Recently, Linux Insider asked whether or not wikis had “lost their mojo.” Wikis might be 14 years old now, but I’d beg to differ with those who say they’ve faded from the limelight.
To clarify, the piece didn’t suggest that wikis had been abandoned as a failed platform, only that no one was talking about wikis from “a public relations/mindshare perspective.” While it’s obvious that the media has take a shine to the Twitter clique (among others), wiki communities and businesses have hardly been ignored. The love affair that news outlets have with any Wikipedia story that materializes is evidence enough of that.
Regardless of media attention, it’s certainly true that the honeymoon period is over for wikis. Many companies have installed wiki software expecting the miraculous to happen, and finding only frustration with another unfamiliar technology. Providers of wiki hosting and software have abandoned wiki as a branding term in droves.
Still, many leading enterprise collaboration platforms retain a wiki as their core functionality, and most top hosting services are committed (for now) to staying explicitly labeled as wiki. And as you may have noticed, the major wiki communities of Wikipedia, wikiHow and Wikia aren’t going anywhere soon.
The piece goes on to point out that the ethos of wikis has found its way in to the zeitgeist in a big way. It’s now passé to simply be able to comment on content that needs fixing, and digital collaboration is a hallmark of forward-thinking communities and businesses. The experts polled by Linux Insider seemed to take the position that the technology world had extracted the essence of wikis and duly cast them aside.
But I’d take a different tack. It seems that the the spirit of wikis has become so influential that the technology itself has melted in to the background — still ubiquitous, just less flashy.
In other words, wikis haven’t lost their magic. They just let you borrow some of it.
{ 1 comment… read it below or add one }
The Wiki Well is alive and well (no pun intended) and for many it is a resource that can be trusted for unbiased information untainted by so called information sites with hidden (monetary) agendas.