Wiki's as a Tool

As with any collaborative effort to create knowledge, the underlying assumptions of the collaborators are a key factor in determining the success of the effort.

Clashing assumptions may sink the collaboration, especially if the difference involves a key aspect of the goal being pursued.

I realize these observations are trite, but there seems to be a lot of hype about wiki's as a collaborative tool these days.

Here's two interesting discussions of some collaborative challenges associated with wiki's:

• A Harper's Weekly article on the Wikipedia battle between Clinton & Obama supporters/detractors.


• An older Nick Carr discussion of the fragmentation of Wikipedians.

This sort of thing always reminds me that knowledge exists on a spectrum from "difficult to deny" (e.g., most of physics) to "speculative & subject to complex discussion with no hope of agreement" (e.g., most of philosophy & theology). (my definition of knowledge is "that which is used to turn data/info into decisions/actions").

To the degree that a collaborative goal involves knowledge at the speculative end of the spectrum, you'll probably need agreement on fundamental assumptions if you're going to be successful.

If you can't get agreement on fundamental assumptions, you're likely to spend all your energy on that issue...leaving none to pursue the initial goal.