readers must understand that the content cannot be found in the front page of the article alone, but is found in the whole body of previous versions and page history.

Given this statement, what is the advantage of a Wiki over a more common Internet forum? If the front page can't (or shouldn't?) be trusted, why not just make all the changes explict up front (at which point the wiki devolves into a forum)?

It seems to me the biggest obstacles to online media are trust and credientials. I understand the desire of the Wiki community to enable a kind of Socratic dialog, where all parties refine eachother's statements, moving closer and closer to the Truth. This is all well and good in Ancient Greece, but on the Internet there are so many opinions, which are so divergent, the system breaks down. If there are literally thousands of opinions, we really need a way to (a) distigush who's opinions are who's, and (b) why their opinions matter.
Dan | Homepage | 06.20.05 - 1:18 am | #

Points taken.

A forum is entirely chronological, I think. The chronological part of a wiki is important, but not the only thing that matters, as the evolution of the "end result" has a lot of signifigance in and of itself. For example, an organization's mission statement can be revised over time through a wiki, with all revisions and their authors being identified, but with an end product still being available. It's the front page of the wiki -that's where the mission statement stands at any given time.


I think that the LA Times editorial was really a bad choice of places to use a wiki. A good wiki application solves some of these problems, I think.

In wikipedia, all changes are clearly made by either logged in users whose editing history in other articles you can view or IP adresses of people just passing through without an account (thus less cred.) When I use wikipedia for research (I start by searching wikiwax.com for related articles) I allways pay attention to the history and discussion, but they only color the way I understand the front page. Does that make sense?
Marshall | 06.21.05 - 10:14 pm | #