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I heard a segment on the KUOW show "The Works" about the role of web-based Wikis in the growing popularity of online collaboration. A Wiki is a great way for multiple parties to asynchronously contribute information and ideas to a shared, outward-facing medium. They differ from Blogs in that Blogs are usually maintained by an individual, while Wikis are cooperatively maintained by a group with the occasional involvement of editors.

I had experience with Wikis when working for a start-up company in 2004. The engineering team was geographically-distributed, so it was incredibly valuable to have a Wiki server as a global repository for information that could be accessed via the Web. It was most effective because we were dealing with "hard", factual data. There wasn't much need for an editorial role since the data posted to the site was hard to dispute.

Many Wikis aren't so factual; or, if they are fact-based, the facts can be interpreted in many ways (such as with the edit-wars that occur on Wikipedia). So, an editor might be needed in order to provide direction and stability to the collaborative work occurring on the Wiki.

Some people wonder if the popularity of Wikis and group-think is heralding the end of the autonomous, lone writer. I don't think so. Collaboration through a Wiki is appropriate when direction among a group is required. When a person's goal is to simply express their opinion with the non-essential goal of interesting or persuading others, writing a Blog or individual column is perfectly fine. I think that individual authors might serve as a catalyst for Wikis. You don't know the popularity of a topic until you begin to see a lot of individuals expressing interest in it. Once the topic is recognized as important, discussion can be facilitated using Wikis. Blogs and Wikis are hardly mutually-exlusive; instead, they go hand-in-hand.