Socialtext and Atlassian Confluence are two key players in the enterprise wiki field. Hence it is not surprising to find out that each one is supporting a venture aiming at spreading the use of corporate wikis. Both are interesting initiatives, though they differ in their scope and details.
The Wikinomics Playbook is a wiki opened by Socialtext in order to let people write the "last chapter" of the Wikinomics book. The book is all about providing insights on how the business world will be reshaped with the emergence of new trends, best symbolized by wikis. On the wikinomics wiki, people are asked to contribute in order to write what could become the perfect business book: always gathering ideas and experience from a wide array of writers and up-to-date, collaboratively reviewed...
However, although the main page of the wiki has already been seen more than 2800 times, it has been edited only 34 times. The most revised page has been changed 53 times. This is a good indicator of the discrepancy that exists between reading a website (which most people are used to nowadays ;-) and actually contributing to it. The wikinomics initiative is great and provides much interesting information, but is also a reminder of all the path still to be covered in order to broaden the use of wikis, even amongst people somewhat used to them.
This is where Wikipatterns becomes interesting. Started and mostly contributed to by the newly appointed Atlassian wiki evangelist Stewart Mader, its aim is to create a repertory of patterns that foster the adoption of a wiki under various environments. As the wiki has just been started there is not that much content posted yet, but it may become a valuable source of information about why people do end up using a wiki - or not. If you want to find out more about how a wiki could be used in your company, it is a good place to start - though it would be even easier to contact us and ask us any question you have on the topic.
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