Future of wikis panel - notes

(Missing initial 1/2 hour)

Colas - How many people have tried to install wikis and got fierce opposition from the IT department? (3-4 hands raise)

Ross Mayfield - we love that problem, because it drives people to us. Things start small. People install open-source wikis. Over time, you can get to enterprise-wide scale. Some things break down at 150 people (Dunbar number)

PThoeny - I'm now working on a book on wikis in the workplace. We've done interviews. We see patterns. Wikis typically start grassroots. Then there's a . For every successful wiki there's a wiki champion. There are often several wikis popping up in on enterprise, each with his champion. The larger wikis become, the more you see consolidation efforts.

Ross - Now we're getting top-down sales opportunities. An executive spends the night drinking red bull and playing with Wikipedia, thinks this is great, then hands the matter to some poor schlep to get this deployed. When the champion of wiki is the head of the IT department, it's great. They recognize that IT sucks and they should let users what they need.

LudovicDubost - Offline wikis: shouldn't we have something that really behaves like the online app?

Ross: Totally.

Ward: I use rsync and run a local copy

Comment: Unison, rather than rsync

Ross: Internal Wiki is a spam-free medium, but occupational spam is a problem. I use RSS to track changes to our wikis, not just the wikis, but I also subscribe to weblogs and such.

Q: User types, differential access?

JohnAbbe: Something that would address a lot of things is SisterSites. It's a cheap way of integrating instantly those grassroots things in the enterprise and let people be aware of one another. If you're on a page on a wiki, it lists all the wikis that have a page by that same name. http://c2.com/cgi/wiki?SisterSites

Commenter: We think a lot about technical solutions, but there are skills that are not in the program, but are rather people, social, mediation skills. Lots of stuff that is embedded in humans.

Brandon: This is inefficient. The people in this room need to find one another and talk to one another.

Ross: We need more case studies being shared, more patterns of how to use it.

Ross: Bias towards transparency. Intimacy gradient. The reception area is for everybody, then some rooms are farther to the back and are more restricted.

DK Jennings: I work for the US government, we don't really have a choice as to access. Business logic.

JimmyWales: People who are unfamiliar with the wiki way tend to be suspicious of the openness.

Ross: I have potential sales that accomodate the control mindset, but I let them go because it doesn't really serve the users.

EEK: real-time synchronous editing just blows my mind.

Ward: The user experience of keystroke-by-keystroke simultaneity, as in SubEthaEdit, I think they've got it right. Not sure you can find the refs anymore

Ross: Look at the open-source Synchroedit.

PThoeny: For me it's about offering structured wikis for dummies.

MarkDilley: Baby steps for the newbies, highlight the new stuff, may make wikis more approachable.

Comment: Crazy companies innovating like that, providing ways for people to compete with completely different ways of working.

Comment: Data-intensive pages. I think PurpleNumbers are just ugly as sin, but I may want to see them in certain context.

EEK: I think that PurpleNumbers are pretty ugly too.

Sunir: Concluding comments.

Ross: I think Jimmy will win a Nobel Prize. Things are changing really fast. I think we have the opportunity to For There's a lot of room for innovation still. Sharing practices and code is dreadfully important.

Jimmy: IN part for public wikis, we need to tackle WikiSpam. The options are closing down the wiki, or dealing with the spam The public image of wikis shouldn't be "it's just like email".

Ward: I like the line about "the biggest party". But it's not about getting drunk, it's about doing constructive work too.

Seb: This event isn't going to last forever. Everyone should leave their names on the topic pages they care about so that we can have an ongoing offline wikisym. (See also BOFs)

Dirk: Everyone, please leave feedback on how we should run the next conference on the Feedback page