Martin Cleaver, masterfully. » Blog Archive » Wikis compared to Email, Discussion Groups and Blogs

Martin Cleaver identifies and explains one of the salient features of the type of practice which can be enabled by wikis.

Martin Cleaver, masterfully. » Blog Archive » Wikis compared to Email, Discussion Groups and Blogs

Wikis are Negotiation tools.

* Wikis are means for a group to truly negotiate over meaning, align on values and build action plans together. The open nature of Wikis, where anyone can move or reword content facilitates collaborative idea structuring. The very lack of structured barriers between postings enables the next person to cut & paste conversation fragments around the wiki . Working on the same document (rather than linking between posts, or tacking on yet another comment) creates a workspace for situated cognition, where participants are forced to co-author the document. Co-authoring, in turn, ensures participates find a wording that summarizes the content, first by acknowledging differences and often by bridging through super-ordinate, more profound, concepts that explain a dilemma.