Socialisation in Peer-to-Peer Knowledge Management

IT support for knowledge management that builds on rather standard information systems architectures, e.g. a Web server with underlying database technologies, has proven beneficial in many situations where knowledge processes supported in this way were comparatively rigid and where the value of knowledge could be reasonably easily be assessed. However, these assumptions do not hold for less rigid knowledge processes; thus, more decentralised solutions have been proposed. With SWAPSTER we have built a Peer-to-Peer knowledge management platform that avoids some of the issues that detriment centralised solutions. This platform is surveyed here. We also show methods that support new ways of socialisation enabled by the Peer-to-Peer platform.