Here's more proof that Lessig just doesn't get wikis. His earlier attempt was to use wikis to help him update his book Code. I'm not sure how that panned out for him, but my guess is that it has failed for the same reason this project will fail: Wikis are terrible spaces for rational-critical discourse. The only reason why wikis like Wikipedia and Wikitravel have done so well is their adherence to the NPOV (neutral point of view) and the significant effort they put into avoiding obvious bias.

I suppose this project might be useful in demonstrating how Lessig's opposition can't unify around a wiki project, but that's about it.

I'm not sure I get this. Why would a wiki, as a collaborative writing space, be bad for "rational-critical discourse?" And why is a NPOV better suited to a wiki than what Lessig proposes?

Matt,

Sometimes people use butter knives as screw drivers, or screw drivers as paint can lid pryers or paint can lid pryors as beer bottle openers.

A Wiki doesn't have to be used the way Wikipedia uses it. There are lots of ways to use any given technology, some not necessarily imagined by the technology's developers. Wiki's have been used before Wikipedia for collaborative group work among a closed set of writers, as classroom spaces, and as open to the world writing spaces where anyone can come in.

Lessig wants a use of the Wiki that's a bit more scholarly in its approach, so his book has in effect an editor-in-chief, "captain" in his term, moderator in other terms, person reviewing and approving changes.

It might narrow the range of contributors, but that's probably one of the points of the approach.

To say that Wiki's *have* to be deployed one way or the other in order to be "gotten" is to mistake one path of possibility for *the* path.

Nick Carbone

Yes, yes, I know. Some people do the darndest things with technology. Yet, others don't just grab whatever is lying around to do a job. They actually consider the nature of the task at hand and select a tool that seems most effective for completing that task. Whether the designer of that tool intended it for the purpose is irrelevant. Whether the design of the tool negatively or positively affects what the user intends IS relevant. So, next time you're doing some personal grooming and reach for a set of diagonal pliers instead of the toenail clippers, you might stop and think, "Why not use the better tool?" I especially recommend this if other people have to use those pliers (yuck!)

What people who don't "get" wikis assume is that it's just a freak coincidence that Wikipedia, Wiki Travel, and any wiki worth mentioning is an encyclopedic or reference-type work. Of course, they say, Stephen King could write a novel using wiki. Sure, why not? He could even password protect it so that only he could modify it. Sure, why not? Why not use a wiki instead of a blog. You can retrofit it with usernames and passwords and make it work just like a blog. Heck, some people use them for discussion boards. My question is, WHY? Why force a wiki to do something it isn't good at, when there are plenty of better tools out there for those jobs?

My point is that it is not just a coincidence that the best known wikis are encyclopedias, references, and manuals. There's a damn good reason why this is so, and that's the subject of a chapter I'm doing for this upcoming book project. :-P

I'm not convinced that this is not a good tool for his project. A wiki is a collaborative tool for building multipage hypertexts/web sites. What Lessig is doing can not be done with a blog or a forum because they have predefined organizational structures that do not suit the purpose of the text. In fact, it sounds to me from what he has described that he is doing exactly what you describe as an example of a "best known wiki": building a reference manual of content which critiques his work. In fact, this or the Drupal collaborative book is what I would use for his project. If you can describe how a forum or blog would work better, I'd like to know. Always looking for more ways to use different social software tools in terms of information architecture.

Now whether it will succeed is not so much a result of the tool, but whether anyone actually provides content and continues to update it.

BTW: I think a wiki would be a really cool tool for building a hypertext novel, much better than a blog :)

Now whether it will succeed is not so much a result of the tool, but whether anyone actually provides content and continues to update it.

Well, that's the key, isn't it? If this thing blossoms and flourishes, then it'll be worth its weight in gold. :-P

I was thinking last night that such a task would be best accomplished if the goal really was to compile a comprehensive list of criticisms. Note I say compile criticisms, not serve as a space for criticism. There's a subtle distinction there, perhaps, but nevertheless an important one for wikis.

Yep. We only have to look at sourceforge to see that many commons-based peer production projects have great intent, but never go anywhere.

BTW: I really did want to here more from you about the NPOV thing. I'm getting more heavily into researching how and why CBPP works and when it doesn't from the open source perspective, so it's always good to see what the wiki people are thinking about this. I'm wondering if maybe this connects with project focus/mission? Or do you see the lack of NPOV as a problem for reaching some sort of consensus view in a text? If so, I'm interested in where the negotiation breaks down in wikis.

I'm wondering if maybe this connects with project focus/mission? Or do you see the lack of NPOV as a problem for reaching some sort of consensus view in a text? If so, I'm interested in where the negotiation breaks down in wikis.

I think you've hit upon the exact problem. Wikis depend on the ability to reach consensus. That's why the least reliable pages on Wikipedia are those of living people, particularly living politicians who have gone so far as to either make changes themselves or hire people to do it (no doubt on the tax payer's dollar). The "hotter" the issue, the harder it is for there to be the critical mass necessary to reach consensus. On a wiki, even a half-dozen freaks can steadily ruin a page and waste other people's time to the point where it's just not worth having the page open to editing.

Still, there will always be idiots out there with nothing better to do than piss on a toilet seat. My point above is that the NPOV and so on are designed to keep sensible people (the vast majority) from doing so. As long as it's clear that the goal or mission of the site isn't to argue for a particular point of view, then when we encounter an obviously biased page, we see an isolated problem with a bad contributor, not a global problem with a bad system.