Dennis Kennedy

I've had so many of my friends suggest a wiki as the answer to just about any question lately that I start laughing when another of them says, "What about a wiki for this?"

I've seen limited success in my own own experience with wikis, in part because everyone seems to lurch from one tool to the next wiki "flavor of the month." However, there is no question that wikis are fascinating tools for collaboration and the Wikipedia is certainly a wildly successful proof of the concept.

However, there's always been a problem of explaining a wiki to someone not familiar with wikis, blogs or much else about technology.

Today, I read an interview of Ross Mayfield of SocialText that explains the concept of wikis, and the promise of wikis, as well as I've ever seen, and with enthusiasm. I found the explanation and discussion very helpful and recommend the interview as a good starting point for anyone who wants to learn what all the fuss about wikis is all about.

The money quote:

"We have people ripping out their intranet and replacing it with a dynamic wiki. . . . So, the people are just setting the dynamic wiki utility up themselves. Then, really interesting stuff starts to happen. . . . The difference is that when you reduce the barrier to contribution, and you entrust the users to work with their own information, you end up increasing the amount of information that's available. It increases the probability that, if I'm searching for something, it might actually exist."

As for my wiki-bearing friends, I'm with you, but you really need to pick one tool and stick with it.

[Originally posted on DennisKennedy.Blog (http://www.denniskennedy.com/blog/)]

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