Clay Shirky comes to the defence of Wikis after the recent debate surrounding the use of a Wiki to enable quick collaboration around the RSS standard sometimes-known-as-Atom. The piece has some interesting comments, but none from the reluctant gardener Sam Ruby as yet
Personally, I can’t really get my head around Wikis, partly for design reasons but also because they often end up like a game of Chinese Whispers and I don’t buy the pitch that they remove personality – quite the opposite. I think the unfocussed charge may stick
Wikis, like blogs, are *such* simple tools that it feels odd to focus on the tool so much rather than just use them in a context and with a purpose. The Atom Wiki is doing that, to be fair, but it is too early to tell whether it is working.