Knowledge management by wikis

Wikis provide a new way of collaboration and knowledge sharing. Wikis are software that allows users to work collectively on a web-based knowledge base. Wikis are characterised by a sense of anarchism, collaboration, connectivity, organic development and self-healing, and they rely on trust. We list several concerns about applying wikis in professional organisation. After these concerns are met, wikis can provide a progessive, new knowledge sharing and collaboration tool. 1 Grassroots knowledge sharing During the last decades, the sharing of information and knowledge has gone through an unheard rapidisation. Both the amount of information shared, as well as the speed in which this happens, has taken a huge flight. In many fields of progress, professional organisations were more advanced then ‘amateur knowledge sharers’. Remarkably, in some fields this has changed over the years. On the Internet, many succesful grassroots initiatives have popped up, that still didn’t make it to the somewhat static and controlled environment of professional business organisations. Think of free-software projects, but also of free-information projects, as wikis, weblogs, and open news sites like Indymedia. (Möller, 2005) In this paper, we will examine on of the most popular and upcoming knowledge sharing enablers on the Internet: wikis. Consequently, we will discuss why wikis are not (yet) adequate for a professional environment, and what could be changed to have companies adapt the power of wiki-based knowledge sharing too.