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Wikis
Some things take longer than others for me.
I was quick to grok the blogging thing, reading them, writing them, etc.
I was pretty quick to grok the podcasting and vlogging things too.
RSS made sense to me immediately.
But candidly wikis have taken longer for me.
But I am there now and happy to be at the party. Better late than never.
I've been using wikipedia for a couple years but its only in the past couple months that I have made it my first stop for any sort of quest for knowledge.
Now when my kids ask me a question while they are doing their homework, whether its something about a proton, Antarctica, or Ben Franklin, I click on the Wikipedia button on my browser and peek into the collective knowledge of the Internet users. It is fantastic and it gets better and better every day.
Tom Evlsin launched his hackoff.com project over the weekend and called it a "blook". If you go to wikipedia and search for "blook", there is already an entry on the topic. And Tom didn't put it there because he sent me an email telling me how blown away he was to find it there.
The web moves fast and wikipedia is one of its main beneficiaries.
The wiki concept is simple. Leverage the concept of "peer production" to build knowledge bases that could not be economically created any other way.
Wikipedia is clearly the most visible and most powerful example of the power of a wiki, but the wiki movement is taking hold all over the place.
Just this morning, I blogged about Alacra's wiki for business information. If you know a lot about business information, go there and add some stuff to it. If you want to know more about business information, go there and benefit from the knowledge of others.
The first people finders I saw in the wake of Katrina were wikis that had been hacked together in a matter of hours. They got the job done as well or better than many of the other resources that eventually were deployed against that problem.
We used to use a relational database on our server in our office to log every business plan that comes into our firm. It worked but it was a chore to add new fields or screens. And you had to be in the office to log into it.
In a day or two several months ago, Charlie hacked together a wiki. He imported all of the data from our database, and we had a deal log wiki. But in less than a month, it has expanded to the central resource through which we manage our whole firm.
Why?
Because when we get a business plan or something related to a project we are working on, we just email it to the wiki and its in there the next time we go look at the wiki.
Because when we want to add a screen to capture data on a project or event we are working on, we just add a page and off we go.
And these pages can be shared with whomever we want to share them with.
Because wikis live on the web, not locked in some server in our office, we can choose to open them up, bit by bit, to others we want to collaborate with.
And then we can benefit from the knowledge of others.
Clayton Christensen points out in the Innovator's Dilemma that most disruptive technologies are very simple, easy to use products that lack the power and sophistication of the established category leaders.
But these dead simple tools are adopted quickly because they solve the problems for people in a way that the category leaders don't.
So my experience and my bet is that wikis will take the enterprise by storm. Because they are simpler, easier, and better.
They are proving it already on the web. It's just a matter of time before they do it with even more impact in the enterprise.
Here are two places to start if you want to get a wiki
JotSpot - For consumers and small businesses
SocialText - For larger companies.
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Posted September 20, 2005 in Venture Capital and TechnologyComments
Good post...would be helpful if you post your thoughts on pros and cons of the wiki after some time.
Also curious as to which Wiki software you went with.
Thanks.
Posted by: Michael Parekh | Sep 20, 2005 11:52:01 AM
Additional thought...basic, unstructured Wikis are great to fool around with...but just like in the early days of databases (waaay back when), the issue becomes when you want something semi-structured.
Both Jotspot and Socialtext are good products/services, as are the products from 37 Signals. But to do anything really useful, you need to add structure to the wiki, which means using the scripting language of the service in question.
Some of them are on common standards, but some are not.
Question becomes as one standardizes on one, you're forced to learn the semi-proprietary scripting languages (e.g., Jotscript from Jotspot) of each one that tends to lock you in to that system over time.
Then one's exposed to vendor risk, i.e., what happnes if the vendor disappears tomorrow, and your business stuff is locked in to that software...
Age old enterprise software problem emerges again.
Curious on your thoughts on this as you use wikis for your business.
Posted by: Michael Parekh | Sep 20, 2005 11:58:10 AM
Michael, most wikis have an export function, so the danger of having your data locked forever in a format no longer supported is minimized.
We use Confluence (a product by a company called Atlassian- they make a mean bug tracking tool called JIRA that is nicely integrated into the wiki). They use their own product nicely- I have never seen software with as much useful and up-to-date information provided.
For us, it required some real effort to increase adoption among non technical folks (I work in the marketing dept.) for the wiki, but now that we do, Confluence has become our answer to the eternal redundancy question of "what happens if your best employee wins the lottery or gets hit by a bus (or both)." We have documentation now that was beyond our wildest dreams one year ago.
The biggest opportunity and hurdle will be for wikis that are open to external customer bases, rather than just to internal business groups. Letting the really passionate users of a software provide first level support, offer usability suggestions, etc. sounds fantastic. Managing that, especially for a large customer base, to prevent abuse and vandalism, will be tricky.
Posted by: Jason Carmel | Sep 20, 2005 1:11:53 PM
Fred, welcome to the wiki party!
I did want to respond to one comment from Michael about JotSpot - "you're forced to learn the semi-proprietary scripting languages (e.g., Jotscript from Jotspot)."
The scripting language used in JotSpot is server-side Javascript. With our open REST-ful APIs, you can use any language you want.
I do agree with Michael that wikis still need work to get easy adoption from non-technical folks. With companies like JotSpot, Confluence and Socialtext focused on the problem I'm confident we'll get there.
Ken Norton
JotSpot
Posted by: Ken Norton | Sep 20, 2005 1:18:17 PM
Jason -- The management of external/internal can be handled in a couple of ways. Simply exposing it, via authentication or network infrastructure can defeat the problem from a simplistic point of view. However the abuse/vandalism issue can be handled more appropriately via some kind of weighting/relevance system (tagging, IMO) which gives better results, more relevant content and uses "social intelligence" to handle filtering for a system/company. I don't think building systemic restraints on Wikis solves the problem, because that really takes away what's great about them. Allow the users to determine what's good/bad/relevant/etc, and that simply takes care of abuse and vandalism. Spam/automation restraints are pretty well established, and more will come as Wikis become more mainstream.
Now if we could just get a decent API on 'pedia...
Posted by: Brad Webb | Sep 20, 2005 1:22:07 PM
We've found at Central Desktop that the adoption rate of wikis tend to be more about the TEAM than about the ENTERPRISE.
Most wikis are successful when they are introduced from the bottom-up (from the IT, bus dev or development departments). The success rate seems to be associated with the 'Team' rather than with the 'Enterprise.' (Salesforce.com had success early on with Sales Teams, rather than with the Enterprise)
Like most collaborative solutions, if they are pushed down from the top they rarely get adopted by the rest of the company. Teams will usually seek out 'other' solutions to meet their specific needs, rather than conform their requirements to the Enterprise Application.
I say this because I wonder how successful wikis will truly become at the Enterprise Level. Sure, 'teams' within large companies will use wikis and collaboration tools, but the adoption seems to always be correlated to the Team (usually comprised of ten people or less that proves the wiki's value) rather than with the Enterprise.
Will wikis truly become Enterprise tools pushed down from the top? I fear that when they do, that they will lose much of their value and adoption.
Isaac Garcia
www.centraldesktop.com
Posted by: Isaac Garcia | Sep 20, 2005 2:23:38 PM
Vaugly on topic:
ITtoolbox recently launched an IT focused wiki: http://wiki.ittoolbox.com, think wikipedia but focused tightly on Information Technology.
Actually on Topic:
Navigating Wiki's is hard, you're left to keyword searching. One solution is to add some structure. But as you add structure you raise barriers to data entry. And the strength of a wiki is the low barrier to entry for users to jump on and add some data.
Wiki software developers need to start thinking about a wiki method of organization and categorization. I agree with brad that tags are probably the way to go here, but also some sort of distributive linking technology, where every user can establish links between articles outside the wiki entry (a tag with an end and start points), and the cummulative linking behavior of individuals drives the navigation of the site.
Posted by: josh | Sep 20, 2005 2:40:07 PM
Just wanted to respond to a couple of the comments above...
1. Ken Norton (JotSpot): Thanks for the clarification on JotScript being server side...I didn't mean to imply anything negative by the "force to"/"semi-proprietary" language...lot of the best products have their own implementation in terms software languages and tools. And JotSpot has done some cool things in the Advanced application side...
One suggestion/request: It'd be helpful if you guys outlined some of the unique Jotspot capabilities on the web-site...a lot of folks new to looking at Wikis for business applications would find it helpful to understand and differentiate between generic and unique capabilities of the software.
2. Jason Carmel: Thanks for the input on Confluence...hadn't spent much time on that one...will check it out.
Great thread, all.
Posted by: Michael Parekh | Sep 20, 2005 5:22:44 PM
we used a wiki for a while, but it became cumbersome...
Posted by: charlie crystle | Sep 20, 2005 8:10:22 PM
Welcome aboard, Fred, we've been waiting for you.
Posted by: Ross Mayfield | Sep 21, 2005 4:41:21 AM
i know, i'm even slower than fred, but... if anyone can contribute to wikis (say, wikipedia) than how can a user of any such resource have any comfort as to the veracity of any information? or am i missing something?
i just went and edited an entry on wikipedia. wow. cool. but i entered completely bogus information (but not obviously bogus, rather carefully disgiuised to appear genuine.)
in days of old, having professional editors manage information was a suspect systm (who are those editors? whats their agenda?) but isnt some control better than none?
maybe we are leaving the age of "Question authority!" and entering the age of "Question veracity!"
Posted by: steve | Sep 21, 2005 6:09:39 AM
I agree. I made a bold statement about a month ago..."wikis will have a more profound impact in the office" than will blogs. Don't get me wrong, I think blogs are a powerful tool. They are just more of a "what's here and now" and "one-to-many" communication technology. Utilizing a wiki allows an office to create a stable knowledge base with many-to-many collaboration.
Wikis can be great additions to a web presence too. For example, I consulted a client earlier today on how a wiki can actually make their site more "sticky" (to throw out an old web marketing term) by making them a definitive source for their particular area of expertise.
Interestingly enough, I actually spoke to the key differences between blogs and wikis on our blog earlier this week.
Posted by: Ken Yarmosh | Sep 21, 2005 11:35:21 PM
>>how can a user of any such resource have any comfort as to the veracity of any information?<<
Some of that depends on the strength and breadth of the community that supports the wiki. In many cases erroneous info is quickly corrected, and vandalism is quickly erased. But that's not the main point.
Wikis are not a substitute for edited and fact-checked material. Their benefit is in aggregating info that you would not have seen otherwise. Sometimes you can tell from the logic (or whatever) whether the info is trustworthy or not. Often you'll be pointed in directions you wouldn't have gone before. Then, depending on your needs you can do your own fact checking if that's required.
Remember that an edited publication is not without bias or blinders either. But it's heavy binding and appearance in a reference room can make us forget to look for that.
One more point - in a book called "The Wisdom of Crowds" the author shows that when input from many diverse individuals is aggregated UNDER CERTAIN CONDITIONS it can be more accurate than even the smartest or most experienced person in the group. In some cases Wikis can provide those conditions.
Posted by: John Seiffer | Sep 22, 2005 9:21:40 AM
Great article ! It's great to have more people value wikis !
To Michael, concerning the 'lock-in' possibilites of the scripting APIs:
You are perfectly right, there is a real danger here and if wikis become a core way to share information, these tools will become a platform on top of which lot's of things will be build. The more the platform are open, the less there are lock-in risks.
Exporting and using 'some' standards are not a sufficient solution. REST and Javascript are open standards and that's good that these standards are used. But the core API is still proprietary and it creates a 'lock-in' from your data and your knowledge to the tool and to the vendor.
Now it's going to be difficult to allow to transparently move data around different tools. With such tools, this would mean the tools are almost the same and this would reduce innovation.
But there is a solution to reduce the vendor lock-in, which is open-source. If the vendor is proposing the solution as open-source, it will give the possibility to work without the vendor if it is ever needed (the vendor is no good or if it goes out of business).
XWiki is a solution competing with JotSpot and SocialText which already has many adopters, including large companies.
Posted by: Ludovic Dubost | Sep 24, 2005 6:38:19 PM
Another note - wikis will not work very well in conditions where people want to hoard knowledge because they believe it leads to job security.
This kind of thinking may seem insane to some of us, but might be more common than we wish to believe.
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