Why #4: Ownership Cont’

From a purist standpoint, my last post could be read as if all information could be owned by everyone.  Well, that isn’t quite true.  For example, HR may have a list of holidays they give the company.  They don’t want anyone going in there changing these days (although I think they may like that!).  Also, management may have information that they don’t want everyone to see, let alone play with.

There is plenty of information that either you don’t want people to change or even see. In either case, almost all Web 2.0 products allow you to have some type of permissions: Read only, Read/Write, No rights, and more.  You can assign those out to particular people or groups of people depending on how your software is set up.

This allows for maximum control at the same time.  Now this may seem like a contradiction, but we can’t be cavalier about the proprietary information our companies have, either.  As a general rule, If the only answer you can come up with is “control” than you better look for something different.  In the case of HR or management, there are legitimate reasons for limitations.  There is nothing wrong with this.  But, if communication and learning can be enhanced by sharing, let it fly!

photo credit: ~~Jen~~