Blogspotting asks "What's a wiki good for?"

"Wikis are structurally capable of handling conversation, but it is not their forte; instead, wikis excel at collaboration. They are intended to maintain a series of unique documents as their content evolves and to provide an organic means of organizing that information."

I think this is in part true, but I think that the bigger issue is that facts aren't always facts. Lots of things are open to interpretation, which is why writing about history isn't a science. The way you put together "unique documents" will change the interpretation of history.

In the light of the Adam Curry debacle, the L.A. Times wiki that was overrun with adult content and a recent controversial biography of John Siegenthaler, I would like to suggest that a wiki is best used as a tool for communication in large communities which are bound and defined by other means... (within corporations, for example, where contributors are accountable to one another by way of the organisation) but that the open-access to editing format is vulnerable when editors have no other obligation to one another. So is a wiki an intranet tool but not an internet tool? Hmmm... Sociology...

Filed in: wikis, wikipedia, webtech