable activities.
- Deliver a Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ) Center; create and publish FAQs in minutes to assist with training and as support to formal training.
- Search for information and find your answer immediately.
- Provide a Self-service channel for employees, partners, constituents, or even customers; 24 hours a day, 7 days a week.
- Gather valuable feedback in line with the content; allows for versioning of a document, instead of passing back and forth in email, etc.
- Roll-out a new product to your entire team and sales team immediately; including marketing pieces, sales guides, procedures and more.
- Enhance your customer service by answering the calls consistently and quickly; deliver up to date information to the desktop of your service group immediately.
- Create a corporate knowledge repository that’s as easy to use as email.
The additional benefit is that it does not require the need for IT resources to get started, simply assign a business project manager and get started using a wiki today.
Other uses for a Wiki
Operations Guides- As fast as you can put down information on what to do in a certain situation at work, it changes. Right? “If the A server goes down, reboot the router.” No… scribble, scribble… Manuals are dead. If I owned a wiki company, I’d sell tee shirts that said “paper is dead.” Wiki-fy your operations manuals (and sure, print them once a month to keep an offline copy, should power go out).
Dashboard- There are better calendering options out there, especially for group projects, but a wiki can be a great FOCUS TOOL for upcoming events. If you’ve got the kind of business that works on deadlines, and on projects, it’s a great way to put a kind of “dashboard” that shows deadlines, things to focus on, and maybe key contacts/resources for that time frame.
Water Cooler- In the world of telecommuting, there becomes a need for telecommunity. Throw up an employee-driven wiki page for stuff for sale, outside-of-work events, and other items. It becomes a great way to keep people connected outside of the email stream. (Which is kind of the point of wikis).
Fact and FAQ Lists- I find wikis are a great way to share all the easy things you need over and over again. For instance, what’s that command that lets you pipe the output of a query right into a MySQL database? Put a line in the wiki showing that info. Did you switch suppliers? Put a reminder on the fact sheet. Want to gather up product resources quickly with links? Wikis are great for it.
Making Plans- Wikis are excellent ways to build up a project for either inside or outside of work. In the workplace, wikis can be a great place to get the brainstorming down, and then maybe to a second edit before committing the information to a more formal project plan. Wiki as whiteboard, I’m suggesting. I think this makes for a quick way to get lots of ideas thrown together. Imagine gathering around a conference call with everyone working on the same wiki. It’s like getting the whiteboard notes without that extra step of copying. Maybe not as easy as a mind-map, but definitely another way to capture points for planning.
More Uses
- Creating a knowledge base on a specific topic (examples: Creatures, Wikimac)
- Writing documentation or a FAQ (see Category:Documentation)
- Brainstorming (example: Scratchpad)
- Collaborative writing (examples: fiction, comedy, poetry, Storypedia)
- Learning writing through online collaboration (example: schools)
- Product reviews and comparisons (examples: beer, Cafe Review, Facial Cleansing Products, shopping, TechCompare)
- Creating specifications and architecture documents for software or other projects (example: Scoop)
- Creating how-tos (example: How To)
- Creating promotional material (example: Mozilla Community)
- Developing new languages (example: Baby Sign Language Dictionary, conlang)
- Sharing tips and advice (example: quit smoking, Answers)
- Translating documents together (example: Translation)
- Coordinate and help fill needs of charities, for donations and services or volunteers (example: fundraising)
- Sharing tips with gaming communities (see Category:Gaming)
- Discussion of theories (examples: Abaeté)
- Publishing (examples: academia, Metodologia Científica)
- Bringing together a community for activism (example: activism)
- Consumption guides (example: Altereco)
- Exploring fictional worlds (examples: Alternative History, Conworld)
- Fan sites or fan clubs (examples: Ashlee Simpson, CamarilaRequiem)
- Developing patterns or best practices (Best Practices, engineering)
- Support groups (examples: Cancer Help, Celiac Resources, Quit smoking)
- Parody (examples: Désencyclopédie, Homestar Runner Wooky)
- Planning and documenting events, maintaining a calendar of local events, or real-time reports on conferences (examples: events, conferences)
- Developing software features and other inventions (examples: FeatureGarden, inventions, Software testing and development)
- A meeting place for language communities (examples: Ladino, Ido Korea, Cantonese, Translation)
- Political campaigns (examples: VoteRice, Eagle Party)
- Communication between and within communities
- Creating an easily searchable, linkable, and editable website
- Community news and group announcements
- Information and policies about a project
- Easy refactoring of communication on forums and mailing lists (by turning the thread mode of these discussions into a more useful document mode).
- Meeting agendas and notes for organizations
- Project collaboration
- Enriching existing text documents by editing them collaboratively and adding multimedia
- Solidifying an existing community through collaboration and increased connections
- Supporting a shared community goal
- And even for playing games (example: games)