We’re beginning to use wikis in our office. Like weblogs, they’re a relatively new medium that, to the unexposed, at first elicit sort of a “huh … so, like, what is it again?” Well, if weblogs let you publish an online news source our journal, wikis let you publish an online reference document.
Like an encyclopedia, each page in a wiki is about a particular topic. But here’s the catch: any user can edit that page over time, and you can link to other topics within each page. As a result, high levels of collaboration create references that evolve with time, increasing in relevance and currency as more and more people improve and edit the page.
Example: Imagine if your encyclopedia’s entry on NASA, rather than being written and edited by one or two people who were only marginal subject matter experts, was instead constantly being edited by hundreds of people who were all subject matter experts. And imagine if you could instantly link to other entries on topics mentioned in the NASA entry (like “Mars Odyssey” or “Russian Aviation and Space Agency”). You’d end up with an awfully robust NASA entry.
And that’s how the largest wiki in the world is used: Wikipedia. Here’s the NASA entry, and if you think it needs something that you can contribute, feel free to edit it … anyone can. Compare its free, layman-produced content to that of World Book, and draw your conclusions … oh, wait! That’s right! You can’t … because World Book requires a fee to use their encyclopedia. Ok then, compare it to the Encarta entry, and draw your own conclusions. And to learn even more about wikis, visit the Wikipedia entry for wiki.