Wikis are everywhere. Not only has the entire sum of human knowledge already been transferred to wikipedia, but every company, team, project, and special interest has their own wiki. What changed? What happened to the Web? What about Web 2.0? How do all these wikis fit in?

Follow up:

In essence, all a wiki is is a web page that is designed to let almost anyone change it. This sounds surprisingly dangerous initially, but when you accept that no change or revision is ever fatal, you begin to see why letting the ‘masses’ in to the web just might work. Want to add a photo you took of a butterfly on the Wikipedia page for butterflies? Just click it and do it. If you screw it all up, someone else very interested in butterflies is probably already fixing your mistake. Does your corporate team need to work on some documentation for a project? There is no easier way than to set up a wiki to allow tagged multi-person edits and discussion.

For some reason, a lot of people spend a lot of time putting their creations out for the world to see. We have some kind of innate desire to create, and for our creations to be recognized in order to give them value. Blogs are a natural extension of this desire to garner human accolades. If you come here, read, and perhaps even get riled up or inspired enough to comment, we have suddenly formed a community that never before existed. Just add a comment and you support both my human desire for acceptance or perhaps even respect and fulfill your own desire or need to chip in your own two cents or maybe even take me down a notch with a better argument.

Blogs are pretty popular nowadays but what is a blog but a wiki only I can edit. Sure you can comment, but you could comment on this if it was a wiki too. Is the next extension of blogging the ‘wiki-blog’? The only hurdle is the question of why you are here versus why you might visit a wiki. Here, this is the ‘all-me-show’. On my ‘wiki-blog’ it is the ‘me show’ with you checking my spelling, and ultimately, with all of you fine tuning this little tangential interlude into a fully collaborative essay on wikis, blogs, and human cultures and mores. You didn’t come to the Web 2.0 for passive entertainment did you?!?

I was never really all that interested in posting ‘blogs’ that you can read and then close with a smirk, a smile, a frown, or disgusted disinterest but for now, it’s what we’ve got to work with. I think that the ‘wiki-blog’ is interesting enough that it might just make for the next MyFace, or MyPlace, or Spacebook.com. I have toyed with the idea of a collaborative story in the past. I think it has huge potential, considering that we already are willing to place extremely personal information in the public domain and we love to interact with other people. Blogs are my most personal thoughts, posted here, semi-anonymously, under cover of the vast equalizer that the internet is. Wiki-blogs: my same thoughts and feelings, posted here for you to edit into something different, something more, something surprisingly unique, something bigger than me or you alone. It’s all just waiting to emerge from this rudimentary chrysalis.

wikiblog.com is already registered as a domain name…