Cool Thought: The Wonderful World of the Wiki

I have a unique outlook with collaborative authorship compared to some, in that a couple years ago I actually tried, with some friends of mine, to create a collaborative 'wiki' website. It was a lot of work. We didn't really have access to a lot of the open source web-based programs that many people have today, we programmed everything from scratch. It really was quite the experience. We failed in the long-term scheme of things—we didn't ever complete the site the way we wanted to and eventually the rest of life crowded out our time-suck of a project that was our wiki.

I feel we did succeed in a couple of ways though. We were able to get a somewhat functional version of our wiki operating and contributed, for a time at least, to the online open-source information community. I really believe in what wikis have to offer. Obviously there is a challenge to having content that is can be edited by anyone on the internet, as a place for useful information. I think therein lies the problem with peoples' thinking, when you hear that "anyone can edit" content on a wiki, it paints this idea of "online anarchy" where "anything goes" and "nothing can be trusted." The reality is much different and there are many checks and balances in place to help refine wikis as a reliable source of information.

I suppose I'm referring mostly to Wikipedia and the like sites, in the last few ideas, but they seem to get the most media attention. The reality is that Wikipedia goes through a very similar process of editing as most "reliable" scientific journals, except everything happens on Wikipedia in real-time and instead of a handful of peer-reviews from "experts", there are tens-of-thousands of people reviewing.

Wikipedia and the like serve an important function in our society—free, comprehensive information, presented in an easy-to-understand format—service that can be accessed instantly. It's funny, wikis, Wikipedia and the like; seem to be serving the original functional the internet was intended for. Like the initial resistance of so many to the usability and reliability of the internet, maybe the wiki family and all their kin are just biding their time to find the same acceptance.