I am frustrated at the on-going misrepresentation of what wikis really are. Call it mis-branding, if you will, and that is fatal to any product. Up until the John Seigenthaler episode, I was just slightly irritated. Now it’s getting really annoying.
A bunch of articles have appeared recently in the MSM (mainstream media) inspired by John Siegenthaler’s understandable upset at seeing his bio misrepresented in wikipedia. The MSM has jumped on it and, in order to put things in context for the average reader, the articles consistently describe ‘wiki’ as being Wikipedia, Wikibooks, the Katrina Wiki, or a few other ‘name-dropable’ wikis
It seems every time I find a story about wiki, it is written in the context of the big, public wikis. This creates a perception in the public’s mind that is only half true. I haven’t done a scientific study, but I would estimate that the ‘context’ of wikis portrayed in the MSM is 50-1 in favor of portraying wiki as the big, public version.
Ask the average person on the street (not a techy) what a wiki is. Most have no clue. Of those that do, most will assume it is Wikipedia. Gimme a break.
Just a few examples - ZDnet has recent articles about various well known public wiki sites, an Esquire article on wikipedia, and a Wikibooks article
Informationweek has articles about Wiki usage , online virtual civics experiments ,and Educational websites . This last one really reinforces the mis-branding issue with this quote from an 'analyst':
“The Wiki phenomenon offers the added element of user interaction, which appeals to college-educated Web users' sense of altruism by allowing them to add or correct online content,” Nielsen/NetRatings analyst Gerry Davidson, said in a statement.
This may be somewhat true, but to the casual reader it reinforces the perception that Wikipedia is wiki - it is maintained, vandalized, and corrected on a regular basis by hordes of complete strangers from all over the planet and ALL wikis work like this.
This Informationweek article about a recent IT convention in Las Vegas still makes the obligatory reference to Wikipedia as ‘the example’ but at least it acknowledges the existence of PRIVATE wikis for the enterprise that are NOT subject to all the hand-wringing about public wikis:
Although IT departments may initially be reluctant to bring apps like Wikis into the enterprise, eventually user demand for such easy-to-use yet powerful apps will drive them behind the firewall anyway. A flexible service-based architecture will make it easier for companies to bring in a best-of-breed Wiki application that will deliver real value quickly, rather than wait for enterprise app vendors--ranging from Microsoft to SAP to Siebel--to add (typically crippled) Wiki functionality to their application suites.
With all the negative press about the vandalism of wikis, of course IT departments are reluctant. I think a lot of IT Management also has the same perception of what wiki is as the general public. Wiki vendors, especially those with commercial enterprise products (Socialtext, JotSpot, and Confluence to name a few), had better realize they have a bit of a public relations challenge here.
Where are the stories about private usage of wikis by groups of people that KNOW each other and are not as concerned with their members trashing the wiki as they are with getting more work done at a higher level of quality in less time?
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