Towards an Infrastructure for Knowledge Communities

In this position paper we summarize our efforts to design, implement, and deploy the infrastructure for conversationally-based knowledge communities. We believe that managing knowledge or expertise really means providing an on-line workplace within which users can engage socially with one another, and, in the process, discover, develop, evolve, and explicate knowledge relevant to shared projects and goals. Our basic approach is to design systems which, by making users and their activities visible to one another, can make ‘knowledge work’ visible, thus increasing its importance to coworkers and to the organization as a whole.