this is an interesting issue, interesting enough to make me contribute for the
very first time to this list. I'm not a native english speaker, so please
excuse any aberrancies.

setting up a collaborative platform is one thing, but convincing people to share
their knowledge is much more complicated. I once created an online environment
for interactive professionals, so that they could share their experience and
knowledge with less experienced professionals.

what seemed like a good idea though, even in terms of free self-promotion for
everyone involved, turned out to be a fiasco. it took me years to realize that
people behave very cautiously in these situations, and not because they are not
aware of the value of their knowledge, but mostly because their knowledge is too
precious to be exposed to critics or to be shared without any tangible benefit

what I did was to identify the most collaborative people, convince them to share
their knowledge and then to show to everybody how cool these guys are, how cool
their experiences are, and so forth. soon lots of other guys started to
collaborate too.

it's what we call here the "me-too" behavior :)

rene


Pamm Schroeder <pammschroeder@...> wrote:
We want to use SocialText (wiki tools) to start creating our own internal
Wikipedia as well. I was originally concerned that people might add content on
topics that they really have no expertise in. But I don't think that's been the
case in Wikipedia.

Now I'm starting to think that the bigger problem may be that people won't share
their valuable expertise because they're not aware that it's valuable.

I'm very interested in hearing from others what your experiences have been in
getting people to "brain dump."

John Robb <jrobb@...> wrote:
Dear K-Loggers,

I don't know if you have had the chance to check out Wikipedia yet. It is an
online encyclopedia. If you haven't, it is a a wonderful resource on a host of
subjects (and in a variety of languages with nearly 200,000 articles published).
Here is a link:

http://en.wikipedia.org/

It is built using WikiWiki software, which is essentially software that lets
people add pages to a hierarchy of pages (essentially a Website) or edit pages
that are already published to that hierarchy. It is very free form.

Dan Gillmor recently published a column on it in the San Jose Mercury News.
Here it is:

http://weblog.siliconvalley.com/column/dangillmor/archives/001709.shtml

He marvels (as I do) at the fact that so many different people (that had in many
cases never met) could come together to build such a high quality resource. He
writes:

A Wiki engenders a community when it works correctly (my note: it helps to have
a benevolent dictator on hand). And a community that has the right tools can
take care of itself.

The Wikipedia articles tend to be neutral in tone, and when the topic is
controversial, they will explain the varying viewpoints in addition to offering
the basic facts. When anyone can edit what you've just posted, such fairness
becomes essential.

``The only way you can write something that survives is that someone who's your
diametrical opposite can agree with it,'' says Jimmy Wales, a founder of
Wikipedia.

For companies or organizations interested in building their own knowledgebases
on subjects specific to their needs, a Wiki may be just the ticket. My
suggestion is to flesh out a hierarchy with the help of a core team of
interested people, set the ground rules, and let the contributions fly. It is a
nice compliment to organizational K-Logs.

Here is a list of Wiki software available:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wiki_software

Here is a tutorial for editing a page and ground rules for editors at Wikipedia:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Policies_and_guidelines

and

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:How_to_edit_a_page

NOTE: some advanced versions of Wiki software can make editing a page even more
basic (read: less markup lingo).

Sincerely,

John Robb
http://jrobb.mindplex.org

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