Say what you will about Wikipedia, but it has generated one enormous collection of information, in a wide variety of languages, and while it does suffer from time to time from vandalism, the trend is to continuous improvement, and the largest assembly of content/information/knowledge we've yet seen.
And courtesy of WIRED, and a contextual ad alongside my gmail account - I found that Wikipedia is 7 years old as of today, January 15, 2008. Kids... they grow up so fast!
Wikipedia may still not quite be universally known, although it is getting harder and harder to find people who will honestly stare at me, blank-faced, when I bring up Wikipedia. Those who do tend to still not have a computer at home, or (god forbid!) not have internet access at work (very much a possibility).
After 7 years though, the controversy still broils about expert researchers and vetted processes, versus amateurs (or "the masses") and the end results of both processes.
The most puzzling lesson (or question) that enterprises are still asking, and will be asking for some time to come is "If Wikipedia has worked at all, how can we take what has worked there, and do it for ourselves? What are the benefits? What are the risks?"
We don't ask such a set of bold-faced questions in our current survey on Enterprise 2.0, but those are some of the underlying aspects that we're testing for. Is there value in Enterprise 2.0? How do you measure it? How do you foster adoption? Is it free? SaaS? Does IT help or hinder? Is "emergence" a lot of hooey, or is there something to it?
Should you happen to be interested in the subject (survey link), and right around 30 minutes of time to answer 67 questions around the topic of Enterprise 2.0, the survey (survey link) closes at end of day (-5 GMT), this Friday, January 15, 2008.
Thanks for your input (survey link)- and stay tuned for the final report, slated for late March, and for an array of Enterprise 2.0 training courses, that will begin to be available in March as well.
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