Wikis

I must admit that Wikis make a lot more sense to me that blogs. Especially as you can limit the people that are allowed edit them. Even Wikipedia sets limits - for certain controversial subjects only recognised users that have already contributed can edit the pages - while other subjects are completely locked and cannot be contributed to at all.

What about the problem of Spam? The idea of "everyone contributes no one controls" sounds pretty good, until you find your page as been ravished by advertising for porn or dubious objects and services. I understand the 'wisdom of the crowd' in principle - but in practice some of the crowd are not only unwise, they are downright objectionable.

I think things like Scholarpedia use wikis to their best potential. I hate to admit it, because I don't like to think of myself as a control freak, but to be really useful I think Wikis do need to be under the control of some group other than just 'the crowd'.

Having said that - I think Wikis are a wonderful tool for people to collaborate and I am quite excited by the technology. Definitely Subject Wikis are in our future.