Motivating and enabling organizational memory with a workgroup wiki

Workgroups can struggle with remembering past projects and sharing this information with other groups in the organization. In a case study of the deployment of MediaWiki as a publishing tool for building organizational memory, group members' motivation to document past projects increased. A browsable collection of past projects allowed for discovery of past work, building the reputation of individuals and the workgroup, and development of transactive memory within the workgroup. The "anyone can edit" feature, frequently touted as the main benefit of wikis, had both benefits and drawbacks in this implementation. Group members did not feel comfortable making substantial edits to others' content but did occasionally use the wiki to coauthor content and also categorize and link to others' content and fix typos, particularly when asked to help.