Enterprise wikis (the ones primarily used at work for things like meeting agendas and minutes, managing projects, documentation and reports, etc.) and Internet wikis (Wikipedia and Wikitravel are popular examples) differ in several significant ways:

1. Organization and Access

Internet wikis often have all content housed in one “place,” so that anyone can access the entirety of the site’s content. Enterprise wikis, by contrast, allow for information to be organized in individual workspaces based on project, department, team, etc., and access to those spaces can be granted to specific people.

2. Security

Internet wikis are often open for anyone to read and edit, sometimes without even requiring one to login. Enterprise wikis are typically not open to the public or partially open, i.e. some spaces are open but others are not. To access an enterprise wiki, you have to login, and your account has to have permissions set so that you can access particular spaces. Permissions can also be set at the page level, so that a person might login, access a particular space, and have editing rights on some pages, but only viewing rights on others.

3. Integration

Enterprise wikis are designed to allow us... read more >>