In his keynote, Ward examined some differences between wikis and blogs. Apparently, whenever some unknowing reporter writes something about blogs, wikis inevitably are referenced and Ward Cunningham is contacted to explain what a wiki is. His answer? A wiki is a work made by a community; The blogoshpere is a community made by its works. “Wikizens can come and go without changing a wiki’s identity.”
Wikis may still trail blogs in terms of user interest, but that seems to be changing. Measured as a count of Google searches with the word “blog” or “wiki” in the search terms, the gap between interest in the two media applications is closing. Wikis seem to be less than two years behind the blog curve. However, in countries like Japan and Germany, wikis have already caught blogs.
Hypercard — his other knowledge mangement baby in the 90s — never had a chance to get to that level. Before wikis, Ward Cunningham transcribed hypercard stacks of a small object-oriented database intended to track where ideas originate in an organization. He had person cards, idea cards and project cards, linking them all to each other when relevant. The problem, though, was the lack of universal access. “The difference between hypercard and wiki is that the wiki could be used worldwide. Hypercard could only be used if you were at my desk.”
Ward compared wikis with two other areas of interest, Agile development and the Open Source movement. They all attempt to make a correction to overcome a barrier to some end-user group. With Agile, the barrier is the development plan. Developers work in teams taking risks that ultimately serve the customer with better code. In open source, the barrier is licensing that prevents developers from distributing improvements to code. By adjusting the way property is perceived, programmers can contribute to that improvement process. With wikis, knowledge is the area of correction, and privileged access to that knowledge is the barrier to overcome. A team for a wiki consists of those who pay attention (including those who pay attention in preparation for editing), assuming good faith until proven wrong.
“There has to be this level of trust. Once you break that, it becomes a content management system that uses wikitext,” says Ward. “I really appreciate that Wikipedia let’s me edit without a signon.”
