What is a Wiki?
A Wiki is a community collaboration. It’s a server software application that can be used over a network or the internet. Users are able to read, add, change or delete any part of an article viewed. A wiki is a very simple service and anyone would be able to make use of a wiki. The general idea is that when the user wishes to edit any article on the Wiki there will be an ‘edit’ button usually placed at the top of the article. Clicking this button allows the user to edit the article.
Example of a Wiki
Wikipedia, the most well known example of a Wiki. It is a huge online encyclopaedia that contains over a million articles. It is well researched, well written, and highly regarded source of information. Thousands of people that form the wikipedia community police the site, fact checking and editing as necessary, so the quality of the content remains very high. Wikipedia is so popular that it is found in the top 100 websites.
Wiki Technology
A wiki is implemented as a website component, a CGI script, or any similar server-side scripting technology. This script manages a set of small documents, known as wiki pages. The wiki page itself is written in plain text and stored either on file or in a database. When a browser requests a page, the wiki script translates this plain text into HTML that becomes part of the returned web page. Each wiki page can be displayed as a web page, using its name as part of the URL.
Wiki pages are written in plain text, no different from sending ordinary e-mail. There is no need for the user to learn a cryptic code language like HTML. A blank line separates paragraphs. When a new page is saved, the wiki script translates it to HTML for presentation. In this process, any URLs are made clickable, and any URLs that end in .gif, .jpg or .png, indicating an image, are converted to an inline presentation of that image.
Many small companies tend to use wiki’s, probably due to them being cheap and easy to use, therefore making a big budget for an expensive program not needed. Also, some major companies use wiki software, for example, Nokia has been using wiki software called Socialtext for approximately a year and a half to facilitate its information exchange within its Insight and Foresight group. Yahoo uses Twiki software to help its development team overcome the problems associated with working from a variety of separate locations.
There are many different software applications available for anyone planning to create a wiki. Here are some of the major ones:
- Tikiwiki has an editorial engine for submitting, editing and approving article submissions as well as a workflow project management system.
- Twiki can be expanded dramatically with server-side plug-in modules that allow for specific handling of functions like calendars, spreadsheets, RSS, barcodes, and so on.
- Zwiki offers a plug-in WYSIWYG HTML editor called Epoz that supports all the major browsers.
Possible benefits of a Wiki at work
Wiki’s provide a great service to many people all over the world. The possibility of a wiki being used for work purposes would introduce many advantages, making the department better organised and stronger. The wiki will be protected from hackers by the site being restricted for personnel members only. There are many advantages for using a wiki in the department. For example:
- The wiki could enable the members of the department to post any problems, and other eomployees would read and edit the post, thus providing helpful advice or even the solution to the problem. As there are more and more posts added to the wiki, it could then be used as a FAQ section for future use.
- Many files can be found in the shared drive of the department. Many of these files can be accessed through the network by anyone from within the department. If these files were to be accessible through the wiki then it would be possible for the workers using the files to improve them thus making the files more useful and not just a waste of hard drive space.
- New starters need to follow an induction routine. This induction would be found on the wiki and the colleague taking part in the induction would have the ability to edit the induction to make it a more useful one for the future.
- When notes are made at a meeting on an important topic, the notes could then be posted onto the wiki for others to view. Then these notes can be improved even further.
- Another great use of a wiki would be to have a department calendar. This would be a calendar where all colleagues input the days when they shall not be in work for some reason, so if someone is required and cannot be found at their desk looking up the wiki can tell where they are.
Wiki’s are easy to create, cheap (if not free) and easy to implement this makes using them within the department a very good idea, for all the reasons stated above.
Risks When Using a Wiki
Many have the assumption that the use of a wiki is not a good idea. The reason being that due to its simplicity it provides a chance for vandal’s to attack the articles. The vandal might add a profanity or inappropriate images to a page, might erase all the content of a page, etc.
However, due to the wiki being used within a department the vandalism is generally expected to be non existent. There are many users (non technical) that may find it hard to use the wiki, but if they were to accidentally alter the wiki then there are some ways for these actions to be reversed. For example:
- Reverting pages back to a previous state is quick and simple.
- The wiki community would all alert each other to the fact that a page has accidentally been altered.
Conclusion
It is evident that the use of a wiki within the workplace would be beneficial to all employees. A fundamental challenge found in all companies is to ensure that information flows through and between the department with as much ease as possible. A wiki is a highly effective means of handling this task. It turns document management into something that can be easily improved by users over time.
