WikiIsTheNewFrontier

ThoughtStorms Wiki

Spring 2003 :

Now I'm convinced ...

Wiki is the coming thing ... a couple of years ago it was weblogs, and weblogs are still extremely important. Everyone with an opinion ought to have one. BUT weblogs are focussed on NEWS. If you want to collect a timeless body of information or discussion you need something else. That's where Wiki comes in.

Wiki is still the wild frontier of web genres. SlashDot style discussion groups have gone mainstream; weblogs have gone mainstream. Wiki is next ... in a couple of years, everyone will be talking about them, wanting one.

Wiki is rather old... But, never mind that, do you think wiki will go mainstream as well?

Yeah, wiki has been around for some time. But then the first weblog was written by Tim Berners-Lee in the early 90s. And only now are we really seeing them become significant (not as individuals but the discussions arising out of swarm weblogging). Actually, I don't know if the swarm effect will be so pronounced in wiki because I'm starting to find wiki's other characteristics (speed, easy refactorability etc.) more compelling than the shared community. I think more conventions are going to arise (interwiki, CategoryCategory) and some more safety (eg. backups, easy revision to earlier versions) will make wikis more acceptable to the mainstream. (Some wiki will always be wild, but some will get tamed.) And people will start to get it's virtues, understand how to use it.

People discovering wiki

http://www.infotoday.com/searcher/apr03/mattison.shtml

Need to be running a dynamic server is a barrier (now) for many people. Is the solution to stick with lite/CGI WikiEngines, or maybe run a desktop app that renders/uploads static pages? (For now, you can always pay me to host it :) ) –BillSeitz