Wiki In The Workplace Survey

We're hoping to get some discussion going about WikiInTheWorkplace, the subject of our survey on the use of Wiki in workplace settings. We've put the survey together as part of a course on Computer Supported Cooperative Work (CSCW) with Gary Olson at the University of Michigan's School of Information.

So, if you have ten minutes and any experience with Wiki in the workplace, please go take the survey (uses javascript and cookies):

http://www.surveymonkey.com/s.asp?u=87711184252

You can preview and or comment on the survey here: WiwPlainTextSurvey?

And then let us know what you think, by adding comments to WikiInTheWorkplace. Many thanks from the CooperativeWorkWorkGroup .

Comments on the SURVEY belong on this page -- comments on the broader topic of WikiInTheWorkplace are better placed on that page:

Hey we forgot to ask for some *comparative analysis* in our survey! How many of you have experience with other collaborative software -- such as Lotus Notes, and its ilk -- how does Wiki compare? Or, is it apples & oranges? - TomAllison

Wow, gotta love the Wiki: LotusNotes & WikiWikiVsLotusNotes (the first has some discussion, the second one is asking for comments from anyone who's done the comparison...)

There have a been a few comparisons from the TWiki vantage point at http://twiki.org/cgi-bin/view/Codev/TWikiVsOtherProducts

I took a look at and took the survey (by the way, feel free to post a plea for participants on my online facilitation list on yahoogroups - there are some wiki die hards on the list and we recently had a small thread on wikis. http://groups.yahoo.com/group/onlinefacilitation/ I like how the survey shaped up and bravo on the process/org parts. I think that is fundamental! Yay! (remember software is not social, people are!!) [Nancy White]

BOTTOM:

At the risk of prematurely forking the conversation, we'll leave this page for discussion of the survey itself and add another for the broader discussion.

Visit the discussion about WikiInTheWorkplace!

[conclusions...]

-----Original Message----- From: Yates, Nathan David (Dave) Sent: Monday, December 05, 2005 7:42 AM Subject: Corporate Wiki Survey iPod Winner Announced

Dear Survey Participants –

On behalf of Dr. Ann Majchrzak, Dr. Chris Wagner, and myself, we want to thank you for participating in our survey of corporate wiki users. [...] All of your responses are extremely valuable to us and we look forward to analyzing the results in January and providing you feedback.

Some interested results that you reported from your survey responses so far (also posted on Twiki if you belong to the codev or support groups):

Ratio of the Number of Lurkers to Contributors, on the average, for the Corporate Wikis: 80 lurkers to 37 contributors, or just over 2 to 1.

Ratio of Respondents that contribute to corporate wikis because it greatly enhances their reputation in the company/field to those who see little reputation benefit: 15 to 49, or under 1 in 3 (Sorry, no fame in wiki use – yet!)

Ratio of Respondents that contribute to corporate wikis because doing so is very helpful to them personally: 64 to 6, or almost 10 to 1 in favor of wiki use.

Ratio of Respondents who feel their organization has greatly benefited from having the corporate wiki: 39 to 18, or over 2 to 1 odds of visible, positive gain to the organization.

Of the responses received so far, over 70% of respondents post new topics, ideas, or comments to their corporate wikis but seldom engage in any 'restructuring' activities, such as major edits, rollbacks, refactoring, paragraph rewrite, or paragraph integration. Only 15% restructure the wiki sites. Why so few?

Once again, thank you for your participation. The worldwide response has been fantastic and has shown how valuable and versatile corporate use of wikis can be.

Best Regards,

Dave Yates

On the question of restructuring wiki sites:

It's probably done infrequently due to ownership and authority issues (a bigger issue on corporate wikis), and because it's hard work. -- JeffGrigg