Sticks of Fire reports that the Tampa Tribune used Wikipedia as a source for an editorial and a recent article on intelligent design.

He's asking if it is acceptable for newspapers to utilize Wikipedia as a legitimate source.

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Over the weekend while discussing some household projects my wife said, "we need to set up a wiki for this." I wasn't totally shocked since we used a 'family' wiki for our holiday shopping lists, but it was not something that you hear everyday.

She likes a wiki becuase it is easy to edit...big surprise there huh. The wiki has been created and we're planning away.

Along those sames lines, why is it that every person I know that has a SharePoint install at their corporation hates it? Ross, that's your cue.

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When you have children, you raise them trying to shelter them from certain things. A few months ago at a playground my son encountered a young boy that was just mean. My son did not know how to respond, he had never encountered anybody like that before. You hope that people will be good and decent, but that is not always the case.

Why say this? I just read this post on Dave Winer's blog and it made me think about my son on the playground. I am not comparing Dave to my son, Dave can handle himself, but it was just one of those moments when you are reminded that not all people are nice.

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The amount of wiki spam I am dealing with now is getting ridiculous. On average I am being hit with 6-8 script attacks per day.

I run a wiki on my site mostly as a proof-of-concept. I publicly post speaking dates and resources from my seminars plus a few other things. There is quite of a bit of behind-the-scenes stuff I use for clients or personal matters as well.

I know these are script-based attacks since they always target the same pages that are common to PMWiki, the wiki software I run. I am notified each time a change is made so I can go clean things up, but it's gotten to the point that it's not worth the effort. I modified the wiki to remove the pages from public display, but the script attacks keep coming.

What is funny is that it looks like a little war between the pill and porn purveyors, constantly over-writing each other's spam.

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I recently talked to a friend whose company is considering converting their current intranet over to a wiki. I loved the idea. What's great about his situation is that the technical folks are on board as well. When I show people how a wiki works one of the things I always talk about is the internal uses for wikis and blogs.

There is a great article over at Gilbane about Blogs & Wikis in enterprise applications. One of the many key quotes:

This is a major issue I see quite a bit. A PR or marketing person I talk to goes back to IT and asks about the utilization of a blog or a wiki and they get the cold shoulder.

This is also true in the web development world. If a web firm or IT person does not understand a technology or a tool they dismiss it or try to convince the client to use another solution. That is when I usually step in for the client and ask, "Is your reluctance to use this solution based upon some sort of research or experience, or do you just not know how to do it?" Almost every time, it is becuase the IT department/developer knows nothing about it, and does not want to take the time to investigate it.

Continue reading "Blogs and Wikis for Intranets and Project Management" »

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Steve Rubel has a post titled Wikis Pose a Threat to Costly Media Directories.

Media directories must evolve into wikis or they risk becoming extinct. They are spending a lot of money paying researchers. Why not also bring customers (e.g. PR people) into the fold and enable us to edit listings, share insights and knowledge via a wiki? In the future, PR professionals - and even consumers - will create their own media directories.

One possible legal issue with the 'open source' PR directory is making sure the data is not copied directly from the existing sources such as Bacons.

Continue reading "Wiki Media Directories: Possible Legal Issues" »

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The SJ Mercury News had an article today about wiki war between the two major commercial wiki developers: SocialText and JotSpot.

This has lead to some discussion about the competition in the wiki space.

My take? Well I will borrow my take from Jeff Jarvis. Here are Jeff's comments regarding the 'blog war' between Engadget (Jason Calacanis' posse) and Gizmodo (Nick Denton's crew) over coverage of CES and other gadget goodies. Jason had complained to Jeff that Engadget was far superior to Gizmodo.

Continue reading "The Wiki War: Get Over It" »

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Stumbled across this quote:

...it is more accurate to think of weblogs and wikis as work arounds for the broken parts of the web, rather than a new innovation. In Tim Berners-Lee's initial vision and implementation, every browser was also an editor.

at an old post from Tuttle SVC.

I agree with this to some extent. Many of the people that I demonstrate wikis to find the ease of use refereshing after seeing tools such as SharePoint or other branded intranet packages. The same thing happens when I speak to a group about blogs and then show them how easy it is to set up an account on Blogger. Wikis and blogs make it extremely easy for the common person/employee to contribute to the conversation.

The original HTML tags made it very easy to create content. The hard part back then (circa 1994/5) was figuring out FTP. What was my first stab at web content? It was a FAQ for Absolutely Fabulous. I wrote it in 1994.

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Dan Forbush over at PRNewswire has called for a Global PR Wiki Day.

Word is spreading among the bloggers. As details unfold I'll post updates here as well. I recently set up my own wiki as a demonstration to my clients and friends.

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The Hyku | Wiki has been launched. I set up the wiki for two reasons: First as a location to post resources for my seminars, Second as a demonstration to clients and visitors.

Go check it out.

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I will be presenting a seminar on blogs and other online trends that are effecting the practive of public relations at 12pm Monday, November 15, for the Space Coast Chapter of the Florida Public Relations Association. The luncheon is being held at the Radisson at the Port in the Port Caneveral area.

The title of my presentation is, "What the Blog is He Talking About and Why the Blog Should I Care?"

Resources for the seminar can be found in the Hyku Wiki.

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Recent hyku commentor Mike Manuel has a post about his PR firm utlilizing JotSpot. JotSpot is one of the many commerical wiki applications available

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Wikis seem to be the topic of the day. Ross Mayfield has some more thoughts on the subject and sources the same PR Week story I metioned earlier.

Steve Rubel also blogs about the participatory journalism capabilities of wikis.

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PRWeek has an article about PR firms adopting wikis. Good intro:

The flux of new technologies entering the market is enough to give the average PR pro a migraine. Just when one understands blogs, early adopter colleagues point out real simple syndication (RSS). Now water-cooler talk revolves around wikis, which can provide PR firms with internal communications enhancements; make writing press releases and communiques more of a team effort; and provide new opportunities for soft launches, tipping off journalists, and communicating with clients.

The local PR professionals I deal with fall into the category of the migraine masses. they are just now beginning to understand how blogs work and how to utilize them (if at all).

When I show individuals public wikis such as Wikipedia they all have the same response. Fear. Many can't understand how such an open system on the internet can function without falling into utter chaos.

Internal wikis are a different story.

Continue reading "PRWeek - Wiki Watcher" »

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