Response – What is Wiki
Writing in response to the article published here.
One thing I noticed is that their information is wrong on the origination of the WIKI concept. It actuall originated in the novel Earth by David Brin (his comments are about halfway down the page). (curiously he also talked about the drowning of New Orleans in the novel). Cunningham may have been the first to create an active WIKI but he didnt create the concept.
Structure, in the begining, of a WIKI can be a problem. Only by adding and cross linking does the wiki become something more that a regular webpage. I know that most of you are not Star Trek fans but a great Trek WIKI and model to look at is Memory-Alpha. It shows how linking and cross linking leads to great depth. I have posted and edited on this site fixing grammar issues. SO I collaborated even though the only credit I get is a mention in the page edit list for pages I fix. Also a second edit to the first.
The authors discuss process over product in relation to WIKI. I agree that this is the view to have. Given that anyone can edit a Wiki page it is foolish to consider it “complete”. This is also the danger of Wiki and internet writing in general. It is quite tempting to keep futzing around with writing because it is easy and cheap to do so. An author has to konw when to step away and say “Enough!”.
