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Corporate wiki

A corporate wiki is a wiki for business use.

Uses

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A wiki can be used to collaborate and track changes to various documents (such as written policies and procedures), while keeping all previous versions on file in case of need to refer back to them later. Wikis have a lot of useful collaboration tools like version control, watchlists, etc. that software like MS Word lacks.

Usually the problem with written procedures and policies is that they go out of date almost immediately. Therefore, a company may have some documents on the shared drive that are so outdated as to be misleading. However, the alternative is that updates to procedure are announced by email, and then if someone new comes on board, they might not have that information because the email was sent out before they were hired.

Steps for establishing a corporate wiki

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Possible steps for establishing the wiki could include:

  1. Bring up the idea with co-workers, and find out people’s level of interest in the idea, experience/skill with wikis (creating pages, editing templates, performing sysop actions, etc.), and what role in the wiki they'd want to have (reader, editor, sysop, etc.).
  2. Figure out who will be on the wiki leadership team in charge of administering the wiki. Ideally, this should be a cross-departmental team.
  3. Get someone with some clout (e.g. a supervisor or manager) to submit the request to IT to set up the wiki.
  4. IT will need to identify an IT person who knows (or will learn) how to install, configure, and upgrade MediaWiki.
  5. After the wiki is set up, create a few wiki pages explaining how to use the wiki, what its purposes are, a brief set of policies/guidelines for content and collaboration, etc.
  6. Have a "soft launch" in which the wiki leadership team, and others whom they tell about the wiki, begin adding useful content to the wiki, so that the wiki isn't completely empty when the company has the hard launch, and so that other employees can follow the example of what already exists when they create their own content.
  7. Have a "hard launch" in which the chair of the wiki leadership team sends out a corporate-wide email announcing the wiki's existence and purpose, and providing a few links to useful resources, and contact information for people on the wiki leadership team who are able and willing to provide assistance and answer questions about the wiki.

See also

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