Below you can find some of my (Ryan Singel) notes and extra reporting done in response to your suggestions.
A note on my note-taking process:
I usually tape interviews (after asking for permission) and type them up as I talk on the phone.
Then later I review my notes, decide which portions I want to quote verbatim and then return to the recording to get the quote exactly.
So I'm putting up some of the notes, which are incomplete in some spots, but should be close enough for you or someone to decide what is a better quote.
Then drop me a note or post in the Comments what you want to use and I'll clean it up from the original recording.
Ward Cunningham Interview Notes
What I like best about wiki is kind of in its little bundle of tech there's a big idea -- that to support creativity you have to let go. Particularly if you are an expert you have to let the the less or slightly diff expert have a go –
Computer programing – was off with risk aversion, with creativity comes risk, want every programmer, it was a shift let ppl who weren't experts, who didn't have a voice in the software engineering world talk about how they developed software
Also a degree that a company, command people to be creative -- in kind of a guerrilla movement fashion wikis spread through organizations, more like steps asid3e and lets it happen
I am absolutely and totally a wikipedia fan, everything I care about with wiki they understand completey kept with every thing they do, through tremendous growth, they have saved that character, just through size and volume, how impressed that they provide so much support in diff languages, need for each culture to find its version of npov they pre-license the text to be readily translated by whoeve4r is so inclined, who else has ever done that in the world– that much text, translating and bringing their own wrestling – it’s a tremendous social process– I kind of imagined on that scale, but had no idea had o and its awesome
A day doesn't go by somebody doesn't say how are we sure that wikipedia works.
Its just that we don't have a way of reasoning about things at that scale, If I ask how does a family stay together, we understand families. we don't understand global networks of like minded people
ON REAL SPACE WIKIS
Well I'm been to a number of those kind of real-space wikis – I'm lucky to get invited to things that are populated by some pretty elite ppl, sometimes and world famous isn't what's imp and its ready to act that's important, I would hate to see a well put together conf not get the respect, because it has a good program that was put together in advance
Camps seem best for something going on and it doesn't have a following and the first meeting and ppl aren't sure what is and isn't the idea you could come and present something and judge the interest and
Wiki really excels when want to talk about something and are looking for a new way to frame a subject, by not having a frame it gives ppl permission to vote with your feet, go where you are finding a hint of an interest, when we know more there's nothing wrong with exploiting what we know
We know what an encyclopedia is, what's really interesting is all the ways its not an ency, if took out the encyclopdia from wikipedia, what's left is wiki -- I'm working with guys in graffiti research labs, met at maker faire , read graffiti on wikipedia, darn if they don't have profiles of various, so that a ny graff artist has a profile on wikipedia, because someone cared , that's not very brittanicaish , its exactlty what I needed these were trying to reframe
ON THE FUTURE
The thing I think is so important is that our vision of the web is more than a shopping mall, and wiki stands out there as shopping mall-not. I hope there is lots more, I thik the creativity that is possible in the world wide network of computers far exceeds what wiki has done , wiki so almost there and I just glued three pieces together and it happened wwith a little more work, How much work is it going to take to make wisywig wiki universal, but somehow doing it universally and part of it was there was browser war happened in there sometime and the opportunity to do it right was lost, we should be outraged that that little bit of future has not arrived, but I don't think they can spoil it forever, there will be someday trivial wysiwg
Seen a lot and weakness is they aren't wiki editors they are html editors, interms of wikis, quick linking and linking structure still presumes you are linking to a page that exists, I had to get around this, you got this fork to work like a spoon , but it really isn't a spoon. And make it not universal and not deliver viruses – happy future that I'm looking forward.
Yoz Grahame, Partial Notes
wikipedia is very competitive environment, especially for eczema relief treatment niche, basically when putting out how to give users control, like many people trying to figuure out if wikipedia is the exception or the rule,
what have seen in load of environ is to give users more control is that where users have power to have more effect on envir they do it for the better, not just in text and workoing in env and this happens in play evironment
Lamba mu, closest spirtitural heir is second life, They both have a lot in common, not just virtual avatar environment, but both hand over a huge amount of building control to their users, not just to create objects, but to program these objects. the idea that if you put logic in the user's hands and let them take control that are operating in this shared env and which can work with other people's code as well, that where you get exponential laws taking off.
Although it seems that with wikis that people are just editing text, there's something more important going on, which is the editing of structure. And quite often in the discussion parts, like the talk pages of wikipedia and the forums going on around these thing, that's where you see process evolving, instead of communities changing the logic of the underlying system, they are dynamically reconfiguring their own underlying process logic. That's how wikipedia evolved, how do we manage this huge amount of incoming data? They evolved a process. The great thing about wiki is that wiki is such a blank and restructtable slate, it means we are able to evolve with them.
How wikis are used as intranets, several companies that use wikis as internets get very mixed success – one of problems with wikis inside companies, integrating fully into company process, piece of advice is to make sure any answer is on the wiki, and for that have
atlassian
www.atlassian.com/ – australian company make two popular internet products one is bug tracking system, other is a wiki called confluence – excellent product closed source, nice features, so its very polished, most are rough around the edges --
When brainstorming design for H2G2 the structure is much more hierrachial and goes through an editorial process, Douglas Adams wrote stuff for it, and he had very keen ideas, and we took him to lunch one day and we presented him with all these problems, the kinds of problems that wikipedia deals with, how do we deal with trolls or people posting all this weird stuff. And he said, oh its easy. Evolution. And then he folded his arms and sat back with a self-satitsfiied smile on his face. And I remember thinking, "that's all very well, Douglas, but show us the fcuking code."
Apart , its wikipedia embodies that evolution very strongly. One of things embodies most is that evolution is a ruthless bastard. It's not nice at all, lots of -- I don't know if that's the kind of evolution Douglas had in mind or not.
one of most imp things about wikis is version control.
Wikipedia if it didn't have page history it would be a complete mess