Decide Why You Want a Wiki

Early adopters say corporate wikis work best when they're focused narrowly on a specific project or collection of information, as well as on a specific group of users. The heated debate within the Wikipedia community over its editorial policies suggests that, at the very least, having lots and lots of contributors begets conflicts over wiki management.

"Wikis are very good for a departmental project," says Pagliarulo. "It remains to be seen how this technology will scale for active collaboration among very large groups" and across multiple locations. It's possible, therefore, that if you're a multinational company you might end up with a wiki for each business location or department along with a global one to serve bigger-picture conversations.

Defining the scope of your wikis will also help you determine which software best suits your needs. WikiMatrix.org is a site that can help you identify which software is right for you by comparing options according to price, security, support, features and multimedia options. And Wikipedia itself has a page that compares wiki options.

Later, having a well-focused wiki can help you get people to use it. Alexander Milne, senior director of public technology at the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania, decided he needed a wiki to help his team share documents in a central repository that was easy to access. Wikis appealed to Milne as the solution because, "You just need a browser and you're ready to go." He deployed a free, open-source application called Moinmoin. After three years, Milne's wiki has become the go-to spot for most IT documents. "I have heard on more than one occasion, 'Let me check the wiki' or 'I believe that was documented on the wiki," he says.

Choose Your Software

The software used by Wikipedia is the open-source MediaWiki. MediaWiki and many other wiki applications can be downloaded from the Web and run by an IT shop behind the corporate firewall. Other free applications, such as PBwiki or Wetpaint, may be hosted. These free applications, whether hosted or not, frequently include features like video integration, customizable templates, and version control that allows you to refer back to an earlier iteration of any page.

But there are also vendors, like Socialtext, Paux and Brainkeeper, that provide commercial wiki software options either on a hosted basis or deployed behind a company's firewall, or integrated with other corporate systems.

Each approach has its pros and cons. Not only must you make trade-offs between cost, functionality and support, you also have to determine whether you want to let end users download and manage the applications by themselves. What's more, employees might already be using homegrown wikis; you have to decide whether to let these be or migrate them to a corporate platform.