Lauren Trees wrote an excellent post addressing the question of how wikis can practically help your business. She cited the recent New York Times article on Diplopedia as a successful example of wiki use in an organizational context:

Success stories like this one are particularly valuable because they explain the tangible business benefits behind the slick new tools (and as the article says, “if wikis can work at the State Department, with its fabled bureaucracy and attention to protocol and word choice, they can work anywhere.”) I think most people know what a wiki is by now and are familiar with Wikipedia, but that doesn’t mean they grasp how a wiki would work in an enterprise context.

In the comments, Eric M. Johnson raised the important question of whether one can restrict reading and editing privileges too much, and end up with something that just looks like a content management system. Here’s how I replied:

This is the distinction between what I call “Internet Wikis” (ex: Wikipedia) and “Enterprise Wikis” (ex: the wiki your organization would use internally). The reality inside an organization is that some information does need to be secured, either from reading, editing, or both.

The principle I advise my consulting clients to use with an enterprise wiki is: “Share as much as you can. Secure only what needs to be private.”

I see both Internet and Enterprise wikis are two different types of true wikis. On the internet, being 100% open is necessary to building healthy participation levels from a virtual community. In an organization, the people are already there (employees), so the wiki needs to be focused on allowing some control over access to meet the variety of needs and uses and become indispensable to employees.

To be clear on one thing, though, wikis and content management systems are fundamentally different. A content management system puts restrictions at the end of a process (i.e. people can submit content, but it must be approved before it’s published), while a wiki puts any restrictions at the beginning of a process (i.e., a person has to have edit access to contribute to a wiki page, but once they have access, anything they contribute is immediately published and readable by others).

The chief place where access is important with Enterprise wikis is at the interface between the organization and the outside world. Enterprise wikis typically require an employee to log in (just as they would log in to access their email, the corporate network, internal WiFi, etc.) but beyond that, there’s typically a lot of access and openness between teams, departments, etc.