An article on Business 2.0 asked the question of "Why Commercial Wikis Don't Work?" They give several examples of the miscues and foibles connected to the recent attempts that have been made. You can find them here.
We need to understand that the Wikipedia model looks on the surface like it's anarchy and everything goes, but in reality it's not. There are some loose rules and guidelines that need to be included for any of it to offer value and make sense. Could you imagine wikipedia not having any categories and people simply writing what they wanted where they wanted, and the reader then being left to find what is relevant to them? It wouldn't even be interacted with after a couple of minutes of looking.
Yet that's the way some larger companies have went about developing wikis, because they didn't understand what is really going on in the wiki world.
What I want to do is concentrate on what can make a wiki more relevant and successful to a business.
I like how Chris Taylor said it: "The future of Web 2.0 belongs to sites that give its users directions and goals as well as total control. People need a common focus, a shared obsession, to be productive as a crowd."
Now let's go back to an old word that I use a lot on this site as most people understand what it means: niche. That's all that's being talked about here again. It all goes back to that.
A wiki will work with a niche that empowers users to be in control. But without a niche, i.e. purpose, focus, it will just be a bunch of people running into one another with no coherent content to be consumed and enjoyed.
One way to understand it would be a community garden where everyone has an assigned place to grow whatever they want. You can grow all the things you want there, but still enjoy all the other stuff that people grow that's different from yours, on that same little spot.
The difference is that if you're growing onions, they need to be growing onions too. If they have something else to grow, they go to a different designated spot to grow what interests them. What makes it work is that there is a spot designated for that purpose they can go to.
That's where offering guidelines and goals comes into focus. For wikis you don't have to interfere with a users' content when you offer them guidelines; as people need guidance. Our job would be to provide structure and then let the people write within that structure.
At least for commercial wikis that offer value to readers and those writing the content, this seems to make the most sense.
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