Recently Laurence Lock Lee from Optimice, James Matheson from CustomWare and Wiki guru Stewart Mader from Grow Your Wiki got together and published the findings of a study they have done into the value of wiki participation. As the real powe of a wiki is in the community it engenders rather than the database itself, using network analysis techniques is appropriate, and several other methods aimed to provide a level of validity through triangulation.The study is available here on the Optimice website and outlines the details of the project and some quite positive results for enterprise use of wiki technologies.
The target of the research was the well known Wikispaces.com website and Social Network Analysis (SNA) techniques show that new leaders are emerging in the community. The study summarises other results of the project this way:
The combination of wiki mining and direct surveying has shown that members who are active participants i.e. collaborators, editors, commentators or page creators are gaining the most value from their membership. (p.8)Well worth the read.
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