After talking yesterday about Versionista’s Web Versioning Tool that provides the wiki-like ability to show a revision history for static websites, we got to thinking about some of the other interesting new tools for collaboration and sharing out there that borrow heavily from wiki-technology.
Here are a few that have come across our radar in the past couple of weeks:
• MixedInk – Advertising itself as “Wiki meets Digg”, MixedIn is a pretty interesting environment for collaboration. The site was recently used by Slate magazine to collaboratively write an inauguration speech for President Obama. Over 450 editors worked on the final product.
MixedInk works by allowing writers/editors to create documents and thoughts, share those thoughts, mix and match ideas and create new documents with the best of previous ones. Everyone then votes on which versions they prefer. While it’s still relatively new, MixedIn provides a very interesting opportunity for consensus building and might be a technology/website to be watching in the future.
• DebateGraph – DebateGraph is a pretty cool way of visualizing intricate arguments and issues. As noted by the BBC News a few weeks ago, it was recently used to diagram the various intricacies and complexities of the conflicts in Gaza. The website provides wiki-like functionality to invite everyone to modify and contribute information to “create and reshape debates, make new points, rate and filter the arguments” as well as provide a Creative Commons project to “increase the transparency and rigor of public debate everywhere.”
• WordPress Wiki Plugin – Instinct recently released a Wiki Plugin for the popular blogging environment WordPress. Essentially, allowing blog managers/writers to make any WordPress page or post “wiki editable” to anyone logged into the site directly from the front-end. They can also see most recent and past revisions. The plugin doesn’t provide full wiki functionality such as the ability to go back to old revisions (you can only look at them), or a list of recent changes. Still the plugin is certainly an interesting way of bridging the gap between wiki and blogging technologies.
Of course, wiki is more than just the underlying technology for collaboratively editing websites. It is as much a set of philosophies for how to build and work together than make it such an interesting and fulfilling way of communicating and sharing.
To their extent, the aforementioned technologies share wiki and wiki-like features and tools – and certainly DebateGraph and MixedInk feature ethos in the vein of “The Wiki Way” – but it remains to be seen how these new tools (and others) further the spirit of collaboration and reshape the wiki conversation. (Naturally, reshaping the conversation of “Wiki Philosophy” is a large part of Wiki philosophy.)
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