Wikipedia and Washington politics, or how to “test[…] the limits of collective smarts and integrity”.

On Capitol Hill, Playing WikiPolitics

As [Wikipedia] becomes one of the most heavily visited spots on the Internet, it’s testing the limits of collective smarts and integrity. But when it comes to Washington, where intrigue and passions run high, keeping such a public record is a particular challenge. Not only is there the obvious temptation to tinker with an opponent’s bio, there’s the whole subjective nature of political truth itself.

Problem is: these issues do not only arise in politics:

Other open-source ventures on the Internet have proven productive; software developers have successfully designed and improved hundreds of online programs like Linux […]. Online marketplaces such as eBay Inc. rely on customer-satisfaction ratings to help buyers self-police their communities.

But, human nature being what it is, the experiment doesn’t always work. Both the Los Angeles Times and The Washington Post […] have aborted projects that invited open critiques of their editorial content after being deluged with crude comments.

Can collaboration really scale?

Mikel Maron est en train d’expérimenter les wikis au seins du PNUD, le programme de développement des Nations Unies, et l’expérimentation se passe plutôt bien!

This is a pretty new approach for the UNDP, but the signs at this early stage are already positive. The start is purposefully small […] if it’s successful, the hope is for organic growth into different working groups (rather than top-down dictations of appropriate technology). There’s been intranets and workspaces and complicated initiatives galore, yet the primary way collaboration occurs is within word documents attached to email! We’ll be watching to see how it develops over the next few months; at this point, what the wiki becomes depends on the organizational culture shift.

Lien

Comme beaucoup d’organisations ils ont tout un tas d’applications hyper chères que personne n’utilise. La collaboration se passe par email et documents Word. Arrive le wiki, installé en quelques jours et quasiment gratuitement, et les habitudes commencent enfin à évoluer. Extraordinaire tout ça.

(merci nico pour le lien)

Mikel Maron is experimenting with wikis inside the United Nations system, and it seems to be going pretty well!

This is a pretty new approach for the UNDP, but the signs at this early stage are already positive. The start is purposefully small […] if it’s successful, the hope is for organic growth into different working groups (rather than top-down dictations of appropriate technology). There’s been intranets and workspaces and complicated initiatives galore, yet the primary way collaboration occurs is within word documents attached to email! We’ll be watching to see how it develops over the next few months; at this point, what the wiki becomes depends on the organizational culture shift.

Link

They seem to have all these huge and expensive apps, and people still collaborate with emails. Then wiki comes in at a very reasonable price and the true changes in mentalities finally happen. Amazing!

(thx for the link nico)

Information week: How To Use Wikis For Business

Anyone who’s worked on even one team project in an enterprise can tell you what a nightmare document management can be. E-mails follow divergent paths. Spreadsheets and Word documents get passed around, and nobody’s quite sure who has the most recent version. […]

Enter the wiki: collaboration software that solves all these problems yet, unlike many traditional content management systems, remains simple enough for non-technical employees to use.

Une lecture intéressante pour 1) tous ceux qui cherchent à comprendre en quoi un wiki peut être utile pour une entreprise 2) les valeureux employés qui tentent de promouvoir l’usage d’un wiki dans leur entreprise. (via weblogger.ch )

Information week: How To Use Wikis For Business

Anyone who’s worked on even one team project in an enterprise can tell you what a nightmare document management can be. E-mails follow divergent paths. Spreadsheets and Word documents get passed around, and nobody’s quite sure who has the most recent version. […]

Enter the wiki: collaboration software that solves all these problems yet, unlike many traditional content management systems, remains simple enough for non-technical employees to use.

Nice reading if you try to understand how wiki can help your business or if you are trying to promote the usage of wikis in your company. (via weblogger.ch )