I am working on the next chapter of my book Professional Wikis that will be available in the Fall of 2007. The question that has come to mind is this: when should you wiki? Judging from the response of some of my undergraduate students, the difference between a weblog, a wiki and an e-commerce site is not entirely clear. Likewise, I've seen business people and educators throw wikis at problems (as the latest cure-all), only to see them splat against a wall, and slowly slide down it into a puddle of ooze.

For example, a certain government agency has decided to launch a wiki that will capture all of the undocumented but highly useful information that floats around in people's heads. They are facing two sources of internal resistance. First, they have a hierarchical culture where every communication gets approved by proper channels. Being propositioned by some young twenty-something about brain-dumping your wisdom into a wiki after having every utterance scrutinized by your superiors for all of your career is like suddenly being told by your wife of twenty years that she thinks you should loosen up a little and get a girlfriend. The second source of resistence is the fact (or perception) that once your brain gets dumped, it becomes communal property and while you may be fairly certain that you will continue to get your paycheck, you are not so certain that you will continue to get credit for your faithful fidelity and the cultured wisdom you have nurtured for so many years. Owning information is a source of power; that's why it's so hard to get people to share it.

Universities are also experimenting with wikis. Wikipedia is such a wild success, the reasoning goes, then wouldn't it be fantastic if I have a wiki for my class and instead of letting students write papers for an audience of one (which is me) they can write them for their peers - their fellow students - and for posterity - all the students that will follow. Therefore, a classroom becomes a source or repository of knowledge. You even dreamily fantasize about students correcting and expanding upon the postings of other students in a communal editing effort where everyone is both the student and the professor. The only problem is that students have no interest in correcting (or updating or expanding) another students work. What's in it for them? They piss off a potential date and don't really have much to show for their work. There are two reasons to go to college - to learn and to acquire documentation that you have learned in the form of a transcript or diploma. I've used papers I've written in grad school as part of my portfolio. What kind of portfolio do I have if it was all done in a wiki?

All of this has lead me to a certain conclusion: wikis are appropriate in certain proscribed circumstances, but human nature will prevent them from being useful in others. Wikis got their start being used by programmers to document software projects. This is an ideal use for a wiki because there is a strong incentive on the part of the programmer to participate. There is a social contract at work. The software needs to be documented and one programmer needs to know what another programmer has done so one programmer keeps his documentation updated with the understanding that other programmers will do the same in a mutual back-scratching arrangement. Since documentation changes often, it produces very little offense when it is changed by someone other than the author. More often than not, wiki edits in this context are viewed as updates to the content rather than as corrections and this can make a huge difference in the mind of the participants.