Why Wikis Work

Christoph Schneider
City University of Hong Kong

Workshop summary

About the workshop

As wikis are increasingly being used inside and outside of organizations, numerous views have been offered for why people are participating and why wikis work. One perspective, which sees wikis as sustainable ecosystems, focuses on the volume of contributions and general activity rate. Another perspective stresses cooperation and thus the importance of practiced governance. Yet another perspective considers the process of content creation and thus targets the importance of ease of access and convenience of contributing, while yet another perspective highlights the importance of the technology that enables all these social processes. While each of these aspects may contribute to why wikis work, an integrated perspective will help to implement and use wikis so as to reap the greatest benefits.

Goals

This workshop is intended to bring together researchers and practitioners interested in unearthing why wikis work.

Specifically, this workshop aims to:

offer the ability to share and discuss classic and emergent views of why wikis work,
integrate perspectives from different researcher and practitioner communities,
identify common factors that make wikis work, and
develop a set of “golden rules” that help making wikis work in their respective settings.

Call for participation

A key component of the workshop will be discussions surrounding diverse and potentially controversial viewpoints regarding what makes wikis work.
Participants are encouraged to document the conclusions reached by the discussion groups on the Why Wikis Work Summary page.
Currently, I am looking for participants willing to give a (~5 minutes) presentation about their viewpoints. These viewpoints may include: