Wikis can bridge the transfer gap between the desktop and the corporate server

If you combine a wiki as a personal information manager (PIM) and a wiki as an enterprise content management (ECM) tool/system (I.E. my last two posts) you can create a seamless environment where ideas/information can be composed, refined, interrelated, shared, group edited, etc. I.E. You can support the full lifecycle of ideas and information in general. Basically more ideas/information get into the system because it's easier and personally useful to do it (PIM), and more ideas/information get shared in the enterprise because of the PIM/ECM integration (facilitated by the shared wiki format).

Wiki + permissions = Enterprise Content Management (ECM)?

Wikis are in essence free form information editors, I.E. they are very good content management devices. Wikis usually have multiple authors, so some servers need/use permissions to control malicious editing, but few seems to have added read permissions. With read permissions the wiki may become viable at an enterprise level where there is a lot of sensitive information. Enterprise level software can cost lots of money (read: big opportunity for Wiki software companies), so why aren't there Wiki ECM solutions running around (Hint, hint, hint)? Certainly there are some challenges (search over permissions, granularity of permissions, how to convince customers they want this product, etc), but they've already been solved by many companies. Perhaps wikis are just too new...

Wiki as personal information manager (PIM)

Wikis are very powerful, but are currently used almost explicitly to manage multi-user editing of content (see wikipedia.com). They could be just as powerful for a single user to manage information, including opinions, contacts, document (essays, presentations, etc), URLs, quotes (from other content), email, IM history, etc. I.E. The wiki becomes a free form information editor.