A WikiWiki

I’m not a fan of public ablutions. I lived in res for three years and the reality of communal everything is something I got over about 2 and a 1/2 years ago. And for some unknown reason when someone says the word ‘communal’, my brain automatically associates with the idea of a commune. Which in turn makes me think of dirty hippie multi-person living spaces from the sixties. Suffice to say ‘communal’ tends towards the negative spectrum in my vocab. So when my attention was brought to the concept of ‘communal ideas’ as a part of the open source movement, I thought twice about whether it was positive or negative.

But with the predominantly impersonal nature of the Internet where there is not face-to-face interaction, the sharing and ‘communing’ of ideas is the only thing that seems to maintain the human element of community when online.

So to supersede the arguments surrounding patents and intellectual property, I decided to look at some of the ways in which intellectual property is shared on open source platforms. The most interesting form that I found is the social knowledge collaboration tool of the ‘wiki’.

Officially (as in according to the ever helpful Wikipedia and Oxford English Dictionary Online) a wiki is a website that people can contribute their own information to. Wikipedia itself is currently the most used wiki. Official statistics show that at the end of 2006 there were 151934 people a day visiting the website.

(Although it is very interesting to note that Google is in the process of establishing an expert-contributors-only wiki website called Knol)

But the benefits of wikis are not just limited to a database of interesting information. They can also provide support for professionals in particular fields, helpful ‘how to’ information and sources for class projects (although no Wiki is allowed at University… I wonder how Knol will be received??). But it is also good to see that wikis in general contributing to the social and sharing nature of Web 2.0.

For more cool stories about specific wikis and open source ideas that aren’t just software or hardware… watch this space!