Collaborating with Wikis

Abstract

{Excerpt} As the internet revolution presses on, computer-mediated communications through social (conversational) technologies also seem to advance every day. (Social sites such as MySpace and Facebook, commercial sites such as Amazon.com and eBay, and media sites such as Flickr and YouTube, to name a few applications, have become verypopular.) Given the fast-rising number of these technologies ,the confused might recall that people form online communities by combining one-to-one, one-to-many, and many-to-many communication modes. The commonality is that all tap the power of new information and communication technologies and the resultant interconnectivity to facilitate engagement, collaboration, and sharing of tacit knowledge. Wikis are one such form of social technology, designed to enable anyone with access to contribute or modify content using a simplified markup language. They are used to create and power collaborative websites. Some believe that such open, peering, sharing, and global tools ring the death knell of old-school, inwardly focused, self-contained corporations.