Internal documentation - protected or open ?

In an ideal world, most internal (and external) documention, whether we're talking about user manuals for software, SPDs, or pension plan information would be held in a wiki, where users could update and edit content freely. Mention that to most HR departments, however, and the response is often "No - impossible". There is a lot of sensitivity around the accuracy of documentation, as the HR internal web site is increasingly viewed as authoritative and definitve. The prospect of users (ok employees) being able to freely edit text that has been checked and peer-reviewed, probably run past lawyers, and checked again, is just a non-starter. But there's still a need for dialogue, for feedback, and even user to user (peer to peer) conversation or help. I've thought for a while now that a nice compromise would be the "commented manual" pattern - as shown here on the MySQL documentation site. You can see that there is "official documentation" that is fixed, and underneath, clearly differentiated by using a different colour, are user comments for that page, which, for areas of concern or trouble, turn into user to user help, feedback on the documentation, etc. So, fixed documentation with employee involvement - the best of both worlds ? Technorati Tags: internal, employee, HR, documentation