Wiki: Geek Collaboration

I've heard a lot about "wikis" as a collaboration tool lately and I'm trying to get them figured out. I think I have the concept down...but I think I have a long way to go.

If you don't want my amateur analysis go here to read a wiki philosophy FAQ.

BTW, wiki is short for wikiwiki, which means "quick". The buses at the Honolulu airport are the wikiwiki buses. :-)

Basically, a wiki is a system that manages web pages that anyone can edit and is encouraged to do so. That's right, anyone.

So, I could have a web page up that has Frequently Asked Questions for my online community, for instance. If I wanted the members to add, remove, edit, change these questions without my explicit involvement, a wiki page/site would allow it. The reasoning would be that collectively, the members would create and maintain a better FAQ than I could do on my own. I'd be involved of course, but everyone else would be about as involved as me. This could work in work groups, etc.

On high level, it's a little like open source software, except members don't add/edit/improve code over time, they add/edit/improve what others have written in the wiki.

It's hard for new users, it has it own linking and formatting convention, it's disorganized, it depends on the good intentions of like-minded users, it has its own subculture, it's not pretty- it's fabulously geeky.

Here's an example based on my knowledge so far:

I start a wiki and invite 20 friends to come help me define the principles of online community building. These 20 folks become part of the wiki system and are free to start posting their thoughts on these principles by creating their own wiki pages. Some will, some won't. Initially, we all go in different directions and things are disorganized- there isn't collaboration.

Then, the basis of wiki, editing and linking, comes into play. We start to look at each person's principles and see elements that we like and some we don't. We change the wording of someone's principle to be clearer. We copy someone's principles into our own version. We see the directions and styles of others and comment in their wikis. We brainstorm on a wiki. We link to others and they link to us.

Over time, consensus starts to emerge. We notice that there are a few pages that represent what we are all working toward. Eventually a single wiki page becomes our final version of the principles of online community building. And even then, we can all tinker with it until we finalize it and move on. It becomes a product of everyone's collaboration and interest.

I think this is one way a wiki could be used. There are many more I'm sure. I'll be keeping my eye on this stuff...

Most of what I've learned came from a site that is now known as THE wiki. It is a community of folks using a number of wikis for many many purposes. It was founded by Cunningham and Cunningham, Inc. years ago

SocialText also has a wiki workspace.