From Chapter 2 of Dan Gillmor's Making the News book. See Wikified Books for an outline of his shared draft chapters. This post contrasts 'zines, blogs and wikis. Changes to the original content marked by edit and /edit.
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Wiki

Can absolute editorial freedom result in anything but chaos? Yes, when it's in a Wiki.

Ward Cunningham, who invented it, writes: " The concept may seem quite weird at first, but you will get to love it. Wiki is a composition system, a discussion medium, a repository, a mail system, and a chat room; it's a tool for collaboration. In fact we don't really know what it is, but try it and explore some links - it's a fun way to communicate!"

"What Is" (an online information technology dictionary) puts it this way: "A wiki (sometimes spelled "Wiki") is a server program that allows users to collaborate in forming the content of a Web site. With a wiki, any user can edit the site content, including other users' contributions, using a regular Web browser."

The crucial element is that any user can edit any page. The software keeps track of every change. Anyone can follow the changes in detail. As Cunningham so aptly puts it, all Wikis are works in progress.

The Wikipedia, a massive encyclopedia, is the biggest public Wiki, but far from the only one. There are Wikis covering travel, food, and a variety of other topics. You can find a Wiki category page on Cunningham's site (http://c2.com/cgi/wiki?CategoryCategory). One of the best examples of a Wiki as a colloborative tool to create something useful is the Wikitravel site (www.wikitravel.org), which brings together a variety of viewpoints from around the world.

Wikis are going private, too. They're increasingly used behind corporate firewalls as planning and collaboration tools. edit]Some of them are finding their way into the newsroom [/edit.And entrepreneurs are even starting to form companies around the technology, extending it for wider uses.

Wikis are making inroads on campuses as well. My co-lecturer at the University of Hong Kong, where I help teach a new media course each fall, set up a Wiki for our students to use as a planning platform for the 2003 class project. The project looked at a controversial proposal to fill in more of the harbor for development. Students posted their outline and story proposals on the Wiki, and used the site to flesh out the ideas. Instructors could watch over their shoulders without interfering except to offer guidance. The Wiki was perfect for this task.

edit Their use in journalism, at least the traditional kind, is almost nonexistent. Wikipedia has become a unique source for coverage of fast changing events with a social editing process that represents a group voice, in contrast to the individual voice . As[/edit] Wikis get easier to use, they will become a particularly well-suited tool to compile information from disparate sources, collected by people in different physical locations.
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