Dynamic Self-moderation in a Corporate Wiki to Improve Participation and Contribution Quality

Contribution to a corporate wiki for the purpose of knowledge transfer can be very low because of continuously pressing tasks, a chronic lack of spare time, and motivational reasons. This is a problem because the wiki fails to achieve its purpose of collecting valuable knowledge, and becomes less attractive through this over time. We present a reputation-based system that socially rewards employees for their contributions, and thereby increases their motivation to contribute to the wiki. In a four months trial of productive use with two work groups, we could show that our concept increases the quantity and quality of articles in the repository, leads to higher activity in general, and draws employees to the wiki who had not contributed before.