[wiki] philosophy
editThere is a pressing need for large-scale sites that support low-hierarchy networks of trust, in which people who share an interest in some activity or process or result can work together towards shared goals and develop skills over time. As they learn about the intricacies of a complex task, these groups need a simple way for more experienced and trusted community members to take on mentoring and reviewing roles in the community, refining its workflow. All of this secure in the knowledge that everyone in the community has always been welcome to improve almost any aspect of it -- its contents, its process, and its goals.
This kind of facilitation -- via website or otherwise -- can mould masses of inexperienced but dedicated people into networks of creators who together can write excellent books, translate the world's babel,develop erudite and tremendous encyclopedias, produce brilliant art and photography, build pyramids, and develop new scientific frameworks.
The original wikis were bound up in wiki philosophy, something with roots in older groups and dialects of sharing, but which Ward Cunningham has managed to evoke very steadily over the years, without entangling the core philosophies and memes with his own ego. Wikipedia when it began was almost identical with Nupedia -- the same founding team, the same group of internationally interested volunteers -- but it had an added sense of agency, the capacity for anyone to come in and tweak any and every part of the system, from bottom to top, and this wiki quality of both philosophy and implementation. t also quickly attracted a core group of people who loved the idea of wiki more than the idea of a free encyclopedia, but weree game to try this new target for their social and intellectual endeavours.
Wikis are reasonably good at supporting ease of participation -- they naturally encourage free manipulation of most of one's environment. They would be better if their limitations were fewer... if it were possible to reach into a page and manipulate its style and ambiance as easily as you can manipulate its text... if history and revision information floated up to the normal display of a page rather than being hidden behind a tab. These things will come in time. And other wildly-manipulable environment such as Second Life will come into being and find their uses.