I’ve been looking into Wikis. When I first went on a Wiki and saw the edit button I was nervous about pressing it. But curiosity overcame me – “What you are really going to let me change your page?” This struck me as being much closer to Tim Berners-Lee’s original vision of the web where he envisaged people as both producers and consumers of information rather than what happened: most people are still just passively consuming content. Most net users (myself included) still only produce email content. If you check the dates of my blogs, you can see I only blog very occasionally.
So it was nice to come across this article that covers the implications of Wikis very nicely Wiki Wiki Web. The article also explains how Wikis relate to other simple publishing medias such as blogs and newsgroups.
I think we are going to more about Wikis. I am going to get one going to see if I can use it as a project development tool for a collaberative Open Source project that I’m trying to get going. The idea is that rather than write mission and vision statements and planning documents in Word or Email I pop them straight up onto the Web where they can be seen.
So principally I see it as a easy publishing tool that allows me to create html documents to which I can add standard hyperlinked cross-references in addition to any structure I decide on in the begining.
But I guess I’m hoping that the Wiki will provide a platform for collaboration and reaching of consensus on some of those issues that always need deciding on. And then perhaps more importantly being a logical place for publishing those decisions. In effect providing a kind of group memory. Check out Corporate Wikis for a starting place.
