Wiki’s are, in many ways, “the” co-creative tool for the web, the “co-creative website” if you like. Businesses are enamored with blogs, but wiki’s are more appropriate for certain tasks. Wiki’s are for a growing base of knowledge, as opposed to a reverse chronology of news and ideas. Wiki’s are good at refining ideas, and creating richer, deeper understanding overtime. The motolora Q wiki, the co-created product manual, if you will, is a brilliant example of a task ideal for a wiki, much more useful than a Q blog 
So guess what, wiki’s can be used for more than encyclopedias, here’s a few examples, i’d love to hear more:
- Play chess with your fans: Zefrank demonstrates with Fabuloso Chess (powered by Mediawiki)
- A co-created product manual: Motorola launches a wiki for it’s Q phone manual (powered by Mediawiki)
- Document the rise of a civilization (also on mediawiki)
- Write a business plan with a team spread around the world (I’ve done it on mediawiki also)
- Write a screenplay (screenplay extension from mediawiki)
- Project Management with twiki
- Knowledge management and enterprise collaboration with socialtext
- Create conference notes/schedule (powered by socialtext)
- Co-create shownotes for your podcast (powered by pmwiki)
- Collaborate on revolutionary standards microformat feedback (powered by mediawiki)
- A compendium of TV knowledge (again on mediawiki)
- Organizing a reunion (powered by wetpaint)
- Planning a wedding (also wetpaint)
- Sharing a handbag fetish (also wetpaint)
- Document a Blog template (calling k2 a blog template being a vast understatement of it’s fabulousness) (Powered by Stikipad)
- Collaborativly write a magazine article for Wired (powered by SocialText)
BTW this post was inspired by my conversation last night with John Winsor, CEO of Radar Communications, and a leading thinker in co-creation, but you’ll need to listen to next weeks “co-creative business show” to find out the real scoop on John and Wikis
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Since we’ve launched Wetpaint.com a couple of weeks ago, we’ve seen thousands of people create wikis on the above topics and more including:
Organizing a reunion (http://ihsclassof96.wetpaint.com)
RSVPing for events (http://snparty.wetpaint.com)
Planning a wedding (http://tuscanwedding.wetpaint.com)
Training for a marathon with friends (http://slowrunning.wetpaint.com)
Sharing a handbag fetish (http://handbags.wetpaint.com)
We’re finding that if you someone is really passionate about something and wants to share that passion with others, wikis are the perfect outlet. And if you make it really easy for them to do, the number of people willing to contribute grows exponentially.
Great stuff kevin, I love it, I’ll pull a couple out and add them to the list.
I think wikis will become far more valuable on the business landscape than blogs will simply because the environment is more conducive to knowledge. Granted blogs are and will be even more prevalent to having an ongoing conversation with your customers but gaining knowledge from your customers that produces value for other customers can be an essential product of wiki usage.
Very well put Andy, and what I will say is that wiki’s are probably “undervalued” in the marketplace of ideas, very underused by businesses as ways to co-create value with customers. In many ways wiki’s are even more scary for business that blogs, and certainly podcasts. Blogs and podcasts you can still very much control, and drive the conversation, sure you might the the odd crazy comment, but the overarching perception of a wiki is “anyone can edit anything” (not entirely true as wiki’s have the functionality that enables different levels of controls).
Thanks,
Karl
Karl,
Very useful post. I had actually been thinking about the utility of wikis for use in the music industry (I have a music marketing blog) and came across your post this morning. I incorporated the information you provided and just posted some additional suggestions for the use of wikis in engaging fans and in promoting music discovery if you\’re interested(http://studioues.blogspot.com/2006/07/all-hail-wiki.html).
Great information!
Thanks Tricia,
Great job extending the conversation, I really like what you did on your blog and have linked the url that you left.
This has turned into a really valuable thread for me, i’m learning more about the uses of wiki’s, and more wonderful wiki projects from all the comments
Cheers,
Karl
Fabulous list. Funny enough, I found Tricia’s expanded list that brought me back full-circle to yours. This is tremendous thinking (and useful information) from both of you. Enjoyed the comments, too.
We marketers appreciate your time/trouble. I’ll likely refer to these posts over and over. Bravo!
Good list! On our website we have a variety of case studies as well about how people are using commercial wikis in large organisations. Internally, we use Confluence for product planning and development, documenting just about every procedure imaginable, marketing plans, event planning, publishing a list of our partners, and internal blogging.
Checking Attendee availability for a meeting across organisations:
http://pascal.vanhecke.info/2005/09/04/introducing-a-wiki-into-an-organization-the-quickdate-page/
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I love wikis! I am a manager at a web design firm, and we recently launched a Wiki on our internal server for our customer support team. As problems arise, or new tricks are learned to resolve issues, we encourage our support team to post and read articles from our own wiki. It has been Highly successful! GO WIKI!
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Yes, I must say, that is quite a discussion going on here. I feel very informed with some new natural ideas.
thanks!