based on my personal experience most of the wiki project's seen in reality failing silent, means they start with more or less enthusiasm but end up in either
- content silos with outdated, bad findable information chunks
or - unused part of the companies intranet / IT infrastructure
or - derived by only a handful contributers and users
by the way there are wiki projects out there (internet -> wikipedia, intranet) which are successful.
what makes them successful?
in my personal point of view, each successful "information process" requires at least
- definition of common information lifecycle
- who has to create which kind of information?
- which criteries must be fulfilled to define a information object as usable?
- which kind of subject matter expert must a involved for which kind of information
.... - and common information taxonomie
- what kind of information must be maintained
- what kind of common classification do we use
- best practices for structuring the information
.... - and people who create, maintain and use the information
- training is required
- advantages and usage of information must be part of common understanding => people must see personal benefit in using and maintaining the information
....
the most successfull wiki project Wikipedia provides the mentioned guidlines all in an open and collaborative way (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:About#Contributing_to_Wikipedia)
one thing does not work is to setup a wiki platform and post a link to all potential users without any additional hard work.
always remember: providing information not more but not less than hard work. the more value a information must provide the more hard work is required to create them.
