Tim Anderson

Wikipedia is remarkable. But I still meet people who have not heard of it, so let me explain. It is an online encyclopaedia that is open for anyone to read and to edit.

Editing an article does not even require you to log in. Simply click "Edit this page", type and save. You might imagine that such a thing would soon be taken over by such people as spammers, link merchants, pornographers, and eccentrics with axes to grind. Remarkably, this hasn't happened.

The secret of the wiki - the generic name for this type of collaborative site - is that it maintains a history. When vandalism occurs, the next reader can repair it.

You might also imagine that without the arsenal of editors, researchers and fact-checkers who deal with old-style encyclopaedias, Wikipedia must be full of inaccuracy and bias. Undoubtedly there is some; but most articles are written, edited and corrected by people who care about their subject.

Despite what seem fundamental flaws, Wikipedia has become a huge and valuable resource since its foundation in 2001. It is even evolving its own jargon. "I've been involved in an edit war," wrote one Wikipedia author fighting over a contentious detail.

Yes, it lacks authority and should not be relied on for critical decisions, but unlike read-only encyclopaedias, an error in Wikipedia can instantly be corrected.

Tim Berners-Lee, the inventor of the World Wide Web, always saw it as a collaborative medium. In his book Weaving the Web he wrote, "I have always envisaged the information space as something to which everyone has immediate and intuitive access, and not just to browse, but to create." Wikipedia and the wiki concept have brought that vision to life.

But does the wiki have an application in business? Given that it is mainly used by the open-source movement, it may seem surprising that the inventor of the wiki, Ward Cunningham, now works for Microsoft creating best-practice guidance for developers.

I have been looking at an early preview of Team System, Microsoft's forthcoming collaborative development platform. There are interesting echoes of the wiki in its web sites, built on Windows 2003 SharePoint services. These can be configured to allow any team member to modify their content.

Poor communication is the bane of any software project, and collaborative team web sites are an excellent remedy. There is no need to wait for Team System. Wiki implementations are widely available for most web platforms.

Discussion of open-source versus proprietary software usually centres on questions about licences, quality and support. It is easy to miss the more fundamental lesson from the open-source movement, which is the power of collaboration and open communication.

Wikipedia is a fine example. The humble wiki, which is simple technology and easily implemented, is a valuable business resource.