Wiki Viability Questioned
There seems to be a revolving discussion about th effectiveness and utility of Wiki technology and the resultant authority. One camp is quick to point out that Wiki works and it is incredibly accurate and self-correcting, generally relying on the highly democratic nature of Wiki as its power source. The other camp is equally resistant to the Wiki forces. Many people in this camp believe that Wiki is error-prone exactly because of the open editing nature of the community and at the mercy of the flippant idealists. Others in the oppostion are opposed to the technology itself finding it either incomplete, stateless, or cumbersome.
Sean Corfield points to a Register article, "Wikipedia 'to make universities obsolete" that discusses the pro-wiki camp's arguments. The comments provide an interesting nugget as well in terms of what would make wiki better (quoted below):
You need to be able to restrict who can edit the wiki to stop random destructive types causing havoc.
You need a history of each wiki entry in case you need to go back to a previous version to check what has changed over time.
You need to have a community of people who have a vested interest in keeping the information correct an current. Even if they don't have the rights to edit the wiki themselves, they can notify an editor.
It helps if the wiki is part of a site that provides some sort of a proper structure rather than a collection of random facts that are linked only by keywords. Personally I think a wiki makes an excellent compliment to a blog.
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