What the Heck Is a Wiki?

While the blog is all the rage these days, its poor cousin the wiki may end up having a deeper impact on how we do our work. A wiki is a group blog that can be edited by its readers (as opposed to a regular blog, which one person writes and everyone else reads).

Wikis are more like conversations. The few well-known wikis include Wikipedia (the online encyclopedia where anyone can submit an article or edit an existing one), Wiki Travel (an amazingly comprehensive travel guide written by travelers), and Wikibooks (textbooks written collaboratively). But most wikis are limited to private groups and are used to manage corporate projects or to collaborate in a quick and dirty way with colleagues.

Although the name sounds like a pathetic woodland creature, “wiki” actually is the Hawaiian word for “quick.” (The wiki creator was in search of a name for his new project and found his inspiration while waiting at the Honolulu airport for the airport shuttle bus called the Wiki-Wiki.) A wiki is usually started by someone in charge of a project who is looking for collaborative feedback on his or her idea. Startups like Socialtext and JotSpot provide hosted wikis for as little as $9 a month (free in some cases). Even major companies like Nokia and investment bank Dresdner Kleinwort Wasserstein are adopting wikis. (Dresdner is gradually replacing parts of its intranet with them.)

By Erick Schonfeld

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