< Wikimania.org

Panel Discussion on the future of wikis edit

• Ward Cunningham, Jack Herrick, Erik Moeller, Dirk Riehle
• Wiki Creole - Eric not sure if it's guided in the right direction, Ward / Dirk think it's good because it gets to standardizing the meaning of the common markup
• Audience - templates are inhibiting us
• Erik - templates cool because it allows innovation, but on the other hand only the one who write it understands it. Why not make an IDE that allows programming interaction with the wiki content.
• Jack - want the flowering of different communities, etc. But wiki has not "crossed the chasm" yet. Geeks / Free Culture, etc. is where we are not, but my mom doesn't get it yet. WYSIWYG, Communicating Values, and other things will be necessary.
• Ward - moving towards collaboration in richer media formats
• Long discussion about Usability
• Erik - In addition to usability, also important is to serve the existing community better / stable versions, approving changes. Want to ask Ward if that's still wiki?
• Ward - It's the kind of experimentation that's important and appropo. Process innovation is important, we must embrace that. And that will be mixed up with technology and human behaviors.
• Dirk - Technology frequently just gets in the way, the real challenge is really the processes. What does it really mean to have a group of people working on something?
• Ward - I'm excited about the fact that the word "wiki" has been generalized not to a technology, but a style of work.
• Dirk - How can transfer the principals to work?
• Erik - 70-80% of OpenSource projects use wikis to track and manage their work. OpenSource crowd is an early adopter, he thinks it will go mainstream. He identifies with FreeCulture more than Web 2.0
• Ward - would love to be able to move through many wikis and still feel at home wherever you are. Creole may be a "secondary" language that can be used to help. OpenID also important and a reputation system too. Easy to create an account, but you have something to loose if you misbehave.
• Jack - SpreadWiki campaign