May 11, 2005

Those Wacky Wikis

Posted by Kevin | Print This Article

Via Steve Rubel I see that Wikipedia is now the second-most-visited reference site on the Internet. I have no doubt it will be number one within the next month or two. Which brings up the issue of wikis, which I haven’t talked about on this blog yet. In the past week I received three emails from people who read the Association Management article asking if I knew anything about wikis.

Wikis fascinate me. In a nutshell, wikis allow multiple people to write and edit webpages. (Sounds really simple, but companies and organizations have spent thousands of dollars developing collaboration systems to do what wikis can do, pretty much for free.) Changes can be tracked and different versions compared. \"Discussion\" pages attached to a document can show the various authors talking back and forth about changes being made.

Wikipedia is the best example — it’s the \"open source encyclopedia\" and anyone can edit articles, or add them. I use it as a reference all the time (and have gotten in the habit of fixing typos). You can also use wiki software to limit edit access only to those with permission, and wikis don’t have to produce \"encyclopedias\" — they can be used to produce almost any kind of document.

Imagine the possibilities. Much of the work done by many associations — standards, \"bodies of knowledge,\" best practices, etc. — can be improved/enhanced/made easier through the use of wikis.

In fact, one can easily imagine communities developing around wikis used for such purposes … without the need for an association.

While \"blogs\" are great tools, they’re not going to fundamentally change associations. Wikis will. I’m going to grapple with this issue a little more down the road, and I’d love to hear what other people think.

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